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Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4750 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 153 of 230 12 March 2015 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, the added problem is that I personally do not make use of such directional in my spoken language (in my mother tongues). I always found them superfluous or unnecessary information.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate them for what they are, I just don't speak like that. I just say "there" and not "out across into"... :) - - - - Unit Completion Entry 55 Cycle Two (Lessons 7-26) Book 2 Lesson 23 New Practical Chinese Reader 3.12.2015 This was the longest lesson overall of this book to finish because of the directional compounds I was whining about last page, and also because a lot of expressions where introduced alongside some introduction to "Chinese passive" sentences. So I had to work extra to start internalizing these. Other lessons are "harder" in the sense of amount of information (like prior lessons where there is much to internalize about word order), but word order also I have learned comes with time, and plenty of listening, and it is not worth doing exercises a million times to get it down right away (though it helps and I did). I'm definitely now at the stage where some days I feel I understand quite a bit of very basic sentences, other days where things still completely fly by me (when I'm tired). From my language learning adventures of the past, I know this is a GREAT sign actually! But this stage also last months if not a year or so... And that was with related languages to my mother languages. Who knows Chinese. On the other hand, I am studying harder and smarter for this language, have given myself more chances for listening and speaking practice, and eventually may go to China, so that all should play to my advantage. Edited by outcast on 02 April 2015 at 3:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4750 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 154 of 230 13 March 2015 at 5:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, well... by the time I click on "post reply" it should be March 13, which I just minutes ago (honest!) realized was the 2nd year anniversary of this log. It's hard to believe because many things have happened that time.
I certainly would have hoped to be near advanced fluency at this point in time when I first started the log, but life just doesn't work out that way. The best I can do is persevere. I hope I will. My Chinese is still rudimentary. I am finding that my listening has improved a small yet noticeable amount. I'm talking about every day language. My reading is extremely good actually, or at least that is what my tutor says. I would rate it as very good. My pronunciation is fine, I'm not worried about it. Output is still horrible but I'm ok with it. I've been at it only three months since I RE-STARTED, so I'm fine with mostly silent period. I do speak short phrases however and I can make up sentences that are grammatically coherent when given enough time, it is just that many times those sentences don't sound "Chinese". So that is my biggest frustration right now. I would think massive input and more vocab will palliate that issue. My routine is pretty much set. Let me preface that I'm not a huge believer in language micro-management. That is, at least for me, getting intricate with a language-learning strategy steals time from the actual learning itself, which is why you don't see detailed explanations of what I do, or how many flash cards I type (actually, I use none!), or setting up complex programs. I just want to learn the language, not learn how to learn a language. I let my past experiences "feel" me through the process. So, basically during the early week (MO-TU-WE-TH) I do NPCR, around 2 lessons, or just under that a week. I think this pace will slow down in April as I no longer study for the HSK Level 3 that I am sitting in two weeks. I will slow down to maybe 1.5 lessons a week, depends how I progress of course. The reason I do NPCR during the week is that I take a college Chinese class as a requirement to get scholarship money to travel to China. It's extra practice, albeit insanely easy for me. I still pick up some interesting new vocab from the teacher, she is actually a good teacher. In the late week (FR-SA-SU) I do Basic Spoken Chinese. About 2 lessons per weekend, thus one unit every two weeks, or thereabouts. This pace seems set to stay so, since back in 2013 when I was only doing this series, the pace was one lesson every four days. The interesting thing about these two programs is that NPCR has a ton of vocab and great sentence structure help, and it also has very clear recordings for hearing over and over and internalizing the structures and vocab. Yet this same recording clarity is a bit deleterious for listening fluency, because the recordings are so clear (specially the tones) that they are stilted. No real Chinese speaks like that. That is where Basic Spoken Chinese comes in. The recordings there are done full speed with speakers that slur their speech or even have downright accents. The recordings sometimes sound distant and low volume. This at first may seem terrible-- I mean it's a language course for Pete's sake-- the least they could do is record clear dialogues! But I think it is great as it compensates for the overly clear NPCR. BSC also has tons of reading on the "non-language" aspects of speaking Chinese: how and when to use certain vocabulary or style, posture, context, social hierarchy, even some recent history on how the language is developing. BSC focuses on speech and cultural context of language only, NPCR on vocabulary, grammar, and Chinese culture more broadly. The whole pattern feels like a good synergy for me. Both have extensive drills which I do, as well as some sections where you have more freedom to create speech. I do those as well. I have not used NPCR workbooks yet, nor have I done the Basic Written Chinese series which mirrors the Spoken series lesson by lesson. I will use the NPCR workbooks as "reviews": at around the time of Book 4 NPCR (June), I will re-do the first three volumes of NPCR + workbook. The workbooks have extra material to reinforce the vocabulary, which is my main goal, plus extra grammar/sentence practice. I will also pay attention to the written part of the NPCR textbooks, which I have completely ignored till now. I won't focus too much on writing though, I will just go through the material for my own benefit. I will begin the Basic Written Chinese after Unit 14 of Intermediate Spoken Chinese, again, re-doing the older Units in Basic Spoken Chinese + the corresponding written lesson. They have good reading character practice, PLUS the Written Series teaches you about how to redact in Chinese: punctuation, style, etc. I find that aspect valuable. So those two courses are my mainstays. In the medium term I will reinforce the whole thing with Living Language Ultimate Mandarin. Why? Extra practice, and because I find those old Living Language series quite concise for the non-beginner. I would never recommend them for raw beginners as those series just have WAAAAAAAY too little in the way of examples on how the language is put together, and the exercises are just marginal. But as a COMPLEMENT to more voluminous, serious language courses, I find them quite useful. They tend to be quite thorough in their vocabulary and grammar (which is why they probably can only offer very few examples, they have to move on quite quick to cover so much ground in a 300 or so page book). Aside all that... I meet with a tutor, which I find invaluable as a source to quickly settle my questions about vocabulary usage (particularly "when" to use "which" word); as well as the occasional grammar that may confound me (I'm good with grammar that's why I say "occasional"). I also get to listen to a native Chinese speaker for an hour, since the class is 80% in Chinese (even the explanations, which she will repeat in very pithy English so that I fully understand). I think a tutor to teach you about which vocabulary is relevant or not in the modern language, as well as quickly noticing mistakes you make is quite an asset. I listen to Chinese cartoons, and I have ever since the beginning, when I understood nothing. I do that with all my languages: I don't wait. I know at the beginning I won't get it, but that's not the point. The point is to take all that gibberish and let my ears find the rhythm, the cadence, the speed, the word-boundaries, etc. I believe one should never wait to begin listening to a new language. Speech, what little I do right now, is done with the tutor, in the class, and with three Chinese friends I have. I don't do much speaking now, I'm still in my own mostly silent-period just soaking words, grammar/sentence patterns, and sharpening my listening. All that keeps me busy enough. As summer approaches though, I think I will force myself to start speaking dramatically: I will slow down a bit my rate of lessons, and give speaking a bit more prominence in my routine. As for times, I usually do the "drilling" in the morning when I'm wide awake. I do listening during lunch or when driving my car. I will do vocabulary learning and sentence memorizing when I'm at work, and watch/listen to Chinese at home in the early evening. Learning grammar (which wakes me up for some reason), I learn last, late at night, because I can squeeze an extra hour or two. When I try to do listening, or drill, late at night I fall asleep almost immediately. So I do grammar and write notes on grammar in my computer late. I try to use all available time the most efficiently as possible, especially so-called "dead time". I have also started a new thing on Fridays, which is to create "islands" of conversational topics, and meet with a Chinese friend to talk about it. I'm only on my first island now ("Introductions"). Basically, I sit down and write down as many questions I can that I would ask someone I want to get to know when meeting for the first time. I then write down the answers next to the questions according to my personal profile. I then meet with my Chinese friend and go over my answers, correcting all the mistakes. He/she will then suggest other questions I may not have thought about. I then answer and write those down. I go back home and for the next week practice and practice these. That way, I can start getting some fluency in specific areas, the most obvious one being talking about me and my life! I have thought about 5 islands thus far: 1. Introductions (me and my life) 2. Language and language learning conversation (duh!) 3. General weather talk 4. Wine and other liquors (since I work at a place, might as well learn in Chinese) 5. Travel So I will at least start trying to focus on vocabulary specific to such areas and practice speaking about them with my friends. At the college, I have to do lab hours, so while I study my NPCR or BSC, I also borrow the "Tell me More" Chinese program they have. It is awkward to use since I can't find the actual lessons, just the exercises. So overall pretty useless, HOWEVER, I do get extra practice and actually do snatch up some new vocabulary that the other series have not covered up to that point. That makes it valuable enough: one needs to learn vocab from 3,4, 5 sources even to pick as broad a spectrum of high-frequency terms as possible. Characters... I basically learned their meanings by rote and some rudimentary flash cards. I forgot many, but that's OK. When I see them again in the NPCR or elsewhere, I know I have already seen them and the new word is much easier to remember (as well as the characters). So I am actually GLAD I did go through mind-numbing hours of going through endless list of characters. I think it is important to divide a task into smaller ones. With characters: 1. Learn to recognize it 2. Learn to know you recognize it and learn what it means (create a story!) 3. Then learn the general writing (not exact yet, just components) 4. Then learn the pronunciation. At this point you repeat. When you see the character in a word for the first time, you should instantly know you have at least studied it, it should not be something utterly foreign. Then, you should have an idea what the word may mean because you made up some silly story about the meaning. As a result, you should now know what the word with said character COULD mean (not always!). You probably forgot the pronunciation (the hardest part), but now that you know a word with the character in it, and you now hae learned this word, the pronunciation of the characters making up the word should become FAR easier to remember. With this system, you don't have to learn everything at once! Finally when you are ready, you write the word down and slowly perfect writing the character. So that's it. While I have good discipline to stick to this plan to the bitter end (and hope for results), I do allow some freedom in the smaller day to day process. If I am interested in a particular area (grammar, vocab, etc), I focus on that. I don't deny myself just because I have to stick to a certain schedule. I believe some organic spontaneity to the learning process makes it more natural and increases its staying power. My medium term goals are to finish NPCR 2 in two weeks, BSC in three. Begin NPCR 3 and Intermediate Spoken Chinese. Begin NPCR 4 around mid-June, finish ISC by September. I would like then to begin reading native material and drastically increasing my input and speaking. And here's to what's to come! Edited by outcast on 13 March 2015 at 6:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4750 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 155 of 230 14 March 2015 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 56
Unit 9 Lesson 1 Basic Spoken Chinese 3.13.2015 Edited by outcast on 02 April 2015 at 3:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4967 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 156 of 230 14 March 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for the detailed report. You've worked through so much in your Chinese learning, and I am sure once you start using native materials you will enjoy it even more. It seems the courses from Tuttle are indeed useful (I'm already familiar with NPCR).
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| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4750 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 157 of 230 15 March 2015 at 6:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Expugnator. Are you using native stuff now or have looked into it? If so, would you recommend or suggest something?
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| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4750 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 158 of 230 16 March 2015 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 57
Unit 9 Lesson 2 Basic Spoken Chinese 3.15.2015 - - - - Unit 9 of this course is very short, almost half the most of the others. I should be done with it in the next day or two. Then I should successfully have completed BASIC SPOKEN CHINESE by around the last weekend of the month. Edited by outcast on 02 April 2015 at 3:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4750 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 159 of 230 17 March 2015 at 4:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 58
Unit 9 Lesson 3 Basic Spoken Chinese 3.16.2015 Edited by outcast on 02 April 2015 at 3:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4967 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 160 of 230 17 March 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry for the late reply. I was about to answer and I realized I was better off replying at the desktop in case I needed to type some Chinese names, but that wasn't necessary in the end. Chinese has such an abundance of resources that you can grade your reading all the way from the basics to an upper-intermediate level. So, after the basic books, it's usually the time to go for intermediate readers with audio. I only know of good ones in French, such as Étape par Étape and Le chinois par boules de neige. But then I didn't wait till I reached that level before starting with native resources. I made use of another tool: the wide availability of programs and series with subtitles both in Chinese and in English. There are a couple of such series at the Learning English section of the state channel CCTV, such as Happy Chinese 1 and 2 and Happy Journey Across China. Plus there are series from Singapore which have double subtitles as well: Don't stop believing, I'm in charge, It takes two, to name a few. When it comes to reading, my first non-textbook sources are translations. For example, I'm reading Dan Brown's books in Chinese. I read them alongside with the English original, and I use the add-on Pera-pera for Firefox or Chrome so that I can figure out the pinyin and the meaning of individual words. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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