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Lorinth’s log - 劳伦的博客 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 97 of 408 30 June 2013 at 11:00am | IP Logged |
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While shopping, listened to the audio version of a story published in the ChineseBreeze level 2 series I'd read, what, three years ago: 我的大雁飞走了. At least I can understand *that*. Finished the ChinesePod lesson about noisy neighbours renovating their apartment. On Fluentu, watched a short animation movie about the 成语 "井底之蛙". Vocabulary drills: HSK, random vocabulary, characters. For once, I didn't read much of the short story I'd started last Friday. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 98 of 408 01 July 2013 at 8:57am | IP Logged |
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Apart from the usual vocabulary drills (HSK, random vocab, characters), I restarted working on the ChinesePod lesson about noisy renovation works because I wanted to try a retranslation exercise. Up to now, I've been wary of the translation method for several reasons. First, I've been a translator translating all day long for nearly 30 years, so I like to do something else when I'm not at work. Second, after almost 30 years of translation I know with 99% certainty that translating in and of itself does *not* create active fluency - at least in my case it hasn't: there are languages that I've been translating relatively frequently (TL > L1) and that I'm still unable to speak fluently. It's a shame. I know. Third, I've had language courses focused on translation before (Latin) and it didn't even teach me to read, let alone write and speak. That said, I actually like translating, so, why not? Moreover, it's probable that if you don't rely on translation only, if it is added to a large quantity of input, and if it is practised from your L1 to your TL, it should reinforce your analytical knowledge of the language and it might improve the active production of the TL. So I started by copying by hand the podcast about noisy renovation works and adding a hyperliteral translation. Now, a retranslation exercise in Chinese has two aspects: retranslating orally and in writing - they are two distinct competencies. I proceeded like this: - from the hyperliteral translation, reproduce the spoken version of first sentence and check against the *audio* version of the original text (which is easy thanks to the ChinesePod interface; every text is split sentence by sentence); and then, - immediately reproduce the written version of the first sentence and check against the original written version; - proceed to next sentence. There are endless possibilities: I could wait a few days or weeks before trying the written retranslation, or I could use larger chunks of text than sentences, or I could write the text as a dictation, rather than copying the written version, etc. These are all interesting methods and hypotheses I could try if I could stuff six hours' time into each hour. Those words and patterns that I was not able to reproduce have been added to my Anki deck as Cloze production cards. It was fun, actually, and it looks like it may be useful. But, wait, didn't I just reinvent the tried and trusted wheel called "Assimil method"? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 99 of 408 01 July 2013 at 8:33pm | IP Logged |
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I actually read the CEFR table and came up with the following evaluation, as far as my Mandarin is concerned: listening | reading | talking | writing Self assessment: A2 | B1-B2 | A2-B1 | A2 HSK3 (passed): B1 | B1 | B1 |B1 HSK4 (passed?): B2 | B2 | B2 | B2 HSK4*: A2 | A2 | A2 | A2 (*) = according to the evaluation of the German Association of Chinese Teachers, which certainly seems much more realistic to me. My mid-term objectives are: - to reach B1 for "listening" ("understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters ". B2 "understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics" seems a long way off) - solidify my B2 (or maybe reach for C1 "understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning") for "reading". - Most probably, I will persist in not doing any particular effort as far as "talking" and "writing" are concerned. For want of time and of opportunities for output, I'm a hopeful believer in the "language is peeing" theory. Language is peeing So I'd be happy if my "speaking" and "writing" abilities are automatically kept one level below my "listening" and "reading", whichever is weakest. Edited by lorinth on 01 July 2013 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 100 of 408 02 July 2013 at 8:40am | IP Logged |
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On NDTV, I watched a short news item about demonstrations in Brazil. On China Radio International, I read an article about how 据斯诺登的文件，美国情报机构监听欧洲 公民、欧盟机构 (according to documents revealed by Snowden, the NSA has been spying on EU citizens and EU institutions, among others). I was able to read the article without a dictionary - because I already knew a lot of information, of course. The article Continued reading 北北's 《总之还要住下去》. In Fluentu, worked a bit more on the video about 在井底的青蛙 (the frog at the bottom of the well). Started a new ChinesePod lesson about 毕业以后的生活。 Vocabulary drills: characters, HSK words, random words. FI Purged the vocab queue in LWT. Worked a bit with today's Selkouutiset news. First pass: I read the transcript. Second pass: I listened to the audio version while reading the transcript. Third pass: I just listened to the audio version. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 101 of 408 02 July 2013 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
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On NDTV, I watched a news item about 埃及的反政府抗议 (demonstrations against the government in Egypt). The anchor speaks so fast she sounds like a Road Runner chased by Wile E. Coyote. In Fluentu, worked a bit more on the video about 在井底的青蛙 (the frog at the bottom of the well). Then I watched a commercial about some sort of bank. Continued reading 北北's 《总之还要住下去》. I continued working in the ChinesePod lesson about 毕业后的生活。 Vocabulary drills: characters, HSK words, random words. -- During the next few days, I'll be living in a tent in the woods with one of the kids, no internet and no ebook. I intend to take just two books: a bilingual anthology of Latin poetry and a simplified version of 巴金's 《家》. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 102 of 408 09 July 2013 at 11:07am | IP Logged |
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Finished reading 北北's 《总之还要住下去》. The sad and disturbing story of a young migrant girl coming to Fuzhou to earn a few yuans in a shady hairdressing salon. The dark side of the Chinese dream. Started reading, and almost finished, 巴金's 《家》. It's a simplified, shorter version, amounting to a novella. There's a leitmotiv, a sentence that crops up several times: "我恨这个家". As 巴金 lived in France in 1927-28, he might have heard Gide saying much the same thing: "Familles, je vous hais". I could work a bit on the ChinesePod lesson about 毕业后的生活 and I started another one about a poor expat trying to turn on the air conditioning, which causes a clash with his in-law. I could barely keep up with part of my vocabulary drills. In theory, every day, I try to clear my SRS queues in Anki (HSK words, characters), Pleco (random vocab) and Skritter (characters). In Pleco, I've been applying the following system for the past few months. Each day: - I add 20-30 words to a list named after today's date (01, 02, 03…, 31) - I study (simple flashcards, no SRS) the lists of days X-1, X-3, X-6 - I move the cards of list X-7 to an SRS queue - I study the SRS queue As holidays are a bad time for studying languages, I'd rather concentrate on extensive reading, and put less focus on formal vocabulary studying. So I'll probably have to cancel the SRS part (in Pleco). The results of the HSK have not been published yet. Apart from that, these last few days, I had the opportunity to speak some Dutch with fellow hikers and some Chinese at a restaurant. Interestingly, I could understand the waiter's little daughter better than the waiter herself. Maybe the kid has been learning some 普通话, while the parents speak a more heavily accented form of Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 103 of 408 09 July 2013 at 12:42pm | IP Logged |
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Finally, the results of the HSK held in Paris last month are in. I took the HSK4 and got
the following scores: 听力 (listening) 90.0 阅读 (reading) 88.0 写作 (writing) 64.0 总分 (total) 242.0 which is logical, as the only part I had actively prepared with mock tests was the 听力. I didn't do any HSK specific preparation for the 阅读 and the 写作. As I continue to focus on input, I seldom use Chinese in writing, so I expected my 写作 results to be much lower than the rest. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4056 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 104 of 408 10 July 2013 at 9:33am | IP Logged |
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I've almost finished reading 巴金's 《家》 (simplified version) and I can't but feel slightly disappointed. At times, the behaviour of the characters seem incomprehensible to me; the specifically political subplot presented in the first part all but disappears in the rest of the text; there's a lot of crying and dying, so much so that the ending is rather predictable. It almost seems mechanical, just as in 余华's 《活着》, but without Yu Hua's verve and empathy. But then, the depiction of the stifling, deadly atmosphere of a crumbling family in a crumbling country is startling. And, one can suspect that the simplification process of the novel killed a lot of the interest of the full novel. So I may have to read the full version of the book in the future. Vocabulary: After having deleted my HSK4 deck in Skritter, my SRS queue in Pleco and my character deck in Anki, I'm feeling much lighter, I can now start my summer diet of Chinese vocabulary, which is composed of: - an all purpose vocabulary deck in Anki; it mainly contains HSK4 and HSK5 words for now but should host more and more Cloze-deleted sentences with ChinesePod vocabulary; - daily vocabulary lists in Pleco, containing words collected while reading; - a character queue in Skritter. LA Read one more chapter of Regulus, the part when the Little Prince arrives on planet earth and has an ambiguous and chilling conversation with a snake. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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