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Getting to A1 Mandarin Chinese, worth it? | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4100 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: French*, English | Message 1 of 3 02 July 2013 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
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I'm currently learning English, but I really needed a break from studying it day in and day out.
I've wanted to study Chinese for a long time, so I've finally started my new language journey a week ago. So far, I know things like 你好， （你好吗）， 吗,， 妈妈， 我不是..., 学生, 我很好, 我不好, 他是类/他是美国人/我是法国人/德国人/使得, 中国人， 谢谢， 样, 羊, 子 and a couple other characters (radicals/ characters I don't feel comfortable writing in Pinyin yet). I feel like I'm progressing very slowly. So far, I've only used Memrise and ChinesePod. Should I start using something else? I have access to lots of resources (Pimsleur, Assimil, FSI...) but I don't know what to use next. I also have some Chinese penpals who speak very good English, so we end up chatting about everyday stuff instead of writing in Chinese. Then again, it's hard to teach someone more than a few words. Learning Chinese also helps me reinforce my knowledge of English. However, it's also a a time sink. I'd like to study Chinese for an hour a day this summer. I don't know if I actually have the time, but I will do my best. I also need to learn 10k+ words of English by 2015/2016, but that's another story. I have college-related work to do over the summer, but I also need to do things that are more interesting (such as learning a brand-new language.) What should I do next? Memrise's HSK1 course seems a bit hard for a complete beginner. ChinesePod is fine, but the hosts gloss over a lot of important points IMO. True beginners (and slow learners like me!) need a lot of repetition. Should I look into PopupChinese? What would you do during your 1-hour study time if you were me? What level can I hope to get to in two months of daily study? Thank you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5674 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 2 of 3 02 July 2013 at 10:56am | IP Logged |
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With limited time you could go through Assimil. FSI is another option, but your progress will be much slower and you'll have to work on the characters separately and deal with a lot of boring government/political vocabulary (which often isn't that relevant anymore). I've made vocabulary sets for a lot of the FSI modules on Memrise if you do decide to go through it. You won't get very far on an hour a day for a summer, though.
For ChinesePod, i've found that the anything intermediate and below is just frustrating with all the English being spoken. Once you can follow the upper intermediate lessons i think it's a really good resource, lots of interesting vocabulary and almost all of it's in Chinese. The Assimil course is ok, just painfully slow. I'd recommend removing the pauses in the first part of the course (你好【5 seconds】你好【5 seconds】etc.). To be honest, i haven't really liked any of the beginner's courses i've used. :/ I'm not sure what you want to do with your Chinese, but even after a year of studying i still couldn't do much. Buy things, tell people where i'm from, say hello and goodbye, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4100 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 3 of 3 02 July 2013 at 2:30pm | IP Logged |
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I don't find ChinesePod that frustrating but I have other issues with it like I explained in my first post.
I will look into Assimil, thank you. I'm mainly learning Chinese for fun, given that I can't get credits for taking Chinese in college at that point. I also want to work on both Chinese and English at the same time, which is why bilingual podcasts are just perfect. I want to be able to talk about my day with a Chinese person, hopefully discuss study methods a little bit, and just chat casually. I'm happy with my progress, but I seem to have hit a mini-plateau already. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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