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Towards Mandarin fluency - Team 鹊 TAC’14

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Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 3775 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 1 of 69
01 December 2013 at 9:00pm | IP Logged 
Hello there!
I'm new to this forum, and as I said in my introduction, I haven't really learned a language to fluency on my own yet. I studied French in school for quite some time, but I wasn't very good back then and lost almost everything. Still, it's a language I want to revisit, I'm just not sure if 2014 will be the year, because my focus will be Mandarin Chinese.

I've been learning Mandarin on and off for quite some time without getting really far. So, since I love reading the logs on here, I decided to make a language log myself. Hopefully, posting my progress will help my studiying consistently.

My Mandarin goals for 2014:
1. read 10000 pages: this will mean abput 30 pages a day. I've tried this in Dec 2013 and it worked quite well for me. I have found some books that are close to my level, so I should have plenty of reading materials available.

2. go through my copy of HSK词语用法详解, which hopefully will give me a decent vocabulary to start out with.
The HSK词语用法详解 contains all the vocabulary for the old HSK and is divided into the four level Beginner (HSK1-3), Intermediate (3-5), Upper Intermediate (6-8) and Advanced (9-11). Ich already know most of the vocabulary from Beginner to Upper Intermediate, but the book has usage notes and example sentences (in Chinese), so I'll make sure that I actually know how to use the words.

3. watch at 300 movies (90 min TV= 1 movie): I already know that reaching this will be hardest, because with listening and reading I can do it during breaks at uni or while getting to work, but that won't work with movies.

4. go through the advanced level of chinesepod: mostly for the vocab.

I hope all this will help me reach a B2 level by the end of 2014.

I hope I can make this log interesting to read, I'll do my best not to solely post short updates.

[edit] Amended my goals for 2014


Edited by Ninibo on 22 January 2014 at 10:34pm

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Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 3775 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 2 of 69
03 December 2013 at 12:03pm | IP Logged 
I stumbled over the Tadoku challenge today and thougth "What a great idea!". So I'm stealing that idea. The first book I'm planning on reading is 蜗居 by 六六, because that seems to be written quite simply. Since the extensive reading approach means I don't get to look up words I'll go through a digital version of the book after I finish it and work more closely on words I don't know.
A friend gave me the chinese translation of Petshop of Horrors 恐怖宠物店, so I'll be reading that too.

I watched 蝙蝠别墅 yesterday, which is supposedly a horror film, but I didn't think it was very scary. The language used was pretty simple, but I still think the plot didn't make much sense.
Recommendations for horror films in Mandarin are very, very welcome!
1 person has voted this message useful



Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 3775 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 3 of 69
15 December 2013 at 10:40am | IP Logged 
For the past few days I've been looking for interesting podcasts to subscribe to and I don't know why, but it never occured to me to just set the itunes store to chinese... I found some that seem interesting, but I realized that listening without visuals, without subs and without knowing the topic is much, much harder than I thought. Will have to work on that.

I also started listening to a Swiss produced French podcast called L'avis de Marie, which is geared towards learners with B1/B2. So far I understand almost everything, but sometimes I have to listen to it twice, because my brain can't catch up.
Lastly, for the first time i've used subs2srs; I used it on the fist episode of Maître de l'air and I really like it. I'll probably try to find something in chinese I can put in Anki.
1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5844 days ago

2020 posts - 2295 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 4 of 69
15 December 2013 at 10:53am | IP Logged 
Ninibo wrote:
I also started listening to a Swiss produced French podcast called L'avis de Marie, which is geared towards learners with B1/B2.


Thanks for the tip. I'm going to try that out!
1 person has voted this message useful



Ninibo
Diglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 3775 days ago

88 posts - 116 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 5 of 69
15 December 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged 
Sunja wrote:
Ninibo wrote:
I also started listening to a Swiss produced French podcast called L'avis de Marie, which is geared towards learners with B1/B2.


Thanks for the tip. I'm going to try that out!


I didn't find it in itunes, but if you're interested, the website is http://www.podclub.ch/sendungen/l-avis-de-marie-f-2 . They also have transcripts.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5844 days ago

2020 posts - 2295 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 6 of 69
15 December 2013 at 12:13pm | IP Logged 
transcripts are even better! Great :) I'd like to revise my French this year, but I'm not able to follow the podcasts spoken at "normal" speed. This podcasts seems to be just right for me. It's nice to have something slower other than "Ecoute" -- they changed their format a few months ago and Nicolas Dambre seems to have disappeared. I don't listen to Ecoute much anymore.
1 person has voted this message useful



Silbermond
Diglot
Groupie
United Kingdom
xuexisprachen.wordprRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4115 days ago

64 posts - 79 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Mandarin, Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 7 of 69
02 January 2014 at 12:04am | IP Logged 
Hi, Ninibo!

The only Chinese horror film I've watched was the original version of The Eye (见鬼), but that wasn't very scary either -- though it was also quite easy to understand. There is a category called 'Chinese Horror Films' on Wikipedia though, so that might give better suggestions than I can? :)

Anyway, I look forward to being on a team with you this year :D. I think we're at about the same level right now too, though my reading is wayyyyyyyyyyyy slower!
1 person has voted this message useful



PointsDotsLines
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 3765 days ago

76 posts - 110 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 8 of 69
02 January 2014 at 3:51am | IP Logged 
Ninibo wrote:


I watched 蝙蝠别墅 yesterday, which is supposedly a horror film, but I didn't think it was very scary. The language used was pretty simple, but I still think the plot didn't make much sense.
Recommendations for horror films in Mandarin are very, very welcome!


You can do a search on www.tudou.com (土豆网) and/or www.youku.com (优酷). Both websites are the Chinese equivalents of YouTube. You can find Mandarin horror films by entering "国语鬼片" in the search box on the top.

Hope this helps.

Edited by PointsDotsLines on 02 January 2014 at 3:52am



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