Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Ziel HSK 3 - Target Mandarin

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
84 messages over 11 pages: 1 24 5 6 7 ... 3 ... 10 11 Next >>
stelingo
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5592 days ago

722 posts - 1076 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin

 
 Message 17 of 84
16 January 2014 at 6:01pm | IP Logged 
Sunja wrote:
Just a quick note why I like Assimil.

     xiàn   zài and zhèng zài

They put these words in the same lesson so I can learn to differentiate between them
right away (instead of getting confused later on). They sound really alike to my ears.
I'm just going to have to memorize this:

[马先生在家里写信。]

老马,你现在做什么?
我正在写新。

There's another one there too. xiān sheng. The word is completely different, but again,
confusing for beginners like me.

edit: I have to watch putting in spaces with the spacebar or using tabs. The spaces
fill up with garbage. Knock on wood, I haven't had the problem with overwritten
characters so far. I know it's been plaguing some of my other teammates.


So by not using the space bar or tab, I should be able to avoid the weird symbols? Is
that correct?
1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5845 days ago

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

 
 Message 18 of 84
16 January 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged 
Yep. It looks like avoiding the space bar/tab helped me to get rid of a few bits of garbage. Time for me to write more in Mandarin!
1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5845 days ago

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

 
 Message 19 of 84
17 January 2014 at 8:12pm | IP Logged 
Actually writing in Mandarin is hard at this stage. I'm having a hard time composing anything at all. I'll just wait until I feel like it.

In the meantime, I want to make a note of where I am. I'm doing my normal routine of studying three Assimil lessons per week and I'm moving along nicely. What I've noticed is that this is about the point where I lost my way while studying French. I didn't drop the ball or anything I just forgot everything I'd learned previously. I kept adding on until one day I realized I'd forgotten the basics. I'm still grappling with the "passive-problem" I have with French. So today I started going over the lessons 15-19. As it is now, I can repeat everything phonetically, but there's usually a 5-10-second pause before I can recall what it means. Seconds pass and I don't know what the speaker is saying and I loose the thread. I need for it to be more automatic. It reminds me of how people listen to songs in English here in Germany and they don't what the text means but they can sing along perfectly. That's basically where I am. I've written down the most important phonetic "chunks" that I need to recognize faster.


回家

怎么办
骑自行车
去买
几点
还有
时间
块钱
快去
还在
在这里
有事儿
待在家里
还是去
什么时候回来
清楚
看病
这几天
您贵姓
一定
来过
可能出了事儿

I'm going to stop adding more lessons and just revise what I know. I'm working on the separate HSK 2 vocabulary anyway, so this is probably a good time to stop and take inventory.




Edited by Sunja on 17 January 2014 at 8:59pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5845 days ago

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

 
 Message 20 of 84
18 January 2014 at 9:07pm | IP Logged 
There are quite a few words from the HSK 2 that I haven't covered in my 35 lessons of Assimil.

To help me along, I've found another toy to play with: HSK2 Lite for my android.

I already have a deck on anki but I need to hear the words so I'm gonna try this. The voice sounds computerized and stilted but I don't think it will hurt. I'll test it!

edit: okay. I have a first impression. It's fun but possibly just another distraction. I like recording my voice and pitting it against the little computerized app-voice but c'mon -- does it really help? I promised myself I wouldn't spread myself too thin with Mandarin materials and toys, but it's oh so hard to resist! I'll keep this little gem in my collection but I won't let it be the center of my studies. I'll put it next to my "waiting-in-line anki deck". I'll label this one, "standing-at-the-bus-stop-with nothing-to-do-but-play-on-my-smartphone app".



Edited by Sunja on 18 January 2014 at 10:17pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5845 days ago

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

 
 Message 21 of 84
19 January 2014 at 11:35am | IP Logged 
I'm about to go into full German modus. I've still got my SGD course that I'm doing and I've neglected it for a week now. I have a book section on "Wirtschaftskunde" which is very dry and difficult to plow through since i'm not used to dealing with that kind of thing -- at all.

Once I get into German modus it's difficult to remember the groove I was in with Mandarin (especially when it has to do with economics) so I'll leave myself a bookmark:

I was up to 1:00 last night going through the reading section of "Vorbereitung HSK Prüfung HSK2" (Hefei Huang, Dieter Ziethen). The reading was truly enjoyable. I was so happy to read something other than Assmil dialogs! Of course the pinyin helped a lot. They give you six pictures and you're supposed to match the corresponding sentence to each one. Some are obnoxiously easy. For instance, you have a picture of a group of children singing and one of the sentences is 孩子们正在唱歌。 Not much thinking there. After a while it got trickier, and here's where I really need to work on vocabulary:

words given: A为什么--B怎么样--C可以--D因为--E所以--F但是

医生,她的病___?

他的家离学校很远。___,他还是走路来上课。

你没有好好准备。___,你做错了很多题。

他没有来。___,他今天要去机场送她的儿子。

你___不回答我的问题呢?

我的事情做完了。我___走了吗? 再等一下吧。


Not sure if that's going to show up with the blanks but that's one of the test questions. Since I barely know 所以 and 但是 I missed two. There's also some unfamiliar words in the sentences. So I have some work to do when I get back.


About the listening part of the book: The listening is very good and clear but difficult for me because for the past four months I've only been listening to sentences from Assimil. I don't know "wristwatch", I don't know "watermelon", "football" or "basketball", to name a few. It's also a different native speaker who speaks normally (I guess). With Assimil the speakers enunciate quite a bit more for the listener which is good to learn with but bad if you suddenly find yourself confronted with a person speaking at normal speed. I'll work on the listening as well. I think I just have to get used to it. I'll continue shadowing my lessons from Assimil in the morning (30 min) and I'll slowly start adding the HSK2 mp3 files to my routine.

I'll give myself one month. There's enough listening and reading excercises in the book (plenty!) so I should reach my benchmark of HSK2 as scheduled (^-^)b




Edited by Sunja on 19 January 2014 at 2:17pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5845 days ago

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

 
 Message 22 of 84
21 January 2014 at 12:58pm | IP Logged 
I'm about to get ready for work, but first, here's what I did this morning,

I've gone over the listening comprehension test questions with the pictures up to H1-05.

I've also gone through the transcript. Since I have the benefit of pictures and a second hearing, there's not much that can really go wrong. If I hear the word "ball" then I click the picture with the ball in it. Simple. Still, my listening comprehension is not brilliant so I'm making big efforts to highlight in the book and copy to flashcards -- all "phonetic chunks" that I think will help me recognize it faster.

I've done reading comprehension exercises up to L1-07,

these have accompanying pictures and are ridiculously easy. There was only one time when there two out of six pictures which had 孩子 in them, and I had to wait until I'd read all of the sentences and was able to distinguish between a baby and a little girl. Other than that the pictures are a dead give away. I've skipped the reading comprehension exercises with the pictures and moved on to section 2, those -without- pictures:

Reading comprehension section 2:

I've finished pages 134-136. These are the fill-in-the-blank questions and are not that easy for me since I have some vocabulary gaps that I'm currently trying to fill. I've painstakingly copied to flashcards all of the "phonetic chunks" like "第一次" which need to become automatic. There are other words that also go together like "wear clothes" and "wash clothes". I'm treating them as one word -- at least phonetically -- so I don't sit there and mull over each character and waste seconds. I've written the pinyin on the back of the card.

Okay now I have to go make pancakes ( ˘▽˘)っ♨ and get ready to go




Edited by Sunja on 22 January 2014 at 5:03pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5845 days ago

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

 
 Message 23 of 84
23 January 2014 at 11:12am | IP Logged 
There's some tough listening exercises on the HSK2 but I'm slowly learning the pitfalls. I have only finished 35 lessons of Assimil and I know I haven't finished the book, but in 35 lessons I'm disturbed that they haven't covered "morning" and "thousand" yet! Those are some pretty basic words. Anyway, the following are some of the listening exercises with pictures. I'm supposed to listen to a sentence and determine whether it fits the picture or not. I've concluded they aren't as -easy- as I'd lead on in my last post!!

The picture shows "¥ 1050"

What you hear is actually 我觉得,1500 (Yīqiān wǔbǎi I think ..) 块一张桌子,太贵了! I missed something with the number. I'll have to have another listen.

Apparantly if I do decide to take the HSK2, I'll have to watch out for female and male doctors. I was shown a picture of a female doctor treating a child and the transcript reads: 那边给小孩看病的是新来的男医生 oops. That's a male doctor. I just heard the word 医生 at the end there and assumed it was correct.

There was another tricky one. I was shown a picture of a girl, lying on her bed in her pajamas. Then you hear: 我妹妹正在穿衣服。 I guess it seems obvious that if she's in her pajamas, she hasn't exactly "just gotten dressed" but I heard "衣服" and assumed since she wasn't naked it must be the correct answer. oops.

What's up with all the eggs and watermelons on the HSK2? I get the impression that's all they have to eat over there! :D I know "watermelon" very well by now because I've seen three different exercises with melons in them. I also know "eggs" but there was one exercise that I just couldn't figure out. I'm shown the typical picture of a basket of eggs (okay, seen that one before) then I hear, 你看,这里的鸡蛋没有卖完。 Why was it counted as false? Is it not "have not been sold out"? The way I see it, if the eggs had been sold out I'd be staring at an empty basket and not a full one. That one is a puzzle to me. I'm probably just confused as usual!


edit: I've signed up for the HSK2. It's only 35 euros and wow, that's really cheap compared to other tests I've signed up for and not taken ;) The DELF is like 89 and the C2 for German is 295! So 35 is very doable. I still have to get there. It's March 16, a Sunday, so how bad can it be? I want to make sure I can pass, so I'll be doing HSK2 until then. I need 120 out of 200 points to pass. I think it will be a good benchmark for me.







Edited by Sunja on 23 January 2014 at 7:41pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5845 days ago

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

 
 Message 24 of 84
25 January 2014 at 1:45pm | IP Logged 
I can't use Anki this weekend because I've replaced my decks with those of my student, who needs help with his English/Deutsch flashcards. I'm helping him revise them. So I have decks full of sentences with words like Kügel-Führungssystem and Lichtsschränke. I just finished one deck.

I have my HSK2 deck saved on my desktop so it's not lost. Anki can wait. I'm about to start the next section of reading and listening exercises from the book I'm using. The HSK2 doesn't test speaking or writing ability, so I don't have to know how to write the characters. Writing is a goal of mine, but I'll just work on my passive skills for now and I'll recover the writing part later.

I'm left wondering what to do with Assimil. I need to continue the lessons, parallel to my HSK2 studies. I'll try to fit it in somehow.

edit: I'm working on one of the exercises from the book and i've discovered another little pitfall. They like to mix up 手机 and 手表. There's a picture of a mobile and the sentence, 对不起,我们这里没有这样的手表买。 I'll have to watch for that he-he!.

Edited by Sunja on 25 January 2014 at 3:24pm



1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 84 messages over 11 pages: << Prev 1 24 5 6 7 8 9 10 11  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3750 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.