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Mandarin: 2days,2weeks,2months,2years

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rdearman
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 Message 41 of 118
06 October 2014 at 1:58pm | IP Logged 
Found a really good resource for TV shows in Mandarin, Korean, and other languages. They have movies as well and lots of sub-titles in lots of different languages ( I mean lots! Like 32 languages)

Viki TV

Did the first couple of written characters with the character writing examples from DLI pdfs.
东 - East
上 - Up.

Not very impressive but I think I'll remember them after writing them out 100 times each. The plan is to write the next two characters 100 times, and these two again 50, then 100,50,25. I'll just keep doing this 100/50/25 breakdown until I've written out all 350 characters in the DHI pdf's.

Meanwhile I continue with Anki & Pimsleur and watching a lot of Singaporean TV. Hope to find an interesting Drama to watch on Viki as well.

:)
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 42 of 118
06 October 2014 at 4:37pm | IP Logged 
Wow, that's a lot of repetition!

When I decided to sit down and (learn how to) write Chinese, I took each character (or word), and wrote it several times until I've filled one line. Probably 10-15 times rather than 100 times. Next step, however, was copying the sentences from lessons, so by doing that, I got a fair amount of repetition "in context".
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smallwhite
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 Message 43 of 118
06 October 2014 at 5:24pm | IP Logged 
rdearman wrote:
[QUOTE=smallwhite]
... So I will take your advice but concentrate on B2 in food & cuisine. It helps that I like to eat.


Food & cuisine seems to be a much better major than news :) Good luck and stay motivated.
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rdearman
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 Message 44 of 118
06 October 2014 at 5:42pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Wow, that's a lot of repetition!

When I decided to sit down and (learn how to) write Chinese, I took each character (or word), and wrote it several times until I've filled one line. Probably 10-15 times rather than 100 times. Next step, however, was copying the sentences from lessons, so by doing that, I got a fair amount of repetition "in context".


Oh, interesting! I have a very nice course book so I might try adding that in as a sort of weekend exercise and copy the sentences. The snag for me is remembering the stroke order, so having ~350 characters with the stroke order defined should help me cement the stroke order rules in my head. So the repetition for me is serving two purposes, enforcing the stroke order and memorisation of the characters.
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 45 of 118
06 October 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged 
Repetition is of course important for cementing stroke order, but some characters are easier (and maybe more common?) than others, and will get repeated anyway throughout a textbook. I haven't had a look at the DLI material, but if there are dialogues (and other texts) and the characters are presented in the same order as in the texts, my bet is that it'll feel better copying the characters when they are introduced and then proceeding to the actual texts. Otherwise it's like those who practice scales and études and wonder when they can play "real" music.
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rdearman
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 Message 46 of 118
07 October 2014 at 12:14pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Repetition is of course important for cementing stroke order, but some characters are easier (and maybe more common?) than others, and will get repeated anyway throughout a textbook. I haven't had a look at the DLI material, but if there are dialogues (and other texts) and the characters are presented in the same order as in the texts, my bet is that it'll feel better copying the characters when they are introduced and then proceeding to the actual texts. Otherwise it's like those who practice scales and études and wonder when they can play "real" music.


I can see your point, I think I might have miscommunicated the reason I selected these characters. The reason I went for writing these characters is they show me how to write correctly and they are in the top 500 most frequently used characters. I also have the book "Reading & Writing Chinese" by William McNaughton which covers 2000 most frequently used characters with stroke order, plus radical charts. I plan to move to this book after I've done the 350.

I'm also using anki with the top 5000 characters, but the problem with SRS is it will help you memorise a character and it doesn't care if the character is the most common character or one which has only been used once in the last 50 years. I'm trying to take smallwhite's earlier advice and shorten the beginner phase as much as possible. So I've gotten three primary exercises which I'm doing in order to learn characters.

- Basic Hanzi review in Anki with 5000+ characters
- Write out first these 350 then move on to the 2000 in the book by Mr McNaughton
- Review sentences in Anki taken from the book 1984 by George Orwell.

I also get some character review from an Anki deck which I've built up from transcripts of the Pimsleur lessons, which have the audio of the phrase, the Pinyin and the characters, then the translation on the other side. With a lot of repetition and encountering the characters I hope to get to the point where I can begin to read one of the graded readers which I have in Mandarin. I did like your suggestion of copying sentences from the text books, because some words come as a character combination, so I would get more of the context.

As of today I only have 2 years and 2 weeks of my time left. I've already burned through 2 months and 2 days and I don't even feel like I've skimmed the surface!

Edited by rdearman on 07 October 2014 at 12:47pm

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Ezy Ryder
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 Message 47 of 118
07 October 2014 at 2:11pm | IP Logged 
If you want to get over the beginner stage quicker, don't study the characters. Learn words, and
try to memorize the characters they use. Also, you don't need to write the characters. Writing and
reading are two different (albeit intersecting) things. You can learn to write some characters, but it
doesn't guarantee you'll be able to read them, as odd as it sounds. Experienced it myself. Plus,
how much need do you actually have for handwriting? On electronic devices, you can usually type
in the pinyin and choose which characters you meant, which requires just being able to read.
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rdearman
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 Message 48 of 118
13 October 2014 at 1:16pm | IP Logged 
Back to work today after a weeks break, so my normal commute time listening to Mandarin was reduced to zero last week, but back on track from today. I continued with my ANKI decks, and writing characters so didn't lose to much hopefully. Still managed to sneak in a couple of foody show episodes, Food Source 3 (食在好源头 3).

I've come to the conclusion being a beginner is just something I'm going to have to suck up and deal with. I've decided to start saving for a trip to Singapore and Taiwan as soon as my goal is complete, and I've decided to buy a lottery ticket too.

:)


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