01 year 03 week into study

What a frustrating few days. My computer is acting weird, specifically, it takes forever for the words that I type to show up. This will be a short update. I have flashcards for about 322 terms, acquisition on about 285 or so, and proficiency on about 190. I did only a few podcast lessons. this is too frustrating, I guess this is it for now.

01 year 02 week into study

Hello everyone,
Once again, I am posting this a few days early on account of having to work over the weekend. This week was another slow one, being that I am consumed with final exam week at my college. I have flashcards for about 280 terms now, acquisition on about 250 or so, and proficiency on about 75. Study has been slow and steady. I have been working at it every day except for those days where it is not possible to do so.
I haven't started my pinyin studies yet, and I plan to do so in the upcoming weeks. I don't feel as enthusiastic about my chinese studies as I did when I first started. It is hard work, and it is slow going, but like someone said to me last week, the words will 'snowball' and soon I will find that I have a range of vocabulary.
I am really weak in the spoken side of my learning. Since the email from last week, I have completed three lessons. I really struggle with pronunciation. Also it seems that I have difficulty retaining the spoken words. For example, I will listen to a podcast, repeat a vocabulary word ten times, play it again, and not remember the word I was just pronouncing. This is quite frustrating. Anyhow, I am still trudging despite these discouraging events.
Feel free to leave thoughts or other feedback

01 year 01 week into study part 2

Hello everyone,
I have to work tonight, and all day Saturday and Sunday. Because of this, I will give an update now as I won't be able to on Sunday.
This week was challenging and a bit discouraging. Currently, I have flashcards for about 235 terms. What was frustrating is that I began to forget terms that I learned early on in my studies. I don't think that I was doing as well as I thought I was last week. This week, I have acquisition on 190 terms, and proficiency in about 60 - 70. I have about 10 or so lessons studied, and like last week, I am not doing as well on the spoken part as I am in the written part.
I have been quite busy with college, as we are heading into finals. I have also been occupied with interests outside of college that have taken a considerable amount of my time. I am also working a lot over the next few days. I have backed off from the studying of the Chinese in comparison to what I was doing last week because of these reasons. I plan on getting at least one good study day in next tuesday. Once finals are over for the semester, I plan on doing a lot of studying. One thing I would like to do is master the pinyin chart. I know that will likely take a while, but I figure if I can read and pronounce any pinyin term, then my learning will improve considerably.
While I do feel discouraged right now, I plan on continuing the studies of Chinese. The only thing I can think of right now that would alter my plans is if I learn that I will be unable to go to China. Should that happen, I will likely scrap all plans of learning Chinese, and pursue other interests. Right now, I am still on course to go to China, so I will keep going.
Feel free to leave your thoughts or other feedback

01 year 01 week into study

Hello everyone,

I have decided to write a weekly (or thereabouts) post to give an update on how my studies are going. I must say that, overall, I am pleased with this week's study. I have written flashcards for 198 terms, obtained acquisition on about 170 terms, and proficiency on about 100 or so. The explanation on how I am using these terms follows;

Acquisition - This means that I have been able to recall this term at least once. I have not mastered the term yet, and I may mix it up with terms I learned earlier.

Proficiency - I can typically identify these terms immediately, or with short delay. I might mix these up with newer terms, but I am able to discriminate quickly. I would say that I know these terms.

I read in an article that a well educated Chinese person can understand between 6000-7000 characters, and that a person needs to understand between 2000 and 3000 to read a Chinese newspaper. With that being said, I also understand that simply understanding the characters is not the goal. I also need to understand the grammar and the actual usage of the language in order to understand what I read. On the other hand, 100 words is 5% of 2000.

The verbal side is an area where I wish I were doing better. I have achieved acquisition on about 8 lessons, and proficiency on about 5. I am having difficulty with the spoken part, some of the sounds are difficult for me to make, i.e. the term for very 'hen'.

My curve seems a bit slow; however I must juggle these studies with my part time job, and full time enrollment in college. In a few weeks or so, the semester will be over and I can devote more time.

As I remarked elsewhere, overall I am happy with my experience with Chinesepod so far. Some of the things I think are good are the lessons shows, dialogues, and fixes. Ken and Jenny do a good job. I agree with the idea that it is important to understand how the language is actually used, rather than just understanding the language without such specificity. I think that while the community isn’t very strong right now, this aspect could have real potential. I wish to be helpful in making a stronger Chinesepod community.

Some of the things I don’t like so much are the things like the interface. It is so cumbersome, and it is a bit awkward to navigate around the site. The vocabulary tab is nearly useless except to enlarge the characters while I transcribe them to flashcards. Sometimes, when I click on a word, it doesn’t get added to my vocabulary list. This can be annoying because this results in me having to return to the lesson and clicking on it again.

The good far outweigh the things I don’t like, so I plan to stick around. After all, I can’t expect everything to be the way I want them. I guess that requires a little giving on my part.

Feel free to leave your thoughts and other feedback