01 year 34 week into study

Hello everyone,
I really feel improvement in all areas of my Chinese study this week. I haven't done much writing practice, but I did do a little bit of work on the Pinyin chart. The flashcards and speaking/listening study is essentially the same as it was in recent weeks, with similar pacing. It turns out that I will not be leaving for China until September, so that means I can dedicate much time to doing Chinese studying until I leave.
Currently, I am spending an hour studying 3 newbie lessons, and I am spending an additional fifteen minutes or so studying older lessons. I am considering changing this up down the road. One of the ideas I am toying with is doing one elementary lesson, one new newbie lesson, and one old newbie lesson each day. I am not sure, but that is what I am thinking of doing in a month or so.

01 year 33 week into study part 3

Hi everyone,
I thought of another tip, and I can't remember if I have shared this already. When I struggle with learning a new Chinese word, and have a hard time memorizing the sound, what I will sometimes do is think of an english word that sounds similar to the sound in question. Then I spell out the english word or sound, and memorize that with the sound.

I hope this helps, if this is unclear, indicate as such in the comment section and I will attempt to explain it better.

01 year 33 week into study part 2

Hello everyone,
I have been doing some thinking the last few days, and I wanted to take a moment to offer some suggestions and words of encouragement for the newcomer to ChinesePod.

Podcasts:

• I originally studied the podcasts in any order in which I desired, without keeping track of which lesson I studied and which I had not. I don't recommend this, I had better success when I organized the lessons and started keeping track of those lessons I studied
• At the beginning, the learning was very difficult. It often took me over an hour to master a newbie lesson when I first started. This is because I didn't know any of the words. If you are experiencing this, take heart! it does get better. I found that as I continued to study, I knew many words in subsequent lessons. This means that I might only need to learn a few new words per lesson, instead of every single word in a lesson.
• Do the lesson until you are able to pronounce each word. After reaching this level of proficiency, move onto the next lesson. Don't freak out if you find that you forget words, as they are repeated in subsequent lessons, and you can always go back and refresh on old lesson.
• Ken Carrol from ChinesePod frequently points out that it is best to learn language in chunks, and also says that learning different contexts for words is helpful too. My experience supports this idea. Listening to the entire podcast is helpful even if you know all the words because it provides the use of these words in different context, and I feel it helps me remember the terms better. At the very least, each podcast give a little insight to Chinese culture, which is important to someone like myself who has never been to China.
• I make good use of the 'audio fix' in each lesson. I use the reviews to test myself on the vocabulary. At first, I couldn't make much use of 'now lets use these words in context' portion of the review. I suggest you listen to them even if you cannot get it right, like I mentioned already, greater context helps me remember. As your Chinese skills improve, you will find that you can do the context exercises. To me, this shows that, not only am I learning the vocabulary, but I am also able to produce Chinese.
• Using the listening test has been helpful to me in showing that I am learning the language. Lately, I typically test at either newbie or elementary level. This is good because I think that is about what my proficiency level is.
• I find that I have a better study session if I am walking around rather than sitting when listening to the podcasts. I believe this is because my heartrate is faster, and blood is flowing quicker. I also find that I get tired if I try to sit for an hour listening to podcasts.

I hope these tips are useful. Please let me know abit about the study methods that you use in the comment section, or what you think of what I suggested.
Thanks

01 year 33 week into study

Hello everyone,
I am glad that I stuck through with the Chinese studying last week even though I was feeling discouraged. This week, I feel much better about my progress. Doing the speaking and listening studying an hour each night has paid off, I feel like I am getting very good. I think there are only two noteworthy things to do on the blogger this week; the first is to say that I learned how to count to 10, which I feel will be essential for bartering in China. The second is to load my latest stack photo. I can't bring myself to feel that the photo is representative of how much progress I have made in the three weeks, I added about 100 cards since the previous photo.

01 year 32 week into study part 2

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I learned a tip about how to improve my flashcard making process to make it faster and better from the community portion of the Chinesepod website. I don't remember who it was, but if that person is reading my blog, thank you!

01 year 32 week into study

Hi everyone,
I have been doing well with the Chinese studies, but I feel that I am expecting too much of myself. I have felt discouraged because I am not achieving perfection in my learning of this difficult language. I get upset every time I make a mistake.

I would say I have made good progress this week as well. I did the writing practice I described last week for a few of the days last week. It is not something that I plan to do every day. I feel that I am really developing with my speaking/listening performance. I guess that is all for right now.