Well, I am really ramping up on the Chinese studying. I have taken actions that indicate that I am putting my money where my mouth is in terms of Chinese learning. Today, I extended my registration with Chinesepod for another two years. Recently, I hired a Chinese girl to serve as a tutor. I will meet with her three times per week for an hour and a half each time. I have also been using Anki, the flashcard program that I mentioned in a previous blog post. I plan to start working out of my hanzi writing textbook again.
Although it isn't perfect, Chinesepod is the best online Chinese teaching website that I have found. It isn't perfect, but it is decent. I have been doing business with them since 2008, and never had any serious issues. They have a 20% off promotion going on, so that if I bought a 2 year subscription, It would cost me about $14 per month. I think the service is worth that. I suppose I could find a way to download the lessons for free, but I figure that they do put effort into producing the lessons, I should pay them. I normally listen to the lessons, and I do use the glossary frequently, but I don't usually use the other tools very often.
Last week, I started taking Chinese lessons with a Chinese girl. She is a student at our university. So far, she has been the most patient with me. So far, it has been hard. She is hard for me to understand. Besides the occasional term that she defines in English, we communicate entirely in Chinese. This means that I spend 4.5 hours each week, talking in Chinese and getting direct feedback on my mistakes. It is pretty difficult. It is mentally exhausting, but I hope that it will pay off in the long run.
I mentioned Anki in a passing remark in a recent post, but I have really been using it. I try to spend at least an hour per day using it to review my Chinese, but lately, it has been closer to two hours. It is the best vocabulary review tool that I have found. I can use it to prompt me on Hanzi, pinyin, english definitions, and spoken. I have also started using it to learn the Japanese vocabulary.
The handwriting textbook is the same one that I used before. I plan to return to doing work out of it. I cannot depend on using pinyin to produce Chinese characters forever. I should know how to write them as well. My reading is pretty good, but if you ask me to write it by hand, I have a hard time.
Well, I will give this a try and report back later on my results of my ramp-up.
