05 year 39 weeks into study

Three things I would like to talk about today... Anki, Memrise, and follow up on the plan I mentioned in the previous blog entry.  I will begin with Anki. As I have stated in the past, Anki is a computerized flashcard program. It is decent, and about a year ago (or so) they introduced a new version (2.0). Initially, I was not too impressed with the new version. After using it on an irregular basis, my opinion has started to sway. At this point, I think I like the newer version better overall than the first. Initially I did not. Anyway, I will talk about the pros and cons...
pros -
1- the algorithm is really good, better than for 1.0.
2- all the decks are grouped together, but may also be examined separately. This is better than in Anki 1 where they were all in different decks and I needed to open each deck to examine them.
3 - because they are all combined, I can search all decks for a common term, very convenient and much more powerful
4 - seems faster than the previous version.
cons -
1 - adding terms seems a bit clunkier than 1.0. This may be the result of me not really understanding the new system, or taking ample time to learn it.
2- sometimes when importing decks, I run into problems with the fields as such that I may have set more than one field, but Anki 2 incorrectly groups the wrong fields for some of the cards.
3- I miss some of the graphs that I found in Anki 1.

Well, Anki 2 is improving, and it is certainly better than it was at release.

The next thing I want to talk about is Memrise, a learning site that I recently learned about from the message boards on Chinesepod.com. I have been using the site for a week, and so far, I think it is fantastic. Because I am doing other things, and I am afraid that they are going to soon start charging for their service, I have been loathe to pursue this site with full vigor, but it does look really good. It reminds me of Smart.fm back in 2010, but I think this one is better, and not exactly the same, but similar idea.

Now to follow up on the previous post. I kind of gave up on the increased structure of study. I will go bullet for bullet and update on what I have done.... Green text is the plan listed in my last entry.

- I plan to study an upper-intermediate and an advanced Chinesepod lesson each week. Yes, I have been doing this, but not in a very systematic way. I have selected 7 adv and 7 upp lessons to review over the summer, and been working at it half-steam.
- Work my paper flashcards and Anki every day- specifically, I want to catch up on my hanzi deck. Right now, I have about a 650 card backlog (yeah, and lately it has been whipping my ass). I did catch up, and still working both Anki 1 and Anki 2. More and more with Anki 2 as I continue to migrate the data.
- Do some type of practice test once per week, either out of the HSK exam book, or on Chinesepod. I haven't done this.
- Continue to transcribe the Qing wen lessons to my notebook I transcribed about 8 or so lessons. It is hard to stay motivated because I am still on the early ones that had Amber and Clay, and they seem somewhat childish, so it is sometimes painful to listen to them, but I will be past them soon and move onto other hosts.
- work on listening extensively, i.e, while on the treadmill at the gym, I will listen to Advanced level lessons. I did so-so with this, but I could do better.
- other stuff to a lesser extent than before. Yeah, Ive pretty much stopped all the other stuff I was doing in June and early July. One thing I have been doing is, is listening to more Intermediate level lessons. For the most part, they are too easy. If I can listen to a dialogue and understand everything, then I just look over the vocab, expansion etc to see if there are any terms I don't know, or any phrases that I want to memorize. If there are parts I don't understand, I will certainly do more work. 

Yeah, thats pretty much it for now. Until next time.

05 year 35 weeks into study

So I, at least for the timebeing, have returned to the original title format that I used when I started this blog. Anyhow, a few days ago, I decided to develop a more focused plan of study. It is rather ambitious, and seems a bit too much right now. I will go ahead and describe the plan that I have designed...
- I plan to study an upper-intermediate and an advanced Chinesepod lesson each week
- Work my paper flashcards and Anki every day- specifically, I want to catch up on my hanzi deck. Right now, I have about a 650 card backlog (yeah, and lately it has been whipping my ass).
- Do some type of practice test once per week, either out of the HSK exam book, or on Chinesepod.
- Continue to transcribe the Qing wen lessons to my notebook
- work on listening extensively, i.e, while on the treadmill at the gym, I will listen to Advanced level lessons.
- other stuff to a lesser extent than before.

Well, I started off strong, but yesterday and today, I just... basically... Don't fucking feel like studying Chinese... period....  Yeah... so I am going to put my notebooks down and ... like do no more studying related work at all this evening. I hope I feel better about this tomorrow than I did today, or I may need to rethink my priorities, or scale-back the plan that I have.

Thats all for tonight.

Return to ChinesePod.com

Hey guys,
I want to talk a bit about some changes I have made to my studying plan. I have, for the time being, dropped the Japanese learning. I did this in order to focus more on the Chinese. In my last entry, I wrote that I decided not to renew Chinesepod, but I had a change of heart. A few days ago, I did a practice HSK 4 exam. It was a humbling experience, but I learned a little bit about my abilities. I have areas that I am really strong, and I have areas that I need to work. I felt that it was a bit hard, and I don't know how the exam is scored, so if I had to guess, I would say that either I barely passed it, or barely failed it. I did good with writing, it was a piece of cake, but I had some trouble with the listening. I felt caught off guard, and felt that, although I understood most, the questions were difficult to answer, and I needed more time to think. For the reading, I knew almost all the characters I saw, but I didn't know all the words. There were a few words that appeared on the exam more than once that I don't think I had ever seen. To sum up the experience, I felt that the way that I am learning Chinese is not really matching the curve of the HSK. In some aspects, I might be a strong level 5, in others, maybe a 3.... if you know what I mean. Couple this experience with a meeting I had with a potential tutor, I feel that a change was needed in the way I was studying. Ive been meeting with people to find a potential tutor. The process has not been easy, and I have met with many excellent, seemingly qualified people who are willing and eager to help me improve my Chinese. Choosing one is not easy, and I have more people to meet with. The day after taking the practice exam, one of the interviewees suggested I use a system to learn Chinese. I am thinking that maybe she is right, but it would be hard to find a good system to jump onto at my level.  Anyhow, taking a practice HSK is an eye-opening experience. In light of this, here are the actions that I am taking to learn Chinese....
1. Suspend Japanese (mentioned this already)
2. Suspend learning traditional characters for the time being.
3. Renew my subscription to Chinesepod.
4. Try to spend at least an hour per day diligently working on listening to difficult stuff.
5. Still using the paper flashcards, grammar textbook, and reading books, but backing off a little on these to focus more on Chinesepod.
6. Really drill down using Chinesepod, especially doing the hard stuff. The harder the lesson, the better I feel. Oh, by the way.... I am listening to Advanced lessons on Chinesepod now....
So yeah, increase my listening and vocab (not necessarily individual characters) using Chinesepod. I am working on grammar using a textbook and Chinesepod. I use Anki to learn and review individual characters. I will find a tutor to help me improve my speaking, to become more accurate and natural. I have a reader that I use to help me improve my reading.
Thats all for now.

Just to fill you in ....

On what I have been doing over the past year in terms of studying... First, I want to say that I have been studying. Lately, I have been studying hard. I have been pounding Anki everyday, and it runs me between 1.5 hours and 3 hours every day lately. I mentioned in a previous post that I had been focusing on a pronunciation deck and starting with writing... Well, I finished the pronunciation deck, and now I am up to my neck in the Character writing deck. Right now, I am overwhelmed. I have about a 1500 card backlog, and I am adding 25 cards per day. I study around 340 cards per day, and I will work my way up to at least 350 cards per day. I hope to seen be able to chip away at the backlog. The pace I am working at now, I figure I will be finished with all new cards in the early part of November, or late October... It is hard to say for sure right now.
Although I am focusing on Anki, I am also doing other work. I am also using paper flashcards, studying Chinesepod, using a reading textbook, a grammar textbook, HSK practice exams, and I meet with a group of Chinese friends on Sunday to drink tea, and I use this time to practice speaking. I am also dabbling a bit with Japanese, and learning to recognize traditional script.
I would say that my Chinese at this point is 'OK'. I am reasonably fluent at the conversational level, and my reading is pretty good as well. Handwriting is not so good, but lately, I have been practicing writing more often than before. 
I decided not to renew my subscription to Chinesepod right now. I have enough lessons right now to hold me over, and it is somewhat expensive to do. Maybe in the future, I will purchase another subscription to download more upper and advanced lessons and pdf, but right now, no plans.
One thing I would like to do is hire a tutor to help me with my learning. I think it would be useful, but I would need to be somewhat picky. I need someone to help me work on speaking. I don't necessarily need someone to practice with, but someone to teach me how to speak Chinese well.
Guess that's all right now.

Vacation Chinese Studying

Well, the teaching period has ended, and I started my vacation on Wednesday. This means that I may have more time to dedicate to studying. The first part of my vacation will be dedicated to traveling, so studying may take a back seat. I intend to maintain my discipline of studying Anki everyday. Anki is a flashcard program that I am using to work on many areas of Chinese learning. Right now, I am focusing on pronounciation. I created an Anki pronounciation file that will likely take 11 months in total to complete. I have been working on it for over three months so far, so I have another eight months left. Although I am focusing on pronounciation, I am also working on other areas as well. I am in the process of listing all the information from a Chinese character textbook onto Anki. I practice my writing as well as my pronounciation, but I am not focusing as hard on the character writing right now, I spend between 20 - 30 minutes per day on character writing. I also work on files that were created on a now defunct website known as 'Smartfm'. They have been produced for Anki, but they have been adapted to suit the Anki format. I am not really focusing on these study tools as greatly as the others. I also have an Anki lesson that pertains to HSK preperation sentences, chinese characters, and a lesson that pertains specifically to food related vocabulary.
I also created a file that I use to learn words that I learned using Chinesepod and from my grammar textbook. This also takes a pretty good chunk of studying time. In all, I spend over an hour per day on Anki. In the short-term, I expect that that time will increase, then maybe in 6 months or so, decrease back to the level that I am at now.
A few weeks ago, I made the jump from Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate on Chinesepod. It was quite hard. I am still doing Intermediate lessons as well as I find that I can still learn new content. Despite daily Chinese studying, my score on the Chinesepod placement exam has not improved considerably. Perhaps in a few more months, I will find improvement on that exam.
So after three years of studying, my Chinese is still not that good. It is improving at a moderate pace over a considerable period, but I still have a long ways to go.I can understand simple conversations, and I do pretty well if I am talking to someone speaking the standard dialect, and speaking carefully. If they try to talk to me like they would a Chinese person, they easily blow me out of the water. Anyhow, thats all for now.

Chinese ramp-up

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.

My first post of my 3rd year of learning Chinese

After I wrote the last post, I did continue to study. I spent lots of time working with Smart.Fm. It has really been a great help for me with learning characters. From October until late December, I worked heavily with Smart.fm, and I also studied with ChinesePod. I also bought some Chinese textbooks that I dabbled with, but never really pursued. I have not done anything out of my handwriting Chinese textbook, but I am thinking about resuming that work.
Last month, I learned that Smart.fm will be closing, and it will be replaced with a pay site (called iknow.jp) . Currently, I cannot get the new site to work. I feel reluctant to study using Smart.Fm since it is closing in the not so distant future. If I do use the new site, I will have to find a way to pay in yen. They do not accept American money.
At the beginning of the new year, I spent time traveling around China. For the first three or so weeks, I did no studying. For the latter part, I was spending an hour a night studying with Chinesepod. I still work with the Intermediate lessons, but I don't try to do everything in each lesson. I focus on two areas; the dialogue and the vocabulary words. I don't work with the expansion sentences anymore, they are just too difficult. I work on a 3X4 schedule. Lets suppose that I am going to work with four lessons;
Lesson A
Lesson B
Lesson C
Lesson D
I have a rhythm that works like this;
day 1 - Lesson A show, lesson A review (for every review, I only focus on vocab), play the dialogue, then audio review a second time
day 2- Lesson A show, lesson A review, play the dialogue, then audio review a second time
day 3 - Lesson A show, lesson A review, play the dialogue, then audio review a second time
day 4 - Lesson A show, lesson A review, play the dialogue, then audio review a second time
day 5 - Lesson B show, B review, A dialogue, A review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review
day 6 - Lesson B show, B review, A dialogue, A review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review
day 7 - Lesson A show, A review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review, B dialogue, B review
day 8 - Lesson B show, B review, A dialogue, A review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review
day 9 - Lesson C show, C review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review, C dialogue, C review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review
day 10 -Lesson C show, C review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review, C dialogue, C review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review
day 11 -Lesson B show, B review, A dialogue, A review, C dialogue, C review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review, C dialogue, C review
day 12 - Lesson A show, A review, C dialogue, C review, B dialogue, B review, A dialogue, A review, C dialogue, C review, B dialogue, B review
Now, on day 13, I drop lesson A and begin lesson D and continue the cycle as outlined above.

For each day, this process takes about an hour.

I am also working with a program called Anki. It is a flashcard program that I really like. It functions somewhat similar to Smart.fm, although it has some differences as well. The biggest difference is that I cannot test for pinyin. I use another program called ZDT that helps me learn the pinyin for the hanzi.

Okay, im tired. I am going to go to sleep.

I am still studying Chinese, but not with quite the intensity that I had before. I spent lots of time studying in June and July, but cooled off considerably in August and September. For most of August and September, I was traveling around the Northern part of China, and therefore had less time to commit to studying.

I was not very motivated to study, this is especially true for the latter part of September. We are in October now, and now I want to renew my efforts to study and make progress. What I can say about the past few months is that my reading level has not really increased that much, but my speaking and listening has. My speaking and listening is catching up to my reading. My handwritten Chinese is still very poor. When I switched to Intermediate, I really felt the change in difficulty. While I was learning a lot more, I really could feel the strain of the increased difficulty. It requires a lot more effort to study the intermediate level lessons than the elementary lessons. There is a huge difference.

I guess that I am in a transition period right now in terms of my Chinese learning. I don't know which direction to go. Here are some possible outcomes;
- I could stop studying. This happened to me last year at this time. I simply stopped studying Chinese for my first few months here. My increase in responsibility and the realization of the fact that my Chinese was so poor was too overwhelming, so I simply stopped studying. I am facing a similar situation now. In the past week (before the 1st), my studying had been lackluster at best. I did study a little bit, but it was just a token effort. I want to acknowledge this situation so that I can do work to prevent a complete stop in studying.
- I could work solely with Chinesepod. This is a possibility. I use a number of resources to study Chinese. I may simple stop using the rest, and stick with Chinesepod. I am seriously considering this option. I will, however, use a tutor if one becomes available.
- I could diversify my study efforts. I may seek out additional resources to use to study Chinese.

I don't know which direction I will choose. Today, I hope that I don't simply give up.

Yesterday, I started going through the flashcards I was using last year to see how many I remember. I am about a third through the stack, and I can read more than half. It is interesting because I am using a better developed thinking process to attempt to read the words. It is like trying to solve a puzzle. So far, I feel satisfied with what I am finding with this process.

Today, I took the Chinesepod placement test. I seem unable to do well on this test. According to this test, I am still a Chinesepod newbie. The test seems very difficult. Despite all the time that I have spent studying Chinese, my score is not improving. I do believe that I am improving, but the placement test does not support this belief.

Well, I don't want to think too much about the placement test. Instead, I will focus my efforts on improving my Chinese.

No use in keeping track of time.

我会说中文好一点. 我一直学习中文天天都. Ok, I will switch to English. I wrote that I am able to speak Chinese better than I could before, and that I still study Chinese everyday. These things are true. Not much has changed since the last update, but I will discuss some of the stuff I have been doing lately. The Chinesepod work that I described in the last post is very similar to what I do now. Recently, I made some changes to what I do with Chinesepod. For example, I am now studying intermediate lessons. I must say that making the jump from Elementary to Intermediate is quite difficult. Perhaps, I am not truly ready for Intermediate, but I felt that I was not learning enough with the Elementary. I wanted more of a challenge, and I am getting it with the Intermediate. Before I was studying three lessons at a time, but because of the increased difficulty, I have dropped it to two, and increased the time that I work on lessons from 9 days to 10 days. This may not seem like a huge change, but it allows me to more keenly focus my study on the two lessons that I am working on instead of trying to do three. As a rule, I will learn between 10 - 15 new Chinese words with each Intermediate lesson. Because I focus on the lesson for 10 days, I really hammer down on pronunciation. Each 5 days, I add a new Intermediate lesson. I try to spend an hour on Chinesepod each day to solidify the work that I do on the podcast, but that can feel like a chore, and I don't do it as often as I should.

I have also signed up with a website called Smart.fm. It is really good, and it has been helpful with helping me learn to read Chinese characters. I am actually not too bad with reading hanzi, (thanks to the hours of studying I did using flashcards while living in the states), but I don't know how to say the chinese with the characters or write the pinyin. smart.fm is helping me with both of these. I recommend Smart.fm for anyone who is learning to learn a foreign language as a good free supplement to the resources they currently use.

I still am doing the writing practice that I described in the previous post. My mean average is 4 characters per day, and I hope to increase it to 5 by the end of June. It is a lofty goal, and I don't know if it is mathematically possible, but it is something to shoot for. The writing practice is helpful to me because it is helping me to understand why the characters mean what they do.

May 2nd, 2010 ChinesePod Profile Update

Updated on May 2nd, 2010 -- I started learning Chinese on November 23rd 2008. I am able to spend more time studying Chinese. Between what I use here at Chinesepod, and other resources that I use, and the practice with native speakers, I have noticed improvement. As always, the improvement is slow, but it is happening.

Year two pretty far into the year

I still study Chinese almost everyday. Since December, I have kept a semi-rigid regimen. When I am not teaching, I work harder than I do when I am teaching. For speaking/listening, I work on Elementary level lessons. I listen to a show for three days, then work on audio reviews for the lesson that I am currently on, and the audio reviews for the previous two lesson I studied. In this way, I really master the words that I am studying. I don't feel too satisfied with the difficulty level of the lessons, but I do spend much time teaching. I will focus on studying more difficult lessons when I have fewer classes to teach.

I have been working out of a Chinese writing textbook for a little over two months now, and I am not doing too much with reading. At this point, I am able to do many things around town. I can talk to people about basic things, and if I am controlling the conversation, I can appear to know more Chinese than I really do.

I still have much work to do. I hope to be better about updating my progress in the future.

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 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 31 week into study

Hello everyone,
Another week has gone by with good progress. I even had a good weekend of flashcard study. Most nights, I had studied an hour of speaking and listening. I plan to continue this work. I bought two books to hopefully fill in the gaps that Chinesepod does not seem to cover. I wanted to learn more about writing and grammar, and the two books I bought address these topics. I will discuss the books. The first book, Schaum's Outlines: Chinese Grammar, by Dr. Claudia Ross, will obviously address grammatical issues in the Chinese language. My other new book, Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition, by William McNaughton, will help me learn stroke order for the simplified Chinese Characters.
I started with McNaughton's book today, and I devoted 20 minutes to the study to help ensure that I don't get burned out too quickly. The characters are difficult to write. Over the next week or so, I am going to see how I can fit my new study resources into my study to diversify my work. As noted in previous entries, my strongest area is reading chinese characters. I am improving in speaking and listening, but remain very week in other areas of study. I am determined to continue, and I am about to step out to do an hours or so worth of spoken study.

01 year 19 weeks into study

Hello everyone,
I have only a few things to say this week. First off, I can say that I am happy with using ChinesePod to learn Chinese. Sure, they are not perfect, but they seem decent as any site that I have found. I will continue to praise them, and wish them success. I hope to someday visit their office if I am ever in Shanghai.

I had a great week as far as Chinese studies are concerned! This is in light of having a moderately heavy academic load to carry as well. I didn't work this weekend, so I was able to contribute more time to studying that I normally would have. I have studied over 100 lessons (actually, it is more than that, but using the idiosyncratic tracking method that I am, I temporarily disregard those studies that I have studied but not annotated... long story... and it isn't significant), and I find on most days, I study two new lessons.

Hell yeah, still always into something, heart still in Compton.. Opps! wrong blog! This is the Chinese learning blog, not the rap blog.

Well, as you can see, I am in an irregular mood tonight so I will get going. But before I do, I just one more thing to say. I have bought colored index cards, and now I have a huge stack of blank flashcards for my future lessons.

Peace.

01 year 16 & 17 weeks into study

Hello everyone,
Well, I must say that essentially, no Chinese studies happened while I was in Spain. It was just too much. I was struggling to recall the little bit of Spanish that I learned years ago, and the Chinese was frustrating that effort. Well, it was for the first few days anyway. I resumed my Chinese studies in full swing upon my return to Massachusetts on Saturday. The 10 new characters per day totally fell flat, so I am back to the 5 per day.
I feel mixed right now about my progress. For the positive, I scored at elementary (low) on the listening test on the Chinesepod website. I feel that testing at elementary is an important milestone, and performing as such indicates that I am making progress. For the negative, I just struggle with the feeling that this Chinese studying is pointless, and that I will never master the language. I feel this way despite the overwhelming evidence to the fact that I am learning the language. I have been studying since November, but I am where I should be if I were studying since January. It's cool though, I am just going to continue to work at it everyday and trust that I will improve.
I hope to be able to speak enough Chinese to be able to express my most basic needs when I arrive in August. My trip to Barcelona, and the frustration resulting from the language barrier has demonstrated to me the types of things I will need to learn in order to communicate in a foreign language. Perhaps I should have traveled to China for the break, but I cannot take back the past, and I have to live with decisions that I have made.
My studying routine is the same routine that I have outlined in the update in week 16. If you are reading these blogs, I would really be interested in knowing about your presence. Please feel free to become a follower or comment.
thanks

01 year 14 weeks into study

Hello everyone,

I wanted to do this week's update earlier than normal. I have switched from posting at ChinesePod to using Blogspot because of a number of reasons that I may or may not get into in a later post. In the last few days, I have really gotten back into the swing of studying Chinese. I have entered a relatively relaxed period academically, so I can focus on the Chinese learning. It is going well, and it feels good. As I mentioned last week, I have tried a new strategy in my studies. I emphasize the speaking/listening part more than the character acquisition focus that I had previously. When I did focus on acquisition, it was very effective for my learning of the written vocabulary. With this being said, the verbal/speaking suffered. I have learned over 600 flashcards, but only 68 lessons after over three months of study. While I would say that I was doing well before, I think that now I am beginning to lag when compared to others who have started learning Chinese back around late November. Here is a summary of my routine;

On days that I have no work or academic demands -

I spend one hour listening to podcast shows and audio reviews. I listen to one new lesson and learn those words during this time. After this, I normally listen to audio reviews of lessons that I have listened to in the past so that I can really get those terms down pat. Because this is the part that I enjoy the least, I do it first before moving onto the flashcards.

I have a learning stack, of which I add 5 terms a day. I use a similar method of rotation that I have used in the past. I also review a subgroup of my acquisition stack each day.

On days that I have demands -

I make the best I can do with the above idea given the amount of time of which I have to work.

Here is the lastest stack photo. Obviously the stack is not growing as fast as it was before. I plan on stepping up the studying in a huge way when the semester is over.

01 year 07 weeks into study

Hello everyone,
Just to give a heads up - this is a rather long post.
Things are progressing well. I have had to scale back the study efforts a little bit on account of having to do full time college starting this week. I don't expect to make the types of gains in reading that I have been making in the past few weeks until Classes are over in the summer.
I have almost finished studying the 520 flashcards from last week, expecting to add the final ten today. I will begin to make the next batch either today or tomorrow. Last week I added 100 flashcards. Ten of which were words that I previously learned, but found myself having trouble with. The remaining 90 were new terms. This week, I am adding about half of that. Currently, I plan on adding 50 words. 45 new terms, and 5 are words that I learned already, but are mixing up with newer terms, or other things to that nature. I am also in the process of converting the worst of the handwritten cards to the printing method discussed in the last email.
This has been a marginally better week than normal for speaking Chinese for me. I made it through 5 lessons in 7 days. My ideal is to do more like 10 lessons in 7 days, but that may be unrealistic. What I have tried is doing a new lesson every day, and redoing a lesson that I have learned previously. Currently, I have my lessons arranged in something I call 'books'. Each book has 10 lessons. My first three books consist entirely of newbie lessons, and starting at the fourth I have one elementary lesson thrown in. I don't necessarily have one elementary lesson in every book, but I have no more than one elementary in each book up to book 13. Starting at book 13, I am adding both elementary and newbie lessons as they are added to the site.
As I just mentioned, I am attempting at least two lessons per day. One new lesson and one old lesson. I want to take a moment to describe this more specifically.
For the new lesson I do each day, I have two goals. The first goal is to be able to say all the vocabulary in the audio review when prompted with the english word. At this point, I am not trying to say it right away, I just am content with being able to say it even with a brief pause. So what I do is I listen to the word, pause the ipod, and say the chinese word. My focus here is to say the word paying attention to sound and tone to get it close as possible to the way the model says it. The second goal is to be able to understand the dialogue within the lesson. At this stage, I am less concerned with meeting the second goal than I am the first. This is all I am trying to do at this point when listening to new lessons, and I attempt to achieve this by listening to the entire show at least once, and typically listening to the audio reviews as many times as necessary to I reach the first goal.
For the old lesson I do each day, my goals are different than the new lesson. I find that I can usually state each of the terms in the audio review, after the first time through. I do the audio review with the goal of saying all the words perfectly without using the pause button on the ipod. I also, at this point, attempt the phrases. I am not necessarily concerned with being able to recall the phrases at this point, because the phrases often have vocabulary that I havent been introduced to yet. I just want to practice using the phrases. The goals for the old lesson I do each day are not as clearcut, but the overall intention is to be better at doing the lesson afterwards than I was before doing the lesson that day. For simplier lessons, I might be able to do it perfectly. For others, it may not go so well.
I have a system for keeping track on where I am in my lessons. My tracking system has a number of steps. Like I said earlier, I have the lessons arranged on my Ipod in books consisting of ten lessons each. So this means that the first step in the tracking method is to change the album name that is assigned by Itunes when I download a lesson from the site to a name that I select to arrange it into the books. For example, if the default album name is 'show' I change the name to 'Chinesepod.com book 01'. I do this for the audio review (fix), the show, and the dialogue. This makes for 30 files within one book (or album), and keeps the lessons in a managable manner.
The second step in the tracking system is to change the name of the lesson. There are three objectives that I am trying to reach by doing so. The first is that I want the three files for the lesson to be grouped together. The second is that I want to distinguish between the show, the fix, and the dialogue. The third is that I want to be able to remember what the lesson number is when I change the track number (Ill get to that in a minute). So I use a format that go something like this;
old file names might be -
Newbie - I'm cold!
Newbie - I'm cold! (Fix)
Newbie - I'm cold!
As can be seen, there is no indication of lesson number, or which is the show or dialogue. I might change the file names as such -
Newbie - 286s I'm cold!
Newbie - 286f I'm cold! (Fix)
Newbie - 286d I'm cold!
Notice how it is easy to tell what is what and what the lesson number is? I like it much better.
The third step is to change the track number. Now that the lesson number is listed in the file name, I can change the track number to a number that makes better sense. This allows me to arrange the lessons within a book as I see fit. For example, in book 6, I arranged all the internet related newbie lessons, I.E. (surfing the internet, sending emails, and chatting online) into a group by modifying track numbers.
The fourth and final step, which can be best taken after the previous three have been taken, is to utilize the rating system that is built into the Ipod to keep track of how many times I have reviewed a lesson. So after I do the new lesson in a given day, I would 'rate' that lesson with a 1-star. After doing the review of the old lesson each day, I would change the lesson from a 1-star to a 2-star.
All this may seem complicated, but it really is not. These changes can simply be done by using the 'get info' option that is found on the right mouse button menu when right clicking on a file. All these fields can then be changed as such. I hope this is helpful to someone. I can certainly say that having a book of ten lessons with thirty files is much more managable than having 300 lessons or more in an album.
I have also undertaken a plan on writing the characters, and studying the pinyin chart. As far as writing the characters, I plan to simply go through my 'learned' stack and practice writing the term on a sheet of paper. I might write only a few characters a day. For the pinyin chart, what I did is downloaded the chart from the website, and started making flashcards for the different sounds. I plan on buying a four sided dice, and adding five to ten sounds per day. What I would do each day is shuffle my stack of pinyin flash cards, and draw a card. After drawing the card, I would roll the four sided dice to see which tone I would attempt. Suppose I rolled a 3. I would then attempt to pronounce the term in the third term, and play back on the pinyin chart to see if I am correct. I would repeat until I get it correct. My plan is to master the pinyin chart by the end of April.
Well, I have written alot. I wanted to describe the work I have been doing on the site since I have started back in November. I must say that I have been at it everyday with the exception of a week during December when I was having difficulties. I am happy with my progress, especially my progress with reading chinese characters. The speaking stuff is coming around too, but it is slow and more difficult for me.
I guess at this point, I want to know if these weekly updates are meaningful and useful to anyone. I do these updates mainly for three reasons. First, it gives those who have been around for a bit an idea of the work I am doing and the results I am getting. I have received good feedback that has influenced my study habits thus far, and I hope to receive more. Secondly, I describe what I am doing in the hopes that newer people may read this and be able to use things that I have learned in my experience. I simply want to be helpful. Finally, I find it reinforcing to show my progress each week. It helps me keep going, knowing that I will give an update each week showing how I have improved.
With that being said, I don't mean to add clutter to the board. If these updates are not useful, or if they are irritating, I will stop doing them. Just send me a message through the chinesepod mail system, and if several people say that they are either not useful or irritating, I would promptly stop posting to the community. The last thing I want to do is be a nuisance.
Guess that is all for this week.
Please goto this link if you would like to see a screenshot that illustrates what I have been discussion in this post..
http://us.share.geocities.com/gcharestiii/untitled.bmp

01 year 06 weeks into study part 2

Hello everyone,
I had a relatively good learning week! My technology problems seem to be solved right now, and I am back into a good grove. I have flashcards made for about 520 words and word combinations. Out of this, I have proficiency on about 339. I have acquisition on an additional 90 terms. The verbal part is going slower than the written part, but I am doing better on both areas. The past week, I had done the taxi conversation series and a couple of other lessons. I like the idea of an audio phrasebook, and I also like when the lessons are grouped together like that.
As I have stated in an earlier post, I have found a way to print flashcards. This has the benefits of being faster than writing, and being more accurate. For example, it took between 50 minutes and an hour and 15 minutes to do 15 flashcards using the handwriting method. Last night, I printed off 100 flashcards in about 3 and a half hours. What I do is I use ms paint, do print screen and set up a paper with 5 terms as if I were going to print them on a sheet of 8.5 X 11 paper. What I actually do is use packing tape and tape my flashcards to the paper, and feed the paper through the printer. It uses very little ink, and it never jams up. I use the same flashcards that I was using for the handwriting method, so there is no conflict there.
My greatest gains are in reading. I am at a point where I can read much of the newbie expansions. I would say that half the time (50%), I get the essential meaning of the sentence right. another 25%, I might understand all the terms, but my lack of knowledge of how the terms are actually used prevents me from understanding correctly what is being said. For the remaining 25%, I generally will not understand a word or two in the sentence, or flat out get the sentence wrong. Elementary level expansions are more difficult for me. I would say that 15% of the time, I am able to get the essential meaning of the sentence right. another 15% or so, I might understand all the terms, but my lack of knowledge of how the terms are actually used prevents me from understanding correctly what is being said. For the remaining 70%, I generally will not understand a word or two in the sentence, or flat out get the sentence wrong.
Much of my study time is spent going through the lessons trying to find terms and words that I don't know. I don't bother going through the newbie lessons doing this anymore because I might only find one or two unknown words. I currently do well doing elementary lessons, but I figure it is just a matter of time before I feel like I am panning for gold in my bathtub. I notice that in the community page, people build vocabulary lists. I also notice that I can set to share my vocabulary lists. Is there a way to find lists that others are sharing so that I can get words from them? I am guessing that there is such a way, but I havent figured it out yet.
Guess that is it for right now, below (hopefully) you will find two photos that will show my progress that I have had since joining Chinapod. In the first photo, I have a small stack. It was taken about a week or so after I started the chinese lessons. The Bottom photo was taken on the 3rd of this month. I guess I will be doing these updates on Thursday/Friday instead of Sunday as I am scheduled to work on the weekends for the time being.

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