November 11th, 2011 ChinesePod Profile Update

Updated on November 11th, 2011 -- I started learning Chinese on November 23rd 2008. I have been diligently studying Chinese everyday. I am using three means to study: 1. Using Chinesepod, studying roughly one Upper-Intermediate and one Intermediate lesson every week. Using a computer program to do review, and I work with a tutor to help with Grammar. I think these measures are helping me greatly. I hope to continue to progress.

You can keep track of my progress at;

(http://amesbury georgechinesestudy .blogspot.com/) without the spaces or paranthesis. I must confess, I have not updated this page in quite a while because I cannot log onto this site while I am in China. If you do go to that page, I would be interested to know that people are reading it. Feel free to follow the blog, or comment so I know of your presence.

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

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.

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 30 weeks into study

I must say, that it has been a good week overall for Chinese studying. I feel like I hit a good rhythm. In the past, the speaking and listening had been the weakest area, but I feel that the work I had done in those areas had reached parity with my flashcards. I don't do much studying on weekends on account of work, but I do much during the weekday. I will normally learn 3 podcasts per day at newbie level. I know that I forget much of what I learned, but the podcasts have much repetition. This means that when the vocabulary comes up again, I remember that I had learned it before, and I relearn it very quickly. My plan is to incorporate more elementary lessons into my daily speaking and listening routine. The newbie lessons are beginning to be too easy.
The flashcards are going good as well. It is frustrating that I typically forget many that I had learned, so I do much review.

Not much to say this week, no real changes to my methodogy besides my plan to include more elementary lessons. That is all for right now.