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.

The life of a Chinese learner living in China... As posted on Facebook

I think that I can understand how hard it is for a foreigner to learn a new language. I have been living in China for 8 months now, and in addition to that, I had studied Chinese for around 10 months while living in the states. I have some experience with this. I must say, it can be difficult at times. Learning Chinese for an English speaker is probably easier than it would be for a Chinese person to learn English in the United States, because many people can speak at least some English. When these Chinese people see a foreigner, they are often friendly and eager to use the little bit of English that they know. This means that they may be willing to be helpful, and patient when I try to speak Chinese. However, there are not many Chinese speakers in the United States, so this is not very likely.

Anyhow, my life in China is filled with constant frustration, confusion, and irritation. Doing any task in the street is always difficult, because my Chinese is not good. I study Chinese for several hours on most days, but I still know very little after all this time. Everyday, the fact that my language skills are poor is immediately apparent. As I learn more Chinese, I find that, in some ways, it actually gets harder to function. When I knew very little, people were more patient with me. Now, people expect me to be able to speak better than I actually can, so they just get frustrated with me. Sometimes, Chinese people, meaning to be helpful, will sometimes throw English words in their Chinese sentence. This causes problems for two reasons; first, their pronunciation is often very poor, so I don't realize that they are trying to speak an English word until later. And second, they will say the English for words that I already understand the Chinese for anyway. In this way, this is no help and serves only to frustrate matters worse.

I recently hired a Chinese person to help me work on my oral Chinese. I am one of the very few Chinese learners whose reading and writing is better than my speaking. For most people, their speaking and listening is good, but they cannot read or write. After my first lesson, I got discouraged because she spent lots of time talking in English. I might have to find a new tutor.

I get so frustrated sometimes. Some days, I might spend a three hour session studying Chinese, then go to the street to do something, and fumble, stumble, and crawl my way through the most basic Chinese interaction. As I said earlier, I am constantly reminded of my poor speaking ability. My reaction sometimes is to simply say 'screw it, this is too hard. Perhaps I will just play video games during my spare time' but I know that if I practice, I will improve. I know this because I am improving. It is very slow, but I am getting better each day. I just have to maintain the regimen of studying that I have been doing since around January or thereabouts.

I know this is not well written, but it is a first draft, and I don't really care to revise and edit. This is what you get. Sorry.