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.

September 1st, 2012 ChinesePod Profile Update

 This was posted to Blogger on September 15th 2012 at around 600 Beijing time, but I backdated it to when I wrote this.

Updated on September 1st, 2012 -- I started learning Chinese on November 23rd 2008. I have been diligently studying Chinese everyday, haven't missed a day in over a year. Lately, I've been using three means to study: 1. Using Chinesepod, studying lessons in a somewhat haphazard way. If I see a lesson I want to study, I study it. 2.I use Anki, an online flashcard program that I may download for free. With Anki, I focus on pronunciation, Hanzi writing, and intensive vocabulary and sentence reading review. During the academic year, I work with a tutor to improve conversational skills. I also occasionally review my grammar textbook and other resources. In addition to Chinesepod, I also use Nciku, which is a pretty good resource. 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. 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.

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.

The life of a Chinese learner living in China... part 2 As posted on Facebook

Things have improved since my last note. About two or three weeks ago, I was spending time with some friends. I was talking to Charlie, a Chinese man, and like usual, really having trouble communicating. Shortly thereafter, I started talking to him, and I was understanding some of what he said to me. I am not trying to say that after that moment, I was fluent, but I was more confident. I have been spending time at the local store talking to the women that work there. I find that I can express many of my ideas in Chinese, what a great feeling! After so much time of frustration and heartache, my work is paying off. There are many words I do not know, but I have a lot of linguistic tools at my disposal that I can use. Granted, those women have to use some language barrier gymnastics to understand my GaoYuan Hua (高原话） GaoYuan (高原)　is my Chinese name, and hua (话) is one of the Chinese words for language. What I am saying is that I make many mistakes when speaking Chinese that sometimes I feel I am speaking my own dialect of Chinese.
I find that I am better able to express myself if I feel confused, frustrated or upset. These are things I could not do in the past.
Where I live, people speak different types of Chinese. Some people are easier to understand than others. Sometimes, I talk to people whose pronunciation is so different that I cannot understand them at all, and sometimes I want to correct them. The local accent is very difficult for me to understand, it is remarkably different than standard Mandarin. Well, at least I think it is. Perhaps a native speaker may not think so.
I guess that is all I want to say right now.

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 02 week into study

Hello everyone,
Once again, I am posting this a few days early on account of having to work over the weekend. This week was another slow one, being that I am consumed with final exam week at my college. I have flashcards for about 280 terms now, acquisition on about 250 or so, and proficiency on about 75. Study has been slow and steady. I have been working at it every day except for those days where it is not possible to do so.
I haven't started my pinyin studies yet, and I plan to do so in the upcoming weeks. I don't feel as enthusiastic about my chinese studies as I did when I first started. It is hard work, and it is slow going, but like someone said to me last week, the words will 'snowball' and soon I will find that I have a range of vocabulary.
I am really weak in the spoken side of my learning. Since the email from last week, I have completed three lessons. I really struggle with pronunciation. Also it seems that I have difficulty retaining the spoken words. For example, I will listen to a podcast, repeat a vocabulary word ten times, play it again, and not remember the word I was just pronouncing. This is quite frustrating. Anyhow, I am still trudging despite these discouraging events.
Feel free to leave thoughts or other feedback