爬中文山

I was so glad to finally finish this book last night. I started working on the book some months ago and made slow progress, as I was only doing around two pages a day. My pace wasn't so much about lack of motivation, just that I was working other resources at the same time, rather than focusing on only one. When CNY hit and I had some days off, I vowed to finally do the book as it was designed , which is 1 unit a day. I still had 12 units to go at that point. I did my best, but each unit ended up requiting 4 hours and it took me a month to to get through those 12 units. Most days I put in 2 hours on it, there were days I did 4 hours and I skipped a few days altogether. It was an absolutely exhausting activity: 

1) Read the word 汉子 and English (once in a while the pinyin if I needed to doublecheck)

2) Read the English sentence and work out how I'd translate it into Chinese

3) Read their sentence in 汉子，compare to mine

4) Read their sentence few more times (and maybe the English again)

5) Say their sentence without looking until I could do it correctly and fluently - sometimes aloud, sometimes silently

6) On to the next word or sentence, each word had 1-3 sentences

*There are also some exercises and mini-tests and supplementary info, which I also did/read.

**100% of this was review for me, none of the words or structures in the book were "new" to me, other than around 150 incidental new words(non hsk or hsk 6+) that I added to my srs

Sometimes it's hard to know if something is effective or not. I do feel like I was nailing a lot of sentence translations and if not, I was getting the most important parts right. It really forced me to think about the sentences structures and compare them to the English way of saying things. I feel like lately I'm spitting out better and and better sentences. Is that from this, or one of my other resources, or watching TV in Chinese, or my mother in law staying with us over the holiday, or a combination of it all? Who knows.

I'm going to take a break from Hsk for the time being and work on some other things that are Hsk 5-ish, but not actual Hsk materials.

Thanks to this post about improving sentence structure https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/62960-improving-sentence-structure/page/2/#comment-492407

, I've decided to do the Kubler Intermediate Spoken Chinese book. I purchased the Kubler Basic Spoken and Intermediate Spoken at the same time a few years ago. I finished the Basic and Basic Practice years ago, which I loved:

but never got around to the Intermediate Kubler books because I wanted to move away from Pinyin. Well, now I've embarked on the Intermediate Spoken and Spoken Practice Book.

However, after getting through part of the first unit of Intermediate, I had this nagging feeling that I should re-do the audio drills of the Basic book. I decided to revisit them and go through them at a fast clip, just the audio drills and the translation role plays. I've already finished half of this basic review. I can't decide if I'm wasting time or it's a good check of the foundation. I'm hoping to get through it is quickly as possible, and get back to the Intermediate. I guess about an hour and a half a day for 5 more days should do it.

The other day, my teacher gave me homework to write about the new tea tray I bought. Here's my writing followed by her corrections:

让我介绍一下我新买的茶盘。因为我南方家里的茶盘比较大，所以我买了一个小的更适合我北京房间。我选择这种茶盘的过程是这样。我两年以前去广东北边的潮州古城旅游。那时候我很多次看过老人坐在走道上喝茶，聊天。他们用的茶盘很简单。它的样子是圆形的，不太大。有的人用陶瓷的，有的人用不锈钢的。几天前我在淘宝上看了看。我找到一些从潮州来自功夫茶盘。最后我选择了一个12英寸（30厘米），白色的。它要花差不多一百块钱包括快递费。今天早上茶盘到了。我很开心。我觉得这个茶盘挺好看的。我现在能在家里喝茶像潮州老人一样。

With corrections(my wrong sentence in parenthesis):

让我介绍一下我新买的茶盘。因为我南方家里的茶盘比较大，所以我买了一个小的更适合我北京房间。我选择这种茶盘的过程是这样。我两年以前去广东北边的潮州古城旅游。那时候我很多次看过老人坐在走道上喝茶，聊天。他们用的茶盘很简单。它的样子是圆形的，不太大。（他们用的茶盘很简单，圆的，不太大。)有的人用陶瓷的，有的人用不锈钢的。几天前我在淘宝上看了看。我找到一些从潮州来自功夫茶盘。（我找到一些从潮州来的功夫茶盘/我找到一些来自潮州的功夫茶盘。）最后我选择了一个12英寸（30厘米），白色的。它要花差不多一百块钱包括快递费（加上邮费差不多一百块钱）。今天早上茶盘到了。我很开心。我觉得这个茶盘挺好看的。我现在能在家里喝茶像潮州老人一样。（我现在在家里就能像潮州老人一样喝茶了。）

茶盘=tea tray 

过程 = process

潮州 = Chaozhou

古城 = ancient city

走道 = sidewalk

圆 = circle, round

陶瓷 = porcelain, ceramic

不锈钢 = stainless steel

功夫 = gong fu

英寸 = inches

厘米 = cm

厘米 = include

快递费 = delivery fee