爬中文山

So two months ago, I started NOT looking at the transcript when doing any kind of audio material. I found I was relying on the transcript and/or vocab list too much. I feel this has helped me a lot in being able to hear the tones of words in full sentences just from listening. It has also been helping me with more natural sentence intonation. I've gotten better at it over the last two months and only look at the script if absolutely stuck.

For the month of January, I am going to stop doing flashcards entirely. I am going to try following the advice thats often seen on this forum: practice whats hard for you (or something similar). I find it incredibly easy to repeat single words. However, full sentences keeping the correct tones, natural flow and the right grammar is another story. Even if just repeating them is a much harder task for me than single words. I think the reading and listening I do will act as natural spaced repetition for vocab anyway. My goal is(with the exception of naturally one word answers) no Chinese comes out of my mouth unless its a complete sentence. 

I hand an off hand compliment last night. I was at a 湖南饭馆 last night. I was sitting around a corner kind of out of the way. at one point, I called out 服务员， the waitress instantly stopped and looked around for who was calling her. She turned to the guy sitting at the table behind her and asked him what he needed, he said he hadn't called her. She did the same with another customer. I then called her again and she made eye contact with me. This was a small victory, because when I first started, I could never seem to get a response from saying 服务员, last night the waitress thought it could have come from a native speaker?

The last few days I've been moving up to some Intermediate ChinesePod lessons. The thing I love about them, compared to Elementary ones, is the Chinese host speaking completely in Chinese(at least the John Pasden and Fiona Tian episodes) while the native English speaker speaks English. This 50/50 banter is great listening practice and nice grammar and vocab reinforcement. I had been getting pretty tired of listening to Jenny, etc speak English to be honest, as its kind of a waste of time. Looks like theres over 700 of them in front of me, yeehaw!