Efficient ways to study HSK (B/I) on my own and on budget?

[Courtney]

To sum up my main question:

How do I decide on the best things and ways to study given that I'm studying on my own now and have very little money (let's say <$50 total)? I have taken college courses previously and hope to obtain an upper-intermediate HSK certificate, but my Chinese knowledge is all over the map. I have already looked at the best study tools list--which is great!--but I need advice on how to balance my time using various online/offline resources (note: I need Mac-friendly programs and cannot go learn in China right now even for free). Advice on any part of this is very much appreciated.

For a better idea of my particular issues:

I studied 3+ years of Chinese in college and even spent a term studying in China. Unfortunately, I used the old (im)Practical Chinese Reader (PCR) I, II, and III for my first couple years (and admittedly, didn't study as much as I could have). Then, I went to China and was thrown into using a much better book in a class that was too difficult (because my knowledge of the fundamentals was really spotty and the class was conducted entirely in Chinese). After returning to the US, I took a couple of advanced Chinese literature/culture classes that were still too difficult (and still entirely in Chinese).

As a result, I am much better at hearing Chinese now (in that I can transcribe the pinyin of most Mandarin speech I hear--especially if its a podcast that I can rewind bits of). However, I never really caught up on a lot of the basic/intermediate vocab and grammar (so even when I can distinguish the tones and syllables, I still don't tingdong enough of the actual content). Also, my speaking is kind of slow and awkward because I rely heavily on the basic phrases I do know.

My reading comprehension is also better and worse than it should be. It's better because I learned a ton of obscure characters for quizzes. Of course, I can only write a small fraction of them, but I still recognize quite a few. I'm also much faster at learning and writing characters now (thanks to having to learn 50+ characters every other day for quite a while). But I'm still missing a lot of normal/conversational words. It's also harder to remember which radical goes with which meaning and things of that nature. I also spent a lot of time translating literature just enough to get the gist of it, so I've learned a lot of grammar by osmosis. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to apply that grammar for writing/speaking myself (outside the context I learned it in). On the plus side, I can write lovely paragraphs about the cultural revolution and tragic death.

What I'm doing now and want to improve on:

I still have my old PCR grammar books (though not the regular books themselves) and a number of advanced texts (with advanced vocab and corresponding grammar). So far, I'm using the lists of most frequently used Chinese characters and the HSK vocab lists linked on the "best study tools" sticky to narrow down what I need to know most. Then, I'm going through my grammar books to find the grammar that goes with the most frequent characters I don't know well enough. Then...well..I'm kind of randomly going through the advanced lessons I've done before looking for examples of the words/grammar I just looked up. I'm also trying to read Chinese news sites and am listening to intermediate/upper intermediate podcasts. Lastly, I'm trying to speak/write myself and am working on making "Chinese friends" on the Internet and locally to test stuff out with.

It's working okay...but I've run into a few problems. The biggest one is that there's no comprehensive list of HSK grammar that I can find. I mean...I'm trying to look up the "corresponding grammar" of the HSK vocab, but sometimes it's difficult to figure out which words have corresponding grammar. Also, for a lot of characters (了，得，上，什么的）I'm not sure how much of the grammar I need to know. I suspect I need to know a bit more than is in my basic grammar books. Sometimes I can figure out different usages in the more advanced literature by context and using dictionaries, but even then I'm not sure when I can apply those rules. Here and on Google, I don't see an efficient way to look up grammar usage (especially HSK-relevant grammar).

The other problems are that I can't stand listening to painfully slow beginner podcasts, it's really hard to tell which intermediate/advanced podcasts will use certain basic words, and I'm not sure how to test my progress aside from talking to Chinese people (which I still can't do with any regularity). I've downloaded the one official HSK mock test and have found a few others, but I'm not sure how I should portion them out or if they're really good indicators. I really want to do well on the HSK, so I can use that and my poli-sci degree to get a job that I care about (and incidentally would make me the money that I don't have to spend on Chinese courses right now). Sorry this is so long, but I don't know what's most important.

So what should I focus on? What should I do? Thankyou so much!

[gato]

Take a look at these threads on grammar books. You can order most of them on dangdang and have them shipped to the U.S.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=66064#post66064

HSK语法点速记速练

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/112-tattoos-in-china02&highlight=hsk+grammar

300 most useful grammar points

(so even when I can distinguish the tones and syllables, I still don't tingdong enough of the actual content). Also, my speaking is kind of slow and awkward because I rely heavily on the basic phrases I do know.

But I'm still missing a lot of normal/conversational words. I also spent a lot of time translating literature just enough to get the gist of it, so I've learned a lot of grammar by osmosis. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to apply that grammar for writing/speaking myself (outside the context I learned it in). On the plus side, I can write lovely paragraphs about the cultural revolution and tragic death.

It's hard to figure out what level you are at based on what you wrote. Is it possible to write paragraphs about the cultural revolution without a grasp of basic vocabulary and grammar? Maybe you can give us some links to web sites with texts that you can understand, so we can get a more concrete idea.

[Courtney]

Thanks Gato! Those grammar books look like they'd be worth it. And I'll work on finding some example websites. I do understand most basic grammar, but I can't always use it and my vocab has gaps. Part of the problem is that I know the grammar that usually goes along with certain contexts, like the cultural revolution, better than the grammar that goes with other contexts. It's also difficult to get a good feel for groups of words that behave similarly. For example... I can use "他死掉了", but I don't know what other contexts I can use "掉" in. I can look up phrases it's in in dictionaries, but even then there's a chance I'll use it incorrectly. I also won't know what other words use similar grammar. Is "掉" ever used as a complement like "下去" for example？ Can it be used like the opposite of "提"?

Anyway, I really appreciate it, and will look for examples. But I need to sleep now.

[imron]

I'm also trying to read Chinese news sites and am listening to intermediate/upper intermediate podcasts.

If you're looking to improve your listening, you might like to have a read of this thread, in particular the comments made by 赫杰 about CRI.

If you start listening to CRI, you might also be interested in this little program that will compile all the articles from a given broadcast into one nice html file with an embedded media player. The update to this program works fine on a Mac, because that's what I used when I wrote it