The 2009 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[renzhe]

I found the 2008 thread useful for forcing myself to stay the course over the last year, so I think it's a good idea to do a new thread for 2009.

Here are mine:

1) Finish the HSK vocabulary. I'm at around 6300+ vocabulary items, out of 8800 overall

2) Add the vocabulary lists from our Grand Episode and BotM projects for more vocabulary that isn't in the HSK

3) Finish Legend of the Condor Heroes. I'm about halfway through.

4) Read some other book(s) after I'm finished with that.

5) Keep on working on characters (both the ones encountered while reading, and the most frequent ones I'm missing), the new goal is 5000 characters.

6) Get comfortable at speaking fluently about a wide range of topics.

7) Be able to watch modern TV dramas and movies without subtitles (I still need to glance at them often, but it's getting better)

10) improve writing my characters. Be able to write between 1000 and 2000 characters by hand by the end of the year.

8 ) Take over the world!

Non-Chinese goals:

9) Submit my thesis

The 5th one is not really necessary, but since I have to review characters already, adding some more doesn't hurt, and I still run into characters I don't know and which aren't that difficult to remember. I'll just keep it up and see where I get, without a strict target.

3 should be finished by May or June. I don't know what to read after that. Perhaps another Jin Yong novel (these are enjoyable), though it might be too much Wuxia and not enough more "serious" culture. I really want to read Ba Jin's "Family", but I'm a bit afraid of jumping into another huge novel that seemingly never ends. Perhaps a number of shorter novels and essays by well-known authors would be a good thing after finishing Jin Yong and before tackling "Family"? Any suggestions?

The 2nd objective is for the case I finish the HSK vocabulary before the end of the year (I hope I do). There are many useful words we've collected during our TV watching, especially in the Fendou thread, and I'd like to flashcard those as well. The useful ones, anyway -- should still be well over 1000 words.

Anybody else?

Edited February 28, 2009 at 11:51 PM by renzhe
The fluency part was misleading

[mandarina]

1)Go to China for at least one semester

2) Pass the advanced HSK

3)continue writting my chinese blog

4) finish my thesis (two of them actually)

5) finish all the hsk vocabulary

6) finish Reality Chinese (a pretty cool book with lots of spoken chinese expressions, a good supplement to my chinese classes, which are not excatly language oriented)

7)watch some tv shows

and

try not to kill my laptop by feeding it coffe, again

9) continue studying japanese

i am getting tired just by looking at it...

fighto, fighto! (that is actually japanese for 加油, the informal version, at least)

[querido]

Thank you renzhe and roddy, I was waiting for this now-traditional New Year's post.

1. Graduate at least "first grade" (vols. 7 and 8.) of New Concept Chinese for Children (BLCUP). It would be nice to go far enough in this series to enjoy, as literature, the equivalent difficulty-level readings from the People's Education Press "Yuwen" series for Chinese children, from their website. Someone here compared this to knowing the Mary-had-a-little-lamb-equivalents of Chinese culture. I'm following this unusual road (for an adult) because I think I can.

2. Read, over and over and over until transparent, the six volumes of Chinese Breeze graded readers level I that I have on order. This method served me well in Spanish. This should be a great way to ingrain grammatical structures.

3. For conversing with adults, reabsorb the first book I learned from, which I've let slip away: "Modern Chinese, A Basic Course" (Dover 1971), and/or the similar "Conversational Chinese 301".

4. What about the great "Cracking the Chinese Puzzles"? I don't feel able to tackle this from front to back. I hope it, along with Wenlin, will help enrich 1 through 3.

5. Tear myself away from economics blogs, because it is *killing* me.

我有一盒彩色笔，

红色用来画太阳，

蓝色用来画天空，

绿色用来画草地。

Edited December 18, 2008 at 09:27 PM by querido
Edited to credit roddy

[c_redman]

1) Learn to recognize the HSK words up to level 3, start on level 4

2) Use Skritter to learn to write 1000-1200 characters

3) Implement my planned blog on technologies for learning Chinese

4) Go to China for 2 weeks in the summer

5) Do some independent research on statistical NLP and Chinese. Bonus if it can help the CC-CEDICT project

6) Give a try at translating, e.g., at yeeyan.com or Chinese Blast

7) ??

Profit!

Edited December 18, 2008 at 10:14 PM by c_redman

[character]

Get measurably faster at handling Chinese grammar.

Get measurably better at pronouncing Chinese, esp. those rare and mysterious things called "tones."

Get to the point where I can understand most of the dialog in formulaic Shaw Brothers wuxia/kung fu films.

Read more Chinese (next up, Traditional Chinese Tales).

[gato]

I really want to read Ba Jin's "Family", but I'm a bit afraid of jumping into another huge novel that seemingly never ends. Perhaps a number of shorter novels and essays by well-known authors would be a good thing after finishing Jin Yong and before tackling "Family"? Any suggestions?

I would highly recommend 棋王 by 阿城. It's a short one with only about 100 pages. It was sort of a BotM way back when.

see this thread here:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=147817#post147817

棋王 by 阿城

[renzhe]

That sounds great, thanks.

[Meng Lelan]

Finish the HSK vocabulary. I'm at around 6300+ vocabulary items, out of 8800 overall

renzhe, did that take you a year's time and I'm assuming you have that HSK book of 8000 vocabulary words? By the way which story by Jin Yong have you already read?

I'm trying to come up with my own list of 2009 Aims and Objectives to contribute to this thread but they're really related to my wushu training not much to do with Chinese studying...except for one Aim and Objective, it's to continue my twice weekly live online private Chinese lessons with an online school in Beijing. I'm getting far more conversational practice in those online lessons than I ever did in my time in China so it has helped a great deal.

[renzhe]

renzhe, did that take you a year's time and I'm assuming you have that HSK book of 8000 vocabulary words?

About two years' time, and I'm using the HSK vocabulary list available here on this site. There are also versions available for popular flashcard programs. I study every day, or else it would be quite difficult.

By the way which story by Jin Yong have you already read?

I'm halfway through 射雕英雄传.

[rob07]

I really want to read Ba Jin's "Family", but I'm a bit afraid of jumping into another huge novel that seemingly never ends.

Just "家" or the whole trilogy (激流三部曲)? The latter two books, 春 and 秋 were written quite a bit later (I think he wrote several other books between 家 and 春/秋), and I don't think they are anywhere near as good. I'd recommend not bothering with them.

I think 家 stands alone as a novel and by itself it is what, 400-500 pages? Certainly a significant undertaking, but much shorter than 金庸.

[wushijiao]

1) Work on writing a book in Chinese. I’m going to write a book about the advantages of being a vegan and eating a plant-based diet, with special considerations for the Chinese context. If I can’t get it published, I’ll publish it online. In any case, I think it’ll be a good chance to practice my writing skills (also, hopefully, writing with a electronic pen, to practice my writing, and possibly to learn to write in trad).

2) Continue to work on Cantonese; in particular, listen to at least 30 minutes per day, and start to speak more often. My motivation to work on Cantonese has really come in waves. I live in TST, which is probably one of the most English-speaking places there is (or at least that’s my pathetic justification to explain away my still piss poor level). But, in March or so, I’ll move, which should help. Also, connected to this goal, do more cultural activities in HK.

3) Read at least five scholarly books in Chinese (in 2008, I think I only read three and bits and pieces of others). If there is one thing that I’ve found, it’s that my Chinese studies work best when a book is the core focus. I think I’ll rejoin and contribute to the BoM community.

So, for me at least, to make a long story short, I had spent three or so years with learning Chinese being my sole overriding day-to-day priority, but this year (2008 ), my focus shifted elsewhere (health/exercise, Buddhism, studies, career building…). I’m at the point where I’m back and focused on Chinese issues, but to some degree, I feel like I don’t have the passion or energy to engage myself in debates, especially online.

Also, as far as 家, it was a selection of the month, and is worth the read, in my opinion. As far as novels go, it isn't too hard either:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/6442-selection-for-november-%e5%ae%b6-family-by-%e5%b7%b4%e9%87%91-ba-jin&highlight=ba+jin

[DrZero]

Renzhe ...

Curious ... with a vocabulary of over 6,000 items, how are you not fluent for everyday conversations?

Are you underestimating your ability? Or is your reading that much better than your listening/speaking? I am the opposite, better with speaking and listening, terrible with reading/writing.

[jbradfor]

I'm not sure whether I should be impressed or scared by some of the previous aims, but here are mine.

1. Not be laid-off from work due to spending too much time on other things
   
2. Find time to go to the gym regularly, which is the only chance I have to listen to the ChinesePod lessons.
   
3. Finally get my script working to automatically generate vocab lists from ChinesePod lesson transcripts.
   
4. Learn another 500-1000 words from various random vocab lists
   

with a vocabulary of over 6,000 items, how are you not fluent for everyday conversations?

I can't answer for renzhe, but for me there is a world of difference between being able to recognize a one or two character word that is written when I have time to think about it, versus being able to recognize a word when spoken among a bunch of other words, even when spoken slowly in accent-less Chinese. And don't even consider the case of understanding it during full-speed accented Chinese.

[Lu]

Renzhe, I can recommend another Qiwang, by Zhang Xiguo. Also Huozhe, if you haven't already read that. Or just anything that you would enjoy in English.

Aims/objectives:

Read more Chinese, and perhaps even learn the words I don't know so that I remember them for longer than two pages.

Translate a lot and get paid for it.

(Objective for a future year: translate a book.)

Vague plans:

Find a class/tutor for Taiwanese and/or Cantonese. First find the money to pay for those things.

[renzhe]

Curious ... with a vocabulary of over 6,000 items, how are you not fluent for everyday conversations?

Are you underestimating your ability? Or is your reading that much better than your listening/speaking? I am the opposite, better with speaking and listening, terrible with reading/writing.

If I'm not mistaken, you're in China, right? My problem is that I'm learning in Germany, mostly on my own. So I do lots of reading, and some listening from TV shows. Conversation gets the least practice, but it hasn't been a huge priority so far either. So you're right, my reading is far better than my spoken Chinese.

I think that way I phrased it in a misleading way. Of course I can talk about a number of topics, it's just that it's not as fluent as I'd like. As soon as I leave the everyday chitchat, I have to pause a lot, rephrase things, try to remember the correct word, etc. And the faster I speak, the worse my tones get.

I'd like to speak more naturally, like I can do in other languages.

[Meng Lelan]

My problem is that I'm learning in Germany, mostly on my own. So I do lots of reading, and some listening from TV shows. Conversation gets the least practice

renzhe, just wondering is there a significant Chinese population in Germany where you are? I wonder if that can give you Chinese conversation practice? There's a significant Chinese population in Texas where I live but of course they're all too busy even for a chat.

[renzhe]

renzhe, just wondering is there a significant Chinese population in Germany where you are?

Yes, there is, but the main problem is that my girlfriend lives in a different city right now, or else I'd have all the practice I need. That's also the reason why I'm not too stressed about it, I can always catch up on conversation practice later. For example, over the Christmas holidays!

[yersi]

.

[Meng Lelan]

Who's Anki?

Ok, here's my Aims and Objectives for 2009. Just two!

1. Get a Chinese guy somewhere in Texas.

2. Get a full time job teaching first and second year Chinese in a public high school somewhere in Texas.

[nipponman]

I want to return to chinese and Japanese studying