The 2010 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[AlexanderH]

Since I'm a beginner.. and have maybe 300 characters under my belt, here are my goals before I move to Beijing this August:

1. Complete Chinesepod beginner all the way, practicing all the written dialogues as well

2. Daily reading, I ordered some BreezeReaders.

3. Complete the entire HSK level 1 vocab list I found online (e.g. be able to write, recognize, put characters in a sentence)

4. Once my Anki deck has 200+ cards, add it to my Itouch and review it at work

5. Watch videos in Mandarin, listen to podcasts, focusing on listening comprehension at least 30 minutes daily. I have plenty of martial arts movies in Mandarin, and can listen to various videos posted here.

Priority: Listening. I dominated my Chinese class but when my teacher was speaking normal speed... I was like . My oral exam was cake to respond to, but man does the language go by quickly! It's really hard to pick up on full sentences.

[Hobbes828]

Chinese Goals for at least H1 2010:

- I'm almost caught up on my Skritter queue after 3 weeks of slacking or so... scary in some ways how little of it is in the long term memory... so that has motivated me to keep up with it, meaning probably doing it at least during my lunch break instead of surfing web, etc.. should be able to move from 1500 characters to 2500 by the beginning of summer.

- I keep telling myself I need to start Anki, and I do, I want to put sentences in that I hear/read/have to translate at work especially. Without a definite goal or having started now, this is more of a hope than an expectation currently... I like the Seinfeld calendar thing for both Skritter and Anki if I ever start... Skritter has a contest going right now with a similar idea..

- Keep Reading! Should finish Chinese Graded Reader 3 by next week, then I have the Taiwan Today Intermediate textbook and also an abridged "Jia" to work on. Hope to easily recognize all the HSK 2 words in a month or two, plus a whole bunch of words I need for work. Later on, All Things Considered Reader + Little Prince, Harry Potter, Twilight? are all possibilities leading toward actual Chinese novels.

- Listening/Speaking: Well since my colleagues are all Chinese, my main goal is to not quit my job for the next 2 months minimum, because I think just being there will be amazing for my listening and hopefully almost as good for my speaking.

- Writing: I have an idea for a blog with English and Chinese entries but that will have to wait until I am more settled into my job or after the job ends

*Bonus*

Cantonese - Since my boss and many colleagues are local Cantonese people, I think I might finally take a stab at some basic conversational Cantonese just so that I can pick up a few words that they are constantly saying/yelling at each other.

I should be going back to school in summer or fall '10 and I will be required to learn Greek and Hebrew so I get to put all my language learning skills back into practice again!

Happy New Year to those on East Coast, it is 9 pm pacific as I submit this!

[eya323]

My 2010 Chinese Goals:

1. Take the HSK. This is probably completely unrealistic, as I work 80 hours a week and my Chinese studies often get pushed to the side. I like being a bit unrealistic in my goal-setting, though.

2. Not let my work interfere with my Chinese studies so often. Since I have a once a week one-on-one class that is pretty self-paced, I often let work get in the way of my Chinese study schedule. Since I'm not really graded and my job often hands me demanding tasks, I far too often push my Chinese homework off until the last minute and rarely review past vocabulary, grammar rules, etc.

3. Watch more Chinese TV. A lot of CCTV is pretty terrible (i.e. games shows) or tough to understand at my level (i.e. news or talk shows), but I often get the gist and I'm sure I'd get more than the gist if I watched it more often.

4. Listen to Chinese podcasts regularly AND review the transcripts. I often have news podcasts playing in the background of my office, but I don't really listen for content. This means that I am not really absorbing as much as I could be. Reviewing the Chinesepod transcripts (among others) would be helpful.

5. Read a good book in Chinese...and not any more of these little kids books. Maybe something that is middle school level? I want to read Harry Potter or one of the classics. Even if I struggle, it's got to be better than reading Chinese Cinderella.

6. Talk to the Chinese grad students. I am a program manager for an R&D lab at a university that hires some Chinese grad students. I already say hi and ask how they are doing in their classes in Chinese, but I'd love to have more in-depth conversations. My conversational skills are progressing a lot more slowly than my written and reading comprehension skills.

7. Go to China again (preferably for work). I spent too much money doing a two-week immersion course last summer, so I can't go for pleasure this summer. BUT...after the Climate Talks this year, it looks like my university may have reason to pay some potential clients a visit. I want to push for this, if only for personal reasons.

8. Retain what I have learned. Although I really want to progress quickly, I've realized that I can't keep plowing through new material without reviewing what I have already learned. This means actually using Anki, pulling out my old handwritten flashcards, listening to old dialogues, and re-reading old stories I've previously read.

Goals Unrelated to Chinese:

1. Read War and Peace.

2. Alternate reading a book a month in German and French.

3. Get promoted.

[imron]

Watch more Chinese TV. A lot of CCTV is pretty terrible (i.e. games shows) or tough to understand at my level (i.e. news or talk shows),

Make sure to check out the Grand First Episode Project. Lots of good suggestions there, varying difficulty levels, plus episode summaries, word lists and more.

[eya323]

Make sure to check out the Grand First Episode Project. Lots of good suggestions there, varying difficulty levels, plus episode summaries, word lists and more.

Good advice! I started reading through the television thread yesterday. It's a bit tough for me to understand, but I watched the first episode of 奋斗 yesterday and I think I'll keep watching it. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the vocabulary lists and transcripts--what a great idea! Very helpful!

[knadolny]

I'm joining in with my language goals for the new year! I am glad I am not the only one tackling Japanese and Chinese. My Chinese is good and my Japanese is basic at the moment.

Japanese goals

- speak fluent Japanese by the end of the year. I am currently speaking broken Japanese at the beginner level.

- Pass the JLPT 2 in December.

- learn katakana (why can I learn Kanji faster than the katakana)

Chinese

- read more short stories in Chinese

- begin reading magazine articles

Chinese and Japanese goals

- write more. My writing of kanji/hanzi is my weakest area and a bit embarrassing since I can read without much trouble.

- learn structural vocabulary

- read and understand the Chinese building code

- converse with coworkers in Japanese about structures (I have to in any case)

To a good year in 2010!

Cheers

[Shadowdh]

Wellll its been a looong time since I posted here and a similarly long time since I studied Chinese seriously... not since my exams and finishing my degree really... but got the bug again and have been smsing and emailing my friends in China and doing some light reading (if there is such a thing) and now will do a little everyday to get back to the level I was at and beyond... soooo with this in mind I will outline some goals and objectives for 2010...

Chinese Study - increase my listening, reading and writing practice to mid 09 levels

- make an effort every day to do at least a little bit of study

- start to read more news paper and other articles

- watch more Chinese tv and movies

- generally interact more on this site and others using as much Chinese as I can...

Life in general - keep up with the training to stay fit and maintain muscle mass

- keep going with the diy and building work on the house (sigh)

thats about it for now... more to be added later maybe...

[wedge]

This is my first posting on this thread series so first a bit of background:

I am an ABC of Cantonese descent. I spoke virtually no Chinese growing up (grew up in a mostly white environment) but my parents spoke both Cantonese and Mandarin so I have a bit of an ear for it. I took 1 year of Mandarin in college. Now, in my late 20s, I recently moved to Hong Kong and am desperately trying to learn Mandarin (yes I know that HK is a terrible place to learn 普通话). I have thus far worked through NPCR 1 and am up to around 850 flash cards.

1) Vocabulary: Get up to 2000 characters / 3000 words

2) Listening: Be able to understand most of a modern day Chinese drama without subtitles. Understand dinner conversation in Mandarin (as long as they don't talk about politics, history, etc.)

3) Speaking: Hopefully be able to get around (order food, ask for directions, etc.) and talk to people about everyday things when I am in China and Taiwan.

4) Reading/Writing: Be able to chat online with people. I hope to take a stab at translating a business-related news article at some point this year.

Tools:

NPCR 1-4

Pimsleur

Chinesepod

KTdict flashcard program on my iPhone (Waiting for the flashcard function to come out for Pleco iPhone; gave up on Anki and Mnemosyne because I hate being tethered to my PC)

Watching Chinese and Taiwanese dramas

[OneEye]

I'm hopefully starting a degree in Chinese this fall (I'll find out if I'm admitted in March), so I'll be doing a lot of reading in preparation for that. I want to start in their third year classes, so my language study will mainly be based on the syllabi for the first two years of Chinese. They use PCR (the old one) I and II for first year, and Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese (by Ch'ih-Ping Chou) for second year. So here's the plan:

By Fall Semester:

All vocab from PCR I-II and IRMC learned - reading and writing cards in Anki

All sentences from PCR I-II and IRMC entered into Anki - reading and listening cards

By end of 2010:

Read 鹿鼎記 comic book series with dictionary, adding new vocab to Anki

Rouzer book Lessons 1-20, more if time allows

Other reading:

Norman - Chinese

Ramsey - The Languages of China

Sun Chaofen - Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction

DeFrancis - The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

DeFrancis - Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems

Schirokauer - A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations

Ebrey - The Cambridge Illustrated History of China

de Bary - Sources of Chinese Tradition

This semester, I have five hours of library time blocked off in my schedule two days per week after class. The other five days I'll be working part time, so the short shifts will allow for some reading time in the evenings. I have a light course load, so I think these goals aren't too high. During the summer I won't have class, or if I do it will just be one course for about 6 weeks. I'll still be working part time, so I'll have plenty of spare time to study. The fall semester (if I'm admitted) will be more hectic, but at that point some of these books will be required reading for the courses I'll be taking anyway.

I'm on the lookout for more books, both on Chinese Linguistics and Chinese Archaeology, so I'm sure the list will grow to an unmanageable length. Any recommendations are welcome.

[Lu]

Damn everyone is ambitious here! I usually try to make few new year's resolutions, but be determined to keep the few that I make, but this year I have a rather long list, and not much room left for Chinese-related ones I'm afraid. But these are my Chinese-related Aims and Objectives:

- Translate a book.

- Go to China (on holiday).

The rest is stuff like finding a new job/something useful to do with my life, taking more exercise, and such.

[knadolny]

Damn everyone is ambitious here!...-

Translate a book.

Translating a book is pretty darn ambitious. Good luck! 加油

[Hobbes828]

@Lu:

Yeah, I agree with knadolny... People might have put up a lot of reading, or character learning, or whatever, but read a book or two is nothing compared to TRANSLATE A BOOK!

Good luck with that, and maybe 10 or 20 years down the line I can post that on Chinese-forums.com if it still exists....

[Lu]

:-) I guess you're right. What I find ambitious are all the plans to spend a significant amount of time on studying every day (learn new words every day, watch an hour of news every day), driven purely by self-discipline. 佩服,佩服.

[jbradfor]

Not to diminish Lu at all, but I think her Chinese is at a level at which translating a book is not too ambitious for her. For people at a lower level of Chinese, it would be very ambitious. [And for me, it would be a full time job for the whole year....] I think the level of ambition is how much you want to improve wrt what you already know.

[edelweis]

There's book and book. Translating a children's book for instance (I mean, NOT Harry Potter like ) would be more easily achievable than translating a long novel...

My goals by order of priority:

0) don't let Chinese eat up all my energy and free time - leave a little time for my other projects and some energy for the work I get paid to do

1) take the HSK (apparently it will be the new version here)

2) spend 15' per day learning/reviewing character writing

3) finish the 1033 word HSK vocab list

4) finish the study of "chinese grammar without tears"

5) submit at least one written exercise per week on Livemocha to practice 3) and 4)

(preferably more!)

6) keep watching chinese TV and listening to Chinese Breeze. Have a notepad and pen ready to take notes!

and optionally:

7) finish the assimil "Chinese with ease" books

8 ) study one of my Talk Chinese books (perhaps the "IT talk" one)

9) start traditional characters reading (I bought the NPCR1 textbook in traditional characters for that purpose)

10) learn to type in zhengma and wubi and stop using pinyin input methods (for active character recall even when typing)

11) learn the 1000 most frequent characters (in words, not by themselves). Right now I can recognize about 500.

[imron]

learn to type in zhengma and wubi

For wubi, I recommend 五笔快打 for training, and 极点五笔 for your IME. There are also a bunch of relevant threads on the forums about wubi.

[simonlaing]

Hey Guys,

the 2009 thread of this helped espicially with the bump reminders through out the year.

Take the HSK Zhongji and get a 7 or higher

---(I will probably need to study with a tutor twice a week to get to the level)

Start a Blog about China in Chinese and/or English

I plan to take the HSK zhongji with the goal of getting a 7 as a stepping stone on the way to getting a 9 in the Gaoji test. (This qualifies you to test Chinese in China and could be used when I go back to the states perhaps)

Good luck everyone,

Simon:)

[imron]

The 9 might not exist after this year. I've now they've been threatening that for years, but it looks like this year they are actually getting serious about replacing the old HSK with the new one.

[roddy]

February already

Learning to write is going reasonably well, in that I haven't given up. Skritter tells me I've practiced 21 of the last 29 days, and averaged an hour a day, so that seems reasonable. Now have 1820 characters learned (up 300 this month) which is less than I'd hoped, but the review queue can really be a killer at this point and I've spent a lot of time clearing that rather than getting on to new stuff. Guess I just need to keep clearing the queue until they are all learned well enough that they won't come back till 2019. Need to accept that and not get impatient. Also need to use this new skill on phone and computer, otherwise no matter how far I get, it's just going to atrophy until the next burst of enthusiasm.

Guitar's been going ok - hasn't been daily, but not too far off, and I'm doing ok when it comes to practicing and trying to play stuff better, rather than just playing stuff I know, or think I do.

French class is coming to an end (exams this week, though I suspect they'll be a bit Mickey Mouse). It's been fun, and interesting to do, but I'd need to miss quite a few classes over the next ten-week course so I think I'll bow out at this point, at least temporarily. There's still quite a bit of the textbook to do, so maybe I'll self-study that. I'd sign up for the proper exams if they had them in Beijing, as that would motivate me, but they've only got the business ones as far as I can see. Might come back to it, might not.

One good thing to come out of the French class is that I've discovered the cheap French movies you can watch at the cinema at their Center Culturel - seen five this month for the grand total of 100Y, and enjoyed them all, even if I did fall asleep at points. Pretty sure I'll continue going to see those.

[Meng Lelan]

Also need to use this new skill on phone and computer,

On the phone? Writing on the phone? I don't understand.