Can you recommend me a good self-taught program to follow?

[roddy]

Ok Patrick, it's time for your quarterly review. Progress report, please!

[Patrick_ChineseForum]

报告! Glad to know that someone on this board actually remember me (especially the admin). Roddy, your request makes my day. ^_^

I'm still learning Chinese slowly. Most of my learning materials are elementary Chinese podcast (iMandarinPod.com) and CCTV (Growing up with Chinese series). Usually I listen to the podcast every day while walking between my house and train station (20 min walk each way). During the lunch time, I watch CCTV at the office. I think I learn a lot of Chinese in the last two and a half months. I wonder how Benny (the Polish polyglot) is doing. He started around the same I did. It's been almost three months.

Here are my breakdown progress:

Speaking: maybe more like pronunciation. Chinese people in Chinese restaurant don't believe that I just started learning. They were very impressed with my accurate tones and pronunciation. Of course, I didn't tell them that I also spoke another tonal language (Thai). :-) hee hee

Listening: I'm pretty bad at this skill. I hardly understand what the actors in Growing up with Chinese say even after learning all the vocab in the conversation! O.o Unlike English, Chinese has no stress in any syllable making it difficult for me to really "hear" them.

Grammar: Frankly, I still haven't found a good way to learn Chinese grammar. So far, I've memorized the sentence patterns. Here's are some examples:

都。。。了 = . . . already ; 都七点了(dou1 qi1 dian3 le) = It's seven o'clock already?

先。。。 再。。。= First . . . and then . . .

一 。。。。就。。。。。= as soon as (imply that as soon as the first action is done, the next action will take place).

边。。。边。。。 = two actions happen at the same time

Is this a good way to learn Chinese grammars? It's very different compared to when I learn English grammar many years ago. Please advice.

Vocab: I'm pretty weak in this area as well. I've tried SRS tools like Anki and Pleco. It's weird that I can recall words by hearing faster than seeing. For example, I would know what 打算 mean if I hear it, but I wouldn't know what it is when I see the characters. I guess I have to put more work on memorizing characters.

Ok, based on the info above, what grade would you give me? :-)

Patrick

[roddy]

Glad to know that someone on this board actually remember me

Thanks for the follow-up. Last few months I've been (intermittently) setting up reminders to bump posts like this for follow-up after a certain length of time.

I wonder how Benny (the Polish polyglot) is doing. He started around the same I did. It's been almost three months.

He's Irish. And there's a reminder for him as well . . .

[gato]

He posted a video chat with his tutor on his website last week. His tutor did most of the talking, so it's hard to say how he's progressing. She's pretty cute.

[roddy]

Ahem. There's an existing topic for Benny. Which is closed. I shall be reopening it at the appropriate time. This is Patrick's topic, lets not mess it up with that can of polyglotism. Edit: And I also moved out the Rice-Country posts.

[roddy]

And a couple of months later, lets have another update from our Patrick (I wouldn't normally feel so possessive, but he made the fatal error of putting the site name as his surname, so...)

[roddy]

Patrick? Are you still there, Patrick?

[Adam_CLO]

Just saw this topic now. My podcast course - Chinese Learn Online is a structured course, as the OP was looking for. Beginners start at lesson 1 and work their way up. Chinese that is taught in earlier lessons is reused in later lessons so that you're getting constant review. In later levels, the English instruction is completely replaced with Chinese instruction that has been taught before.

It's a similar concept to Pimsleur, but goes a lot further (420 lessons spread across 7 levels).

Good luck with your learning!

[Daniel Nalesnik]

1. Listen to spoken chinese 25 hours a day (old lessons, new lessons, future lessons, podcasts)
   
2. Get software for spaced-repetition word memorization
   
3. Find a tutor and roleplay, roleplay, roleplay!