Organizing study time.

[kongli]

Hello Chinese-Forums ambres!

Well, it's me kongli, back again to enlist the collective wisdom of the all mighty chinese-forums.

I know there are people on this forum like myself doing grad degrees in Chinese, and there are many people attempting to learn chinese whilst working a job, or doing other things. My question is, how do you balance your time efficiently?

Right now I am in my first year of grad school for Chinese lit (yea I switched) and though my Chinese has improved quite a bit, I find myself stuck trying to make time for actually studying Chinese. Example being, this paper I have to write about Gramsci. I find myself doing most of my reading in english and then writing the paper in Chinese, but this severely cuts down on my time spent reading chinese materials. It is difficult because when it comes to lit./history materials and especially things regarding theory, the good english sources just far outweigh the Chinese ones. So I find myself reading a ton of theory work in english, leaving less time for chinese works.

Any advice on how to balance out my time more? should I try to read some of the stuff in Chinese translation?

THANKS!

[gato]

Yeah, if you are going to be studying mostly Marxist or post-modernist theory, then your best sources would be in English. Or French...

I guess the alternative would be to move an area of study where there is better Chinese sources.

[kongli]

yea, but I am studying modern Chinese literature.....so I mean there is a bunch of stuff I need to read, but right I am kind of stuck in the theory phase of things. Plus reading english means I actually have something substantial to bring to the table.

[amandagmu]

Are you studying in Taiwan? I have no idea how sophisticated of a program you're in, but lots and lots of great stuff comes out of Taiwan, and especially Academia Sinica. I bet there are loads of good essays you could find that use at least some of these terms in Chinese but with the English in parentheses or in a footnote if it comes from one of those sources. Would give you a way to try and find out how to properly explain something in Chinese.

EDIT: As I write this I'm reading something really terrific written by somebody at 政大 re: 东亚病夫 and Orientalism and he references various western theorists/scholars quite often with both Chinese and English.

[kongli]

I at 人大。 The Lit program here is pretty good for the mainland. I suppose I should do more digging for good journal articles but at least now I find myself referring to mainly english secondary sources just because of the plethora and quality. Trying to figure out a good balance between the two right now. Maybe like morning english, afternoon chinese? At least for myself, I find it hard structuring my time in a grad program here because there are no syllabi and no real 'deadlines' to have read or done anything.

[kongli]

Maybe I should read some stuff in translation. Right now I am reading meisner's eight essays on Mao and utopianism and I have copies of the chinese and english. So perhaps I should just switch around....

[gato]

I guess it's obvious since you are studying literature, but why don't you read some Chinese novels?

I find myself doing most of my reading in english and then writing the paper in Chinese, but this severely cuts down on my time spent reading chinese materials.

At least for myself, I find it hard structuring my time in a grad program here because there are no syllabi and no real 'deadlines' to have read or done anything.

Maybe it's about reading speed. Presumably reading all that theory in English is saving you time because your Chinese reading speed is probably much slower. If you are finding that you don't have enough to read what you need to read, then you need to try to find ways to read faster, or spend more time on reading. In the US, it's not uncommon for graduate students in top programs to be expected to read more than 1000 pages (several books) per week, so skim reading skills come in handy.

[roddy]

Moved a bunch of posts over to here on request - hope I got the right ones . . .