Sumchoi's Literacy in 3 months

[SumChoi]

Hi Guys,

I'm a first time poster. I've just started on a mission to be literate in 3 months. What I mean by literate is being able to read Facebook posts, signs, subtitles, and other intermediate sentences. I've been using the New Practical Chinese Reader series to study and now I'm on lesson 20 of the second volume. I grew up in a speaking Cantonese household but I never learned to read or write. But now, I've finally decided it's time to learn it.

I actually been studying Japanese for a while and I'm decent at it. Needless to say, my Japanese writing/reading ability is vastly superior to my Chinese and I find it ironic that I'm using my knowledge of Japanese kanji to help me study Chinese. Anyway, I hope I'll be able to rely on you guys for help if I have any questions. I've even started a blog to help track my progress, so I'll definitely keep you guys updated.

[abcdefg]

I've just started on a mission to be literate in 3 months.

It's good you didn't say "fluent in 3 months."

[SumChoi]

I don't dare make that claim like Benny Lewis does.

And 3 months is an arbitrary number. While I believe it's a good idea to set deadlines and goals as a way to motivate yourself, my experience with myself is that if I'm too firm with a deadline, it makes me feel the deadline is the end of the journey when language learning is often a long, continuous, and sometimes an endless endeavor.

[gato]

It's a doable goal since you already know Kanji and speak Cantonese. It'd like learning French for an English speaker.

Are you distinguishing between "literacy" and being able to speak? Are you just focused on reading?

[SumChoi]

I'm not learning how to speak but I have no doubt my speaking abilities will improve even if I'm just studying writing/reading. Since I didn't learn Cantonese formally, my vocabulary is lacking in the more specialized areas, so this is where some studying will help.

Honestly, I am perfectly satisfied if I just learn how to read. But from my experience studying Japanese, after experimenting with different methods, I found the the fastest way to learn to recognize characters is from repeatedly writing the characters over and over again. I might not remember exactly how to write the characters but most of the time, it's enough for me to recognize it the next time I encounter it.