The 2013 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[rebor]

This fall has been mostly drilling vocab in Skritter, with some listening and even less reading(no speaking, grammar or writing at all), which is obviously a very imbalanced approach. I will build habits one by one rather than starting many ambitious projects, so this imbalance will persist for some time. I find myself thinking too much about how to study rather than about the language itself, also a habit I hope to change.

Areas of study are listed roughly in the order I mean to tackle them.

Vocab/characters: If it ain't broken don't fix it - Skritter every day, adding 5-10 words. Currently at 2000 characters/3500 words according to Skritter(less in real life). I have been thinking about ditching Skritter for everything but writing characters, and using Anki for vocab, possibly dropping writing altogether, but I feel that getting started with other parts of the language to be more important than optimizing an area I'm doing decently in. I've also considered starting over by nuking my account, but that I can consider in a years time.

Reviews and 5-10 new words every day.

Reading: I've read some newspaper articles using popup dictionaries which felt great! I will stick to this, but make sure to review all my textbooks(Road to Success, up to Upper Elementary book 2). I will also get UE book 3 and the lower intermediate books, aiming to finish the first lower intermediate book. Reading non-textbook stuff is great for pushing myself forward, but I feel I should not forget the fundamentals. I will also read comics.

20 minutes every day.

Before the winter break is over I should have read 10 articles and reviewed two textbooks.

Grammar: Work through the Basic and Intermediate chinese grammars by Yip and Rimmington, doing the exercises. A lot of it will be reviewing, but I think this should strengthen my foundation, and remove a lot of the uneasiness I feel constructing sentences depending only on the sometimes quite shallow explanations in my textbooks. And as I progress I will obviously encounter quite a bit of new stuff.

Before the winter break is over I should have finished the first 10 chapters in Basic.

4 hours every month and as much as I can during breaks.

Listening: I will continue listening to Chinese Pod and textbooks while walking to and from school. I've tried halfheartedly to establish this habit before, but will now make it my focus for an entire month. I find Chinese Pod more practical than Popup Chinese, although a bit more boring. After this, I will also add 10 minutes of a tv show every day.

Before the winter break is over I should have watched ten episodes of a tv show.

20-30 minutes per weekday.

Writing: Will have to wait, as I don't want to overwhelm myself.

Speaking: I will find a tutor on Skype and have 1 hour of class each week, focusing on tones, pronunciation and simple conversation.

1 hour every week.

[OFK2013]

Chinese: just started, I know only 40 characters, so I want to continue, and I'm really excited

English: prepare to FCE exam, read at least 4 books, watch films in original

Spanish: complete A2 level course

[Guest realmayo]

Hopefully these are realistic and manageable weekday activities:

During office hours (let's say, lunch-break time): vocab on Anki.

Evening: 2 hours Chinese study:

• 30 mins reading a novel (i.e. extensive reading)
  
• 1 hour on a textbook (i.e. 30 mins intenstive reading, 15 mins exercises, 15 mins adding vocab, making notes)
  
• 30 mins listening (either a new listening comprehension exercise, or reviewing an old one with transcript, or listening to a podcast
  

Plus a tutor once a week.

And a poem every week.

Add some daily Korean into the mix.

I spent much of 2012 on a very necessary review of vocabulary and characters but now that that is basically complete there's no excuse not to crack on. If I can't manage the above routine most of the time then I have to rethink whether I'm really serious about trying to improve my Chinese in my spare time, or if I'm able only to try to maintain it at around its current level.

[nicostouch]

Started learning Mandarin a week ago (actually taking it as a paper in summer school, though mostly self studying).

Summer School is 6 weeks (already done the first week) so in the next 5 weeks what I aim to accomplish is:

Cover all the basic grammar

Learn 1000 words - (already know 180!)

Learn to read between 1000 to 1500 hanzi. (can already read 300!)

Actually have basic conversations in Chinese.

[Kobo-Daishi]

I've never done one of these before, but, thought I might have a go this year.

I've been studying Chinese on and off for more than 35 years so my goals are probably a lot different from most of the people on here.

Not doing it for school, to get into academia, employment, to meet girls or guys.

Just an inexpensive, now, free, since I don't see myself ever buying Chinese language learning material ever again, hobby. Not with what's available for free online.

Back in those days when I first started, we didn't have the Internet. Okay, there was the Internet, but, it was mostly for the US military and universities and nobody had browsers to access it. There was no World Wide Web. No HTML. No search engines. No nothing.

And it was all text. No graphics, no video, no audio. Nothing.

Not like you guys have it now where you can download any copy of any book, movie, audio, etc.

No fan subbing teams translating movies, magazines, etc.

If we wanted to see Chinese video we'd have to trek into Chinatown to buy or rent.

READING

I'll most likely keep downloading Taiwanese dramas in both Mandarin and Cantonese audio dubs with standard Chinese subtitles.

Doesn't mean I won't also download Korean dramas, Japanese dramas, etc. with Chinese subs or dubs.

I've just finishing downloading 大長今, the Korean historical drama in Cantonese audio dub with standard Chinese subs. I guess it was recently on Hong Kong TV because the torrent site was uploading one episode per day. It was a big hit a few years back all around Asia and in the diaspora communities around the world, but, I hadn't watched it then. The stupid torrent site all of a sudden hid the links to non-registered members, so, I didn't finish downloading it until a few days ago when I found a direct download site that had the entire series.

I've also downloaded Chibi Maruko-chan the Japanese anime series with audio in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Fan-subbed. You learn a lot of cultural stuff from these series. Many handed down from China.

Download the occasional Manga.

Read the occasional article, blog post, Facebook post, forum post, what have you.

LISTENING

See reading.

SPEAKING

This is my weak suit. I've got plenty of people at work who speak and/or read Chinese. Mainlanders, Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar (the former Burma), Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, S. Korea, etc., but, I'm too self-conscious to speak to them in Chinese.

I've pretty much given up on this.

WRITING HANZI

When I first started learning Chinese we used these little books that were kind of like the blue books they use at US universities for exams only smaller in digest magazine size. Same cheap newsprint paper. Where they have these little squares that you wrote dozens and dozens of characters over and over.

Nowadays I don't do any writing at all. In the old days I practiced the really difficult characters. The ones with a lot of stokes. Like shou (longevity), long (dragon), Taiwan (the difficult one), etc. So those characters I've got down pat. But some of the really simple ones I always stumble on. Like the yi of suoyi (therefore). I'm always screwing that one up. Or de of "achieve, obtain, get".

The really difficult ones I wrote over and over whenever I had the chance. On the backs of envelopes, scraps of paper, etc. They became second nature. While the simple ones...

With computer IMEs (Input Method Editors), I don't see myself putting pen to paper any longer.

AND MORE

Do the occasional forum post.

I might start blogging again.

I know it's been almost 2 1/2 years, but, I finally found my password.

The stupid Blogspot site, owned by the evil Google, said they'd e-mail the password to my e-mail address, but, I'd forgotten that address as well. I specially opened a G-Mail account to register for the blog.

OTHER LANGUAGES I WANT TO LEARN

I downloaded some Korean language material and might take up Korean. Can't be worse than Chinese. ;-)

Got plenty of Korean co-workers. They say that outside Asia, the Los Angeles metropolitan area has the most ethnic Koreans. Might as well take advantage of them.

[Meng Lelan]

When I first started learning Chinese we used these little books that were kind of like the blue books they use at US universities for exams only smaller in digest magazine size. Same cheap newsprint paper. Where they have these little squares that you wrote dozens and dozens of characters over and over.

That is exactly what I used at Nankai when I started in the early 1980s until I discovered that a kids toy called Magic Slate was the better option and didn't need real paper and real pencil.

[li3wei1]

I started in 1985, can I be in the old-timer's club? I took a looong break, though.

[OneEye]

OK, January update time.

As usually seems to happen, things have changed this past month. For example, my original goal of finishing 《文字學概要》 this month became something like "finish a good chunk of that, and also a good chunk of this book and that other book, too." Then by the end of the month, I decided the other two books were more important for now, so I put aside the former in favor of them. I still made good progress as far as total amount of reading goes, so no big deal. I find that the specifics change very frequently, but as long as I'm generally heading in the right direction, it's OK.

January's goals:

]MA Preparation[/b]

Finish 《文字學概要》

Finish my 自傳 and start writing the 留學計劃 for my MA applications

As I said, I've put aside 文字學概要 for the moment. I'm reading two books on phonology right now. The content of the two books is very similar, but one goes into more depth with theory and concepts while the other is more practical (like, this is what the 36 Middle Chinese initials are, now go learn them). They complement each other very well, and the chapters even correspond for the most part, so I'm reading a chapter in one and then reading the corresponding one in the other before moving on. I should be able to finish them in February, but we'll see. Like I've said before, with this stuff it's more important for me to learn it well than it is for me to finish it quickly.

I should be able to finish my 自傳 this week, assuming nothing comes up unexpectedly. February will be spent writing my study plan.

Success.

]文言文[/b]

Finally finish Unit 1 of 《古代漢語》 (selections from 左傳, 2 per week)

Read 過秦論，鴻門之宴，答夫秦嘉書、典論論文、登樓賦 from the high school 國文 reader (1 per week)

I did finish Unit 1 of 古代漢語, but not the 王力 book I originally planned on. I picked up another by the same title from 武漢大學出版社, the first unit of which is also mostly 左傳. Six of one...

The other readings did not happen, apart from 過秦論. I'm not too put out about that, actually, since I'm mainly focusing on pre-Han 文言文 for now. In fact, rather than continuing with 《古代漢語》 I'll probably spend some time with 四書 over the next few months. We'll see how it goes. The important thing is to continue reading 文言文, and I have done a lot of that this past month.

Success.

]Japanese[/b]

First 5 lessons of 大家學標準日本語 (1 per week)

First 25 lessons of Assimil Japanese (5 per week)

First 25 sentence patterns from 日語200句型 (2 per week, not sure if I'll stick with this one)

Well, I finished Lesson 3 of 大家學標準日本語, and that was about it. The other two books will have to wait. I think I've finally found my pace with the first book though, so that's good. I'm good with taking it slow here in order to learn it well, because I have no particularly urgent need to use it for the foreseeable future, other than maybe the occasional trip to Japan.

Meh.

]Other[/b]

Make significant progress on, or finish, 《流星·蝴蝶·劍》

Carry around Spoken Hokkien in my backpack, in case spare time strikes

Made significant progress on, but did not finish, 《流星·蝴蝶·劍》. I should have no problem finishing this month, maybe over the CNY holiday.

Spare time struck, but was actually directed at Cantonese instead. I dabbled for a few days, learned a few phrases, and then thought better of taking time away from Mandarin. It was a fun diversion though.

Success.

This month, one of my goals is to control my time better. There's a lot of wasted time in my day that I could fill with Chinese, even if it's just reading something for fun. I'm also altering my overall goals for the year a bit. I've realized that for the last couple months I haven't done much toward actually improving my Chinese ability, but rather I've been learning other stuff in Chinese. This is great, but I need to keep improving my general language ability. To that end, for the past few weeks I've started actively learning new vocabulary, collecting sentences to drill from various sources (textbooks, TV shows, etc.), reviewing somewhat-forgotten old material, etc. I'll be going back to The Independent Reader (從精讀到泛讀), which I read a bit of last year but never really got into in depth. I also want to do more newspaper reading and news watching, which are two things I've neglected for a while. For now I'm not setting any concrete goals for that, but I will be using News and Views (新聞與觀點) to help with watching TV news. I also plan to squeeze dry the excellent “汉语书面用语初编 Expressions of Written Chinese,” though I'm not yet sure exactly what I'll be doing with that.

So this month's goals:

Finish 留學計劃 and send in all applications

500 new sentences in Anki

The Independent Reader through Unit II Lesson 3

News and Views through Lesson 4

Make a dent in the 四書讀本

Finish 《基礎音韻學》 and 《音韻學教程》

Finish 《流星·蝴蝶·劍》（上） and start something else, or continue to （下）

大家學標準日本語 through Unit 6

[querido]

We're at lesson 102 (of 276) in CSLPod Intermediate.

I can read and write everything and converse in slow motion. :-)

[edelweis]

I have been in an extremely good mood for at least a week. Odd. It obviously won't last.

Warning, this post is not color-blind friendly.

Improve automation

improved, especially the logging. Next: further improve reporting and dictionary lookup.

Learn HSK vocabulary

dictionary look-up (none this month, had to catch up SRS backlog)

SRS

podcasts

old HSK vocabulary book

two novels (finishing 圈子圈套3 will count for half a novel)

other vocabulary

HSK5 mock tests (later)

Have fun with characters

10 per week (2080) + traditional characters

calligraphy

seal script (my home screen now shows at least one bronze/oracle/seal script character per day)

book in simplified characters: have to find a suitable book, preferably about etymology or calligraphy or seal carving ...

book in traditional characters: I think I will borrow a book about calligraphy for this.

Production AKA Getting serious AKA Getting a teacher

Lang8/postcrossing/polyglot meetings/group classes

practice writing and speaking

get a teacher

spoken language textbook

participate in a Chinese-language forum

grammar

(Minimal effort this month, have to do better next month)

(get ready to) Use it for work

科普汉语听记 (didn't even open it )

technical book (has become a multilingual project with Spanish)

Keep other languages active (started strong but fizzled out)

Arabic: x2, Dialects: x8

Spanish: x5

British English: x6 (mostly shadowing Six Minute English podcasts)

Record a book in French: x6 (not yet started with the serious stuff)

sharing interests with family

[WangYuHong]

Update on 2012 goals:

I started in March 2012 with the goal to have read 4 complete novels in 2012.

Results: mixed (but kinda completed)

I finished 3 novels easily enough at a pace of 1 novel per month.

Then I started 《混也是一种生活》, which is 1400 pages long!!!

By the end of the year, I have only finished about 700 pages (or half the book).

But a regular novel is only about 140 pages or so...

So I read somewhere between 3.5 novels and 8 last year, depending on how you count it.

Since I don't have time to regularly study, I felt like reading contemporary novels was a good way to maintain interest while still increasing my comprehension level at the same time. My last trip to China just seemed easier all around. I didn't have to struggle as much with things that I remember struggling with in the past.

My goal this year is to keep reading.

I'm going to finish this current novel, and then read SIX more!

I feel like setting my sights a little higher will motivate me to make positive changes in my life.

I also have a secondary goal to further my Chinese, but it's top-secret and requires a lot more things to happen. It's still possible to accomplish this year though!

[Fei翡cui翠]

This year all the things are getting serious day by day. I hope I can achieve my goal.

At University: To have impressive GPA, tryt to do not fail the lectures! Especially Comtemporary World Politics!,

Every articles that the professors gives me that I try to read all of them,

I wanna focus on articles , websites which Foreign Affairs, China Daily, The newsweek magazine etc.

Try to get a chance a internship which is about Turkish- Asian Strategic Research Center,

2013/ Summer chinese course in China:

Probably I will go to beijing again and try to focus on chinese language!, I will make an hard effort efficiently!

I am gonna travel as much as possible ! inside and outside in China!

About Chinese:

I dont have enough time to practise chinese , this makes me upset but I wil try to practise,

I wanna pass HSK4 AND HSK5!!

I wanna focus on listening and grammar skills on chinese

I will study more character and words!

In life:

As much as possible, I will be happy!

Jiayou!! )

[Mike Hainzinger]

Wow, you all have clear goals. My goal is to learn another 1000 characters (traditional).

[hackinger]

My main goal for 2013 is to improve my reading.

Read Chinese every day, the daily text length should be at least 1500 characters.

I use NPCR, BoYa Chinese and HanyuKouyu as "Graded Readers". I only study the vocabulary and read the main texts for every lesson. I also listen to the recording afterwards.

In addition I use the Chinese Reading World web pages (Iowa University).

In 2013 thus far I finished pre intermediate BoYa Vol 2 (which goes up to the 3000 world level) and I am currently reading NPCR Vol 5. My reading speed is still painfully slow.

!DO NOT BREAK THE CHAIN THIS YEAR!

Using Pleco, I continue to study the vocabulary lists of the old HSK and and the vocabulary lists for NPCR. I do not add flashcards for KouYu and BoYa.

Get enough sleep and exercise.

[Meng Lelan]

祝大家“蛇”麼都如意！

Time to review my ever popular goals.

Chinese related goals:

1. Skritter to 5000 in the queue by the end of 2013...now at 4000 in the queue, the vocabulary from Rouzer is really revving up my reviews. When it hits 5000 I will demand that Skritter grant me an interview.

2. Post an entry to my blog once a month...posted an awesome youtube video in there about 春節。 But not much to write about these days.

3. Master two 武術套路 this year....my Houston shifu is now giving classes in San Antonio on Sundays so I am close to mastering one routine will start the other soon.

4. Stop messing up 琵琶 lessons....getting there.

5. Watch three 功夫片 with 中文 subtitles....watched two Jackie Chan films from the 1980s.

6. Write my much anticipated book review here in Chinese Forums....did that.

[querido]

We're at lesson 150 (of 278) in CSLPod Intermediate.

I should probably slow down a little.

[OneEye]

Finish 留學計劃 and send in all applications

Finished, but I haven't sent in the applications just yet. They're due March 15th, and that will be my primary focus until they're done.

500 new sentences in Anki

I'll settle for 300.

The Independent Reader through Unit II Lesson 3

Nope. I actually decided that instead of this textbook, I'd just read a general interest magazine and the newspaper. Same type of content, but more recent, and thus more relevant (seems that most of the articles in The Independent Reader are 15-20 years old, some stuff even from the 70s).

News and Views through Lesson 4

Nope. Newspaper reading (above) and watching the news on TV will be taking the place of this book. Though I may go through a bit of it before I take the TOCFL (formerly the TOP) in May.

Make a dent in the 四書讀本

Nope. I'm joining a study group on the 尚書 instead. After we finish that (which will take quite a while I'm sure), we'll read 左傳. This should be really good for my classical Chinese.

Finish 《基礎音韻學》 and 《音韻學教程》

Not quite. Writing my 就讀計劃 took a lot more of my time than I thought it would. I'll get back on this once I turn in my applications.

Finish 《流星·蝴蝶·劍》（上） and start something else, or continue to （下）

Again, nope. I'm getting a little bored of 古龍's hyperbolic writing style. I found it amusing at first, but at this point it's getting a little overdone, so I may switch to something else. Or I might just stick to books in my field, magazines, and newspapers for now. I don't know yet, I'll figure it out once my applications are in.

大家學標準日本語 through Unit 6

I ended up switching from this to Assimil Japanese. I'm also using a book called Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese! which is awesome.

So, goals for March:

Turn in MA and scholarship applications

Add another ~500 sentences to Anki (about 25 per weekday)

Finally finish the two phonology books I've been working on

Keep reading magazine and newspaper articles

Keep up with the reading for the 尚書 reading group

Lesson 42 of Assimil Japanese, and unit 6 of Shadowing.

[edelweis]

The past week has been brutal, I had not worked this much in years (at my day job I mean). I can't fathom what came over me. Most of it was useless too - trying to solve problems without sufficient information, and checking everything I did four or five times as I was not feeling at my best due to lack of sleep.

Anyway, I just did SRS once or twice this week.

Previous weeks were okay study-wise but I still need to really make an effort to speak and write. Also I have to repeat that last batch of 10 characters next week.

Improve automation

none this month. Or I forgot.

Learn HSK vocabulary

dictionary look-up (one batch of 70, have caught up on backlog and suspended some easy cards.)

SRS

podcasts

old HSK vocabulary book

two novels (still reading 圈子圈套3)

other vocabulary

HSK5 mock tests (later)

Have fun with characters

10 per week (2120) + traditional characters

calligraphy (蛇年迎春)

seal script

book in simplified characters: perhaps later

book in traditional characters: I borrowed a book about traditional jokes but only opened it once.

Production AKA Getting serious AKA Getting a teacher

Lang8/postcrossing/polyglot meetings/group classes

practice writing and speaking

get a teacher

spoken language textbook

participate in a Chinese-language forum

grammar

( )

(get ready to) Use it for work

科普汉语听记 (only opened it once)

technical book (very slowly)

Keep other languages active

Arabic: x3, Dialects: x6

Spanish: x4 (mostly technical)

British English: x3 (shadowing Six Minute English podcasts)

Record a book in French: x2 (still doing only short texts, and I think I'll keep it that way.)

sharing interests with family: booh.

[Meng Lelan]

1. Skritter to 5000 in the queue by the end of 2013...... now at 4000 in the queue.

2. Post an entry to my blog once a month.....doing that.

3. Master two 武術套路 this year. Hopefully compete in the Houston summer tournament.....finished one last week starting new one this week will sign up for the July tournament.

4. Stop messing up 琵琶 lessons....stopped messing up finally.

5. Watch three 功夫片 with 中文 subtitles....did two Jackie Chan already but movies in general bore me to death so I am taking this idiotic item off my list!

6. Write my much anticipated book review here in Chinese Forums...did that.

I waffle back and forth between wanting to get a masters in Chinese and wanting to get done with my internship in blind rehab as soon as possible... I want to get the master's in Chinese because today I got an email in Chinese from a former student of mine who said I made a huge impact on him and he is now working in Beijing. I don't get that "you made a difference in my life" anywhere in public school special ed where I am working now, where everyone basically hates me and now I am returning that same attitude to them. And at the same time I want to get done with my blind rehab program so I can work on putting together the lives of blinded veterans and accident survivors. I guess I will do both degrees at the same time but it's a massive act to pull off, I guess. Those two careers are never going to be combined in any realistic way, it's one or the other I guess.

[querido]

We're at lesson 170 (of 281) in CSLPod Intermediate.

Yes, I did need to slow down.