The 2013 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[eshton]

So with the year almost gone, I‘ve somehow manged to knock off some of those goals. Got rid of HSKs, my spanish officially sucks and I'm now attempting newspapers and movies, doing my degree in chinese keeps me busy, so.....

[roddy]

Good to see some newcomers joining in, Marguerite, and don't worry, you can get in at the start of the 2014 topic when it starts...

[Marguerite]

Thanks! Trust me, I have my running posting shoes on and my new copy of Boya Elementary 2 ready to go!

[Meng Lelan]

Not much going on with me in terms of goals. Skritter queue at 4100 漢字 or something. I am on episode 52 of 西遊記, just a few more to go and I am done. I have done some more blogging on my Sina blog but am getting bored with blogging because it doesn't seem very interactive. I need something more interactive but maybe this is too much to ask as long as I am in the US..... I wish I could text all the time in Chinese like I used to do in China and Taiwan, loved picking up the cell phone and reading like a trillion texts in Chinese because that was very interactive but here it's impossible.

[imron]

but here it's impossible

How so?

[Meng Lelan]

Not all cell phones in the US can do texts in Chinese. Those who can text in Chinese in the States, they're really too busy with their own stuff or they aren't comfortable texting in Chinese, unlike in the mainland and Taiwan where they are more accustomed to it and do it all the time. My kungfu shifu has an iPhone and also he's a recent arrival from China so if something comes up we text each in Chinese but that's about it.

[imron]

There are various different texting apps - WeChat, Line, WhatsApp, QQ etc, then there is stuff like Twitter and Weibo both of which allow you to participate and interact with Chinese people in small text snippets, and that work perfectly well even with complete strangers.

 

If you want to be able to communicate on your phone, in small text snippets, interactively, in Chinese, with Chinese people, there are plenty of options.  Impossible is not the word I'd use.

[Meng Lelan]

Glad to know you don't feel that is impossible, imron, but I thought Twitter wasn't available in China. Maybe it is in Taiwan. Well it's worth a try. I'll report back here if I find something like WeChatKungfu to text about our favorite forms, weapons, and stuff like that.

[imron]

Twitter is not generally available in china, but there are still plenty of Chinese people outside of mainland china who use it.

[Ania]

Since I'm studying Chinese as a hobby I don't really set any goals, Plus I have a quite unpredictible job, so it's hard for me to plan anything since I never know how much I'm going to be working. So I just figure that whatever I learn, nobody will take away from me Of course eventually I would absolutely love to be able to watch and read Chinese media, but that's a goal for the next 10 years probably... LOL

 

I started studying Chinese last Christmas and right now I'm past HSK2 level and moving towards HSK3, so I think i can be really proud of myself And I think now is when the real fun starts

[querido]

My goal for 2013 was to finish CSLPod Intermediate.

I worked through 175 lessons, with a tutor, flashcarding everything, but just got sick of it (not CSLPod's fault). It's the fragmentation into short bits that I can't stand anymore. Also, I yearn to be able to review just by consuming new but easy material instead of trying to retain these podcasts almost verbatim.   For example, I really enjoy the level one graded readers!

 

Another goal was to try to catch up in listening and speaking. My tutor could tell you that I improved, but I'm still very weak.

 

See you in the 2014 thread! :-)

[icebear]

See original goals here.

 

Mid-term objective

 

On track, except for writing. Getting quite comfortable reading content relevant to my profession, conversation on those topics also decent (although not always precise).

 

Structured Learning

 

Decent. Have been consistent with tutoring, except a few weeks here and there when work demanded more time. Review and revision of homework is spottier, although I'm paid to read this type of material day after day, so that helps cover some of that (at least on comprehension).

 

成功之路

 

Mediocre. Only about 10 lessons further in 52 weeks. I pick up the book randomly to page through a lesson - most of them are review at this point, rather than new material. And I like it that way. I have covered all old lessons.

 

Audiovisual Media

 

Decent. I probably averaged about 2-3 three episodes per week. I also watch movies occasionally. I only watch news occasionally when running at the gym, and then just reading the subtitles (which is fine).

 

Reading

 

Good. Not much textbook reading, but lots of mandatory reading for work and some casual reading in evenings - probably a total of about 1-2 hours a day, 5 days a week. Mostly slanted towards economics - news, government policies, 财经 type articles. The occasional novel, although after all that Chinese reading at work I'm usually inclined to breeze through something in English in my evenings.

 

Composition

 

Poor. Didn't really do any of these. Need to develop a daily habit of composition.

 

Handwriting/Vocab

 

Good. Goal one and two overachieved - consistently added 5 characters per day to Skritter and 10 words per day to Pleco. Together both can be finished on my commute or in odd minutes here and there throughout the day, rather than monotonous marathons. Currently at 2235 characters in Skritter and 4181 words in Pleco (both purged in the last year or so - which I highly recommend, at least with Pleco occasionally). It'd be nice to handwrite more, but at the moment its of limited value except in retaining characters. I'm able to scrawl out something legible if immature, if necessary.

 

Social

 

Good. Great Chinese girlfriend who could care less about speaking in English and a good group of Chinese friends and colleagues that also strongly prefer speaking Chinese. Still spend a lot of time with foreign friends, but they are mostly also highly conversant (or better), so we frequently switch to Chinese for those local friends. New network mostly consists of new Chinese colleagues after a job switch, which has brought a lot of benefits to my Chinese in various ways (as evident above).

 

Bench marking

 

Don't really care. I feel like my Chinese continues to progress at an acceptable rate without that goal, given a few other clearly defined processes I have. My tutor thinks I could breeze the HSK5 with a couple weeks of preparation, and probably do OK on the HSK6 if I put a few months of serious work into practice tests. 

 

I'll update goals in the 2014 post in a few weeks, along with current processes that are working well for me (an update or similar to this thread).

Edited December 8, 2013 at 07:13 AM by icebear

[BigMax]

I hadn't taken any of the HSK exams, so I took HSK 4 in December. My required score is 240 points, I find out just into the new year if I've achieved it. So Maybe I will achieve my 2013 target

 

对了, I need 240 so I can go to SYSU to study Chinese starting in the second year 

[Meng Lelan]

Wow just a few more weeks to the end of 2013 and everyone in here has done an excellent job of working away at their goals. If it's ok with everyone here I will go open up a new Aims and Objectives thread for the upcoming new year 2014, probably will do that in a week or so as I like to get a head start. 

[icebear]

If it's ok with everyone here I will go open up a new Aims and Objectives thread for the upcoming new year 2014, probably will do that in a week or so as I like to get a head start. 

 

 

Go for it!

[tysond]

I started planning for 2014 on the weekend and will definitely have some Chinese learning goals.

 

Today I received this link which is quite useful:  http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/how-to-conduct-your-own-annual-review/

 

Chris Guillebeau is an interesting guy with interesting tips - he's visited every country in the world (193 countries) in 11 years, mostly using frequent flyer points.  Those planning their 2014 goals might find his ideas and template useful.  I've done some version of this kind of annual planning since 2005 and it's quite useful (and amazing how many of the goals I've actually hit).

[edelweis]

2013 review


Improve automation
somewhat improved - I have colours, figures, and now little belts on my home screen.

The colours show which (habitual) tasks are overdue (red), should be done soon (orange), or don't need to be done until a further date (green).

Negative figures show how many days I have postponed a red task.

Positive figures show how many days I have until a task becomes red.

Belts are a new thing, only added recently, inspired by chains.cc/habitRPG/mahjongtime, and (will) change colours depending on habit compliance history.

Too bad the colors are mostly red, the figures mostly negative, and the belts mostly white right now.

I also added some tools like a "din in the head" button that randomly selects some Chinese audio from my collection.

Hmm that's at least two OneEye references in a single pagraph. Feel flattered, OneEye. But don't forget updating us on your progress in Chinese academia.

 

Learn HSK vocabulary

I made some progress on HSK5 vocabulary (SRS+tingli) but not finished yet, and stalled right now.

Read only 1/2 novel with such modern vocabulary.

Not much of the other things.

 

Have fun with characters
I stopped drilling characters. Don't know whether that counts as a failure or a success.

Read about 100 pages in traditional characters.
Did not keep up with calligraphy.

Production

hmm none? that I can remember anyway.

 

(get ready to) Use it for work

I studied only part of 1 chapter of math from 科普汉语听记.

I read only a few pages from a technical book.

 

Keep other languages active
English: tried to work on pronunciation, ended up reading and shadowing poetry perhaps twice a month on average?

Spanish: some varied work (audio drills, sometimes grammar or poetry reading), also not very often, but rather pleasant.

Arabic and dialects: verrry slowly reviewing chapter 9 (out of 30) of written Arabic. I did learn a few new words of dialects but nothing strenuous...

French: lapsed into reading poetry here too - I should really address French as a foreign language... I did record a few poems for Librivox (not a book, but that was clearly out of reach).

Oh, and I sometimes listen to some podcasts from Deutsche Welle about learning German for Chinese speakers lol.

 

 

 

 

Right now the main problem I have is that my little hiding hole at work is no more, and it's too cold to study outside, so my noon study session is a thing of the past, and hopefully of the future, just not of the present.

Also I have a bad case of "what's the point"-itis. (Or I would think it a bad case if I cared, but what's the point?)

The simple fact that I post this on the 13th instead of the 31st shows how much I have become erm reasonable this year. No point in thinking I will suddenly be overcome by a studying frenzy while on vacation.

 

On the other hand I did subscribe again to the Great Wall TV programs, so while I play mahjong online I sometimes listen to some Chinese travel documentary or something. Which is distracting as I often understand half of the words in each sentence, and quite often HSK5 words that I have learnt this year, but seldom any full sentence...

Oh and I did go and see two Chinese operas. Must finish on something positive.

 

 

Edit: Although this post is not terribly helpful, it is also not terribly unhelpful, so whoever gave me a red mark must have done it out of spite, which in my current mood I find hilarious! thank you for making me laugh out loud. I will strive to post more regularly in next year's thread for more laughs hehehe (or mwahahaha).

[laurenth]

Assessment for 4Q2013 (see posts #20, #41, #47 and #65)

 

- READING: Since July, I've been reading regularly, including 《小二黑结婚》by 赵树理, 《孟姜女》in an anthology called 《中国民间故事》, the abridged versions of Qian Zhongshu's《围城》and Ba Jin's 《春》 and 《秋》. And then I've read 老舍's 《猫城记》, not counting many bits and pieces here and there, quite a lot of texts that I've started only to find that I was unable to read more than a few pages/chapters (for instance 王小波's 红拂夜奔 and 三十而立, or 亦舒's 早上七八点钟的太阳) and countless press articles about Syria, the NSA, Ukraine, race pigeons and other interesting stuff as seen by the Chinese press.

 

In fact, while writing this, I notice that I've read less literature than I thought. By Chinese standards 《猫城记》is rather short and the three abridged novels I've read would amount to just one short unabridged novel. So all in all, that's not much.

 

Another thing that bothers me is that I've not yet been able to read a novel on *paper*. E-books are fantastic and all, but I'm afraid they make it a little bit *too* easy to look up unknown words or check doubtful pronunciations.

 

- LISTENING: My level is still abysmal, so I've decided to at least try to do something about it.

I've worked with ChinesePod quite a lot: 40 intermediate-level podcasts since June and, recently I've started listening to their upper-intermediate material (only 3 lessons so far). I've also been using Slow Chinese podcasts, watching news items on NTDTV, watching some cartoons, the first few episodes of 魔幻手机, random stuff on youtube, movies (三峡好人, 洗, 玄奘

...), etc. If there's any progress, it must be really slow, because it's been mostly unnoticeable so far.

 

- VOCAB: I've continued mostly with the same diet, i.e. while reading/listening, I add 15-25 words/day to a Pleco list named after the date of the month (01...31), and I study the lists of days X-1, X-3 and X-6 (simple flashcards, no SRS). Then the words of day X-7 are moved to an SRS list. When the SRS reviews take too long, I delete the SRS list and I start from scratch.

I've also continued studying characters with Skritter. And an Anki deck with audio sentences only.

 

- SPEAKING and WRITING: I had no objective and, look how well the universe is organized, I've achieved nothing either.

 

- OTHER LANGUAGES: the year had started out very well, with a flurry of activity in Latin, Finnish, Walloon and Spanish. But everything came to a grinding halt in the summer.

 

- In other news, and that may explain why my language-related activities have slowed down a bit, my family has grown again (my 4th kid, 3rd girl, adorable) so my daily challenge is to devise new guerrilla routines, unobtrusive strategies and cunning plans to find time for Mandarin. And, if anyone is interested, I've been keeping a semi-daily log of my Chinese-related activities on the site "How to learn any languages?" under the name lorinth.

[Lu]

- Translate a book (still).

Done! In the end I couldn't finish in time and another translator was called in, so it became a joint effort, but the book has been published now, it had a good review in a respected magazine (and another review in a national newspaper that I haven't seen yet). Now working on the next book!

- Actually study Chinese instead of just using it. To this end, set up a serious SRS deck.

Done! Been studying words and chengyu, and seeing them come up in the books I read. I don't have as many cards as I would have liked, but all in all I'm not unhappy with it.

- Keep reading books in Chinese.

Done! Although I should have read more.

- Figure out what to do with rest of life (again). Alternatively, accept that I won't figure this out, and instead make a resolution to spend good times with friends, family and other cool people.

I registered my own company three weeks ago. Two official clients so far, and a few others before the company officially started. Enjoying time with friends, family and other cool people. I've managed to be a way better daughter, sister, granddaughter and friend than in the past three years. It helps that I'm now back in my own country of course, but I have more space in my mind as well. Life's so good I can hardly believe it. The only possible worry is finances, I have some savings but will have to see whether I can keep myself afloat like this, and whether I want to.

 

Now trying to decide on good resolutions for the coming year.