The 2014 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[Meng Lelan]

Yes, getting a jump start on 2014. Couldn’t wait anymore. Here are mine for 2014.

 

1. Skritter to 5000 in the queue by the end of 2014. Get Skritter staff to interview me once I get to the 5000 mark.

 

2.  Master three 武術套路 this year – 刀術 and 南拳 compulsory. After mastering those two I am going to learn an advanced level 長拳 later this year so I am hanging up the pipa as the workouts are getting longer and some of the stunts are a challenge on the hands, wrists, and arms. I am sure I will take up pipa again in the future but the kungfu and wushu take top priority for the next two years.

 

3. Read and listen to all chapters of the DeFrancis intermediate and advanced readers. In this decade of fast paced and high tech textbooks written expressly for Young Whippersnappers, I long for something totally retro and repetitive. So, time for a trip down my memory lane of DeFrancis readers.

 

4. Rally everyone here on Chinese Forums to the Short Story Thread for 2014.

 

5. Blind rehab internship this summer of 2014 for nine weeks. Then start looking for a Real Career in blind rehab. Establish or join a foundation for providing blind rehab training in China and Taiwan. 

[abcdefg]

Lelan's mention, above, of blind rehab training makes me think of my massage earlier today. The masseur is a blind man of about 60 who knows quite a bit about Chinese history and culture. He knows I share those interests, and he talks nonstop for the whole 90 minutes. But he's not content to lecture, he makes it a dialogue in which he asks me why I think this or that happened.

 

We start with something fairly simple and non-controversial, such as what Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing said to Lin Biao just before such and such a conference. The follow up is asking me if I know why she said that. I answer "no" and he tells me to take a guess. He corrects my attempt, then he goes on to tell me something off the wall having to do with Lin Biao's wife and one of Mao's children.

 

He also knows a lot about music, and makes a point of telling me which leaders played what instrument and how well. Today, he was feeling particularly buoyant, and asked me if I knew such and such a song that was popular during the Cultural Revolution. I told him I didn't think so, and he sung a few bars of it.

 

I should be paying him for history lessons in addition to massage. Sure is nice to be back in Kunming.

 

 

[Meng Lelan]

Then your 2014 goals should include regular visits to massage and history sessions. You got a good start already. 

[renzhe]

Here are mine, rather modest due to heavy workload:

1) Finish "Outlaws of the Marsh" this year

2) Read at least one book after that, probably a shorter Jin Yong story

3) Restart "Chinese Saturdays"

4) Start pronunciation drills on useful phrases. I'll start a thread on this soon

[OneEye]

It's going to be tough for me to set many specific goals for the year because I don't know if I'll still be in Taiwan this August, or if I'll be in Japan or even China. I have a few things I'm working toward at the moment though, and beyond that I'll just have to stick with monthly updates.

 

1) Grad school. I'm in my first semester of an MA program at NTNU, focusing on Chinese linguistics and philology. This semester I've taken two classes that focus almost entirely on the 說文解字, so I'm getting pretty good at reading 小篆 and 秦系文字. One of the classes is a year-long class, so I'll be taking part two next semester. I want to also get more familiar with 楚系文字, but it will depend on what my other classes are and their workload. I also want to spend some time learning more about historical phonology, especially Old Chinese, but that may have to wait until later if they don't offer a class next term. More stuff too...history, philosophy, archaeology, what have you. All in due time.

 

2) Japanese. Whether I quit the MA program and move to Japan or not, I'll still have to learn Japanese eventually (it's a requirement for PhDs in my field in the US). I also really like learning it. Anyway, I'm working through a few different textbooks here and there, and I would eventually like to finish them and move on to more advanced stuff. This isn't a super high priority (grad school survival comes first), but it's important to me so I'll be devoting as much time as I can to it.

 

3) Programming. I've just started this a couple weeks ago. I figure some programming ability will come in handy for research, so I'm learning some command line basics first, then I'll probably start learning Python and regular expressions. This is a side project, as I don't have an immediate need for it. Just something to learn in hopes that it will come in handy later.

 

I think I'm going to leave it at that. Obviously, grad school takes up the majority of my time. I get in an hour of Japanese per day at most, not counting flash cards on the bus, and maybe 20 minutes or so of programming in the evening (next thing on my schedule tonight). If it turns out that I'm moving to Japan, my goals will change accordingly. Same deal if I move to China. It all depends on my wife's job, because I'm fine with either of those places, or here. Though I secretly hope we get to move to Japan. But for now, I'm going to continue on like we're staying here, because that's just as likely as the other options.

[imron]

and regular expressions

If this is your goal, I would highly recommend reading Mastering Regular Expressions.  Yes there are plenty of other free resources available on the web that can help you learn, but this book will give you a much more thorough understanding of them.

 

Regardless of how your programming skills progress, regular expressions are immensely useful things, and many text editors support commands involving them.

[sparrow]

Chinese

1. Finish the 5000 words in the Routledge dictionary—a couple months.
2. Read 15 minutes of Chinese per day.
3. Watch 15 minutes of Chinese drama per day.
4. Keep 5 minutes of Chinese drama looping throughout day. Record a new 5-minute segment each week.
5. After I finish Routledge, study out of the HSK 6 book that's sitting on my shelf.
6. After I finish Routledge, review grammar from this Practical Chinese Grammar book I have.

Otherwise

1. Do well in school.
2. Hit the gym daily for rock climbing and lifting.
3. Date a couple people.

[Ania]

I really try not to set too many goals and objectives (unless it's something that has to have a deadline), as life tends to be very unpredictible, especially when you run your own business and you just never know what can happen But I do have some general ideas where I see the year 2014 going

 

Chinese - my general goal is to get to a level where HSK3 tests are going to be a breeze (right now I struggle with them) and maybe move towards HSK4 Not sure how realistic that is, because obviously it depends on how much time I would have to study, plus I really care more about just improving my language skills and not the exam itself, but it's just sort of for reference. Generally II would love to:

1. Study Chinese for AT LEAST 1 hour a day, 7 days a week and if I miss a day, make up for it the same or next week. 

2. Read all the 300-characters readers I have before they become too easy... LOL Not that I would mind that, but since I bought them, I would love to make good use of them

3. Translate the songs that I keep listening to over and over.

4. Find a Chinese TV show that I could watch even without understanding everything.

 

And in other areas of life:

1. Exercise more and try to eat healthy. 

2. Call my grandmother more (I'm very bad at that, she usually calls me and I always feel very bad about that...)

 

That's it for me I guess, the rest of 2014 remains objective-less

[Touchstone57]

These are not new years resolutions, but actual targets, as a lot of them I am already doing. Hacking Chinese has some good articles related to goal management if you are interested…

 

1. Finished one graded reader book per week (500 character level) – Roughly 30 mins/1 hour of reading per day, and listen to accompanying audio

2. Learn one new song per week – Turn lyrics into flashcards to learn new vocab. Review before leaving for work and listen to while travelling.

3. Finish one episode from a Chinese drama per week – reading transcripts and making appropriate vocab lists. At least 15 minutes per day, looping back when necessary.

4. Record 10 – 20 new sentences a day and review the previous four days worth of sentences using Audacity (GMS method) every evening.

5. Find a private tutor for Chinese, for 1 – 2 private lessons per week.

6. Research and find a good book for grammar as I haven’t studied grammar that much so far.

7. HSK 5 – Is it reasonable for someone to go from HSK 3 to HSK 5 in the space of a year, if they have a full time job and are married?

 

Other goals

1. Pass the Microsoft Server Admin exams and CISCO CCNA exams in the first half of 2014. Spend at least 3 hours per week going through the training materials and running through the exercises running on VM’s.

2. Visit more places in China/Asia! 

[OneEye]

Thanks for the tip, imron. I'll probably do an online course or something first to get my feet wet, but I'll keep that book on deck.

[eshton]

My 2014 goals:

 

1) Improve my technical chinese. I find that conversational chinese comes naturally now even if I mess up here or there but sitting in class this semester I realize that I'm just about clueless on scienctific words.

2）Definitely travel. I spent a lot of 2013 traveling and I really enjoyed that. I wanna try to repeat that.

3）Read at least one chinese novel. I've started one but I just lost interest.

4）code code code. I haven't coded for more than six months, starting to feel rusty.

5) HSK 6.

 

I need to discipline myself, I‘m a slacker.

 

@Touchstone57 HSK 5 is reasonable enough if you make time I think the word list is 3x longer but it's possible.

[rebor]

Apart from watching a few episodes of a tv-drama(局中局）and being a reasonably diligent pleco-er(around 7000 learned cards by now), I haven't done much in terms of Chinese. Looking back at my track record since leaving 北京, I can't say that I'm all that pleased with myself. It could have been much worse, but my slacking off certainly has had quite an opportunity cost. There's a lot that I'd like to do, but here's a rough draft of my battle plan:

 

1. I need to ease off flashcards for a while. I'll do reviews, but no new cards for 2-3 months. Flashcarding is rewarding because it's so mechanical, and the next step is always obvious, but I won't see much progress by simply adding more cards at this point. I need to practice actually using the words I have "learned". I will still make new cards(by hitting the "+" in Pleco), but save them for later.
2. This should free up some time, time I should use to finish 局中局 and begin another series. Even 5-10 minutes a day would be a Great Leap Forward. I also need a challenge reading-wise, most likely in the form of 家 or 活着. I want to finish a novel in 2014.

3. Finding a tutor, for pronunciation, basic conversation and grammar. 

I have a decent base in terms of grammar and vocabulary, and my pronunciation isn't horrible(I think...), so if I stick to the plan I should see some decent real-world progress.

[tysond]

[edit -- don't know how to use a computer and posted by accident]

 

Goals for 2014

• Get from somewhat HSK-4-ish, to HSK-5-ish in terms of vocab and grammar, reading speed, listening skill. Consider taking the actual tests.
• Be able to read comics comfortably for long periods with practically full understanding
• Be at the same level with (easy/medium) books as I now am with comics (read a page only need to look up a few words to be able to follow).
• Be able to watch more difficult TV and movies  
• Improve writing of sentences and passages – write work emails in Chinese, continued to be able to write hanzi
• Work on pronunciation issues including inconsistent tones and a few tricky sounds

To do this I'll continue to follow AJATT influenced methods including:

• MCD - Massive/Micro Cloze deletions (will move to monolingual in 2014) in Anki
• Lots of watching movies and TV
• Reading comics, short stories & books (fiction & non-fiction).
• Shadowing practice with Audacity
• 4 hours of 1:1 lessons a week
• Listening and Reading tests (anything similar to HSK, timed if possible)
• Upper-Intermediate & Advanced ChinesePod
• Live discussions on the streets of Beijing & will look for new conversation partners

[Elizabeth_rb]

My turn!   At first glance I saw some of these lists and felt outrageously inadequate, but then I read them more carefully, had a look at some of the apps etc that folk were referring to and felt more like I belong on the thread!!

 

I totally understand those who feel that setting goals etc is almost pointless as life gets in the way, but I personally feel that, without at least some form of goal - preferably a measured and measurable one, forward movement is going to be minimal.  A goal, or series of them, helps to keep me on track as far as I can be, given my being a semi-invalid at the mo.  However, brain still works so here goes:

 

Study the following: (the numbers are where I am in the book at the mo - current chapter/number of chapters)

 

* Colloquial Chinese 2

* Chinese Demystified  6.3/22

* Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar  13/13, notes made to 3/4 through chapter 11

* Elementary Chinese Readers 3  10.6/16

* Elementary Chinese Readers 4

* Elementary Chinese Readers Supplement

* Revise Far East Everyday Chinese book 3 - a brilliantly useful Taiwan textbook

* Finish 'Schaum' Chinese grammar  11.4/15

* Basic Chinese - A Grammar and Workbook

* Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Chinese

 

These are mostly taken from the general goal list that I maintain on one of my blogs.

 

Add to that:

 

* Get my Chinese learning support blog reworked and into full flow with 2-4 posts per week.

* Use much of the material from the blog as well as other stuff to make a start on working up some of the 5 textbooks (!!) I have in mind to write.

* Continue revising Chinese history and culture by finally reading through the books I bought whilst at uni.

* Take full advantage of my weekly language exchange arrangement.

* Use Lang-8 more fully.

* Fish out and listen to some of the aural work tapes I still have from uni.

* Use this forum more (and rejoice Roddy's heart!! )

 

Other than Chinese stuff, I want to:

 

1) Improve my health vastly (which will mean getting a great deal of rest and that means that I can't study much, so many of the above are 'ideal world' goals really)

2) Develop my embroidery skills to a higher level and keep up with the design and technique challenge I'm running in the stitching blogger world

3) Stay sane!!

 

There are many more, of course, but these are quite enough for today!

 

I mayn't be able to do many of the things above, but having a set list of things to choose from and the pleasure of crossing things off that list as and when I can complete them gives me a real buzz.  I just LOVE list making and so on!!

[geraldc]

I've tried to set lofty goals, and have failed. Time for achievable ones.

 

I will make at least 3 grammatical errors a day.

 

I will incorrectly write at least 5 characters a week.

 

I will mangle at least 1 chengyu a month.

[simpleasy]

I've been studying for three years already. Quite pathetic progress I've made so far. I realize I could have been much more fluent by now, now that I look back at it.

This is the first year that I'm setting goals for any year.. This should be somewhat motivational, I assume.

 

- Pass HSK 3. (February - March)

- Finish New Practical Chinese Reader II.

- Get to a level that is somewhat like HSK 4. (Be able to finish mock tests, if necessary in more tries than actually allowed)

- Read at least 5 books by the end of this year. (Suggestions are always welcome, of course! )

 

Everyday goals:

- Study at least 30 minutes every day.

- I get one day off every week if necessary. This can be any day of the week, as long as its never more than once every seven days. If I skip more than one day, then I'll have to catch up those 30 minutes on the next day.

- Write a text no less than 500 words every two weeks, and ask one of my Chinese friends to correct it.

- Report back here every once in awhile to log my progress.

 

Another thing: Just like every year, the new year starts right before my exams. During exam periods (two months total per year) I don't have to write the text, and I'm also less strict on the 30-minutes-every-day, although it's preferred to do it nevertheless. 

 

I guess I'll also make a spreadsheet of the amount of time I've studied every day. Could be nice to turn the data into graphs afterwards, because I like graphs, for some reason...

[icebear]

Mid-term objective: conversationally competent in most informal situations; comfortable both consuming and producing Chinese relevant to my area of work.

Structured Learning
Goal: 1.5 hours of tutoring twice per week after work

成功之路
Goal: continue pushing thorough at a rate of one lesson every few weeks - no rush.

Audiovisual Media
Goal: three episodes of a Chinese TV series per week

Reading
Goal: at least thirty minutes per day of fiction/nonfiction unrelated to a textbook or work

Composition
Goal: translate work presentations and exec summaries into Chinese to be checked in tutor sessions
Goal: post at least once per week to lang-8.com

Handwriting/Vocab
Goal: 5 new characters added per day to Skritter
Goal: add 70 words per week to Pleco, selected by frequency from work texts
Goal: clear each flashcard queue once per day

Social
Goal: increase Chinese use with colleagues - from current social topics and some work to cover all topics

 

Note: the above goals are closely related with my regular study routines, which I think are much more important than long term goals.

[laurenth]

First what I *won't* try to do: Speaking, writing, preparing for HSK 5, studying grammar, etc. and studying/maintaining other languages than Mandarin.

 

These are non-priorities. I may do some work in these areas if/when it turns out I have more time than I thought (unlikely) and I'm in the mood to do so.

 

What I *will* try to do every day: Reading, listening, study vocab.

 

More specifically:

 

- READING:  I will try to read 10 novels in 2014, or about 2 million characters.

 

But I will cheat in a number of ways. For example, I could consider that a short 150,000 character novel is a novel, even if the average seems to be 250,000 to 300,000 chars. My stats will also include the texts I tend to read at lunch time (press articles, transcripts of podcasts or shows, etc.).  I could also re-read novels I've already read. I could read, say, four episodes of a comic, and consider that it amounts to a novel. I'm sure I can find other tricks.

 

- LISTENING: I will try to log 10 hours of listening per week.

 

Again, I will be cheating in a number of ways. For example, I could consider that background listening while working is listening. Of course, "listening" should preferably cover the more active part of the spectrum, i.e. watching movies, watching movies with pause and rewind, listening to podcasts, actively working on podcasts, etc.

 

- VOCAB: my current setup seems to be working fine, so I have no reason to change. Mainly, I use Skritter to study characters and I add 15-25 new words/day to Pleco lists named after the day of the month (from 01 to 31). As I explained elsewhere, I use Pleco daily to review the vocab of days X -1, X-3, X-6 (simple flashcards, no SRS). Words of day X -7 are moved to an SRS queue that I study with Pleco as well and that I delete every time it gets too long (i.e. as soon as I have 80-100 reps on any given day).  In Skritter, I regularly add characters from Patrick Zein's frequency list taken backwards, i.e. I started from char #3000.

[edelweis]

I will be working on the same things as last year... probably mostly on passive skills (HSK5 vocabulary recognition in reading and listening) and only occasionally on active skills. I feel that my Chinese fever has abated from near obsession to hobby #1 and that's fine...

 

priorities:

Don't get stressed out. Have fun if possible, else relax/rest.

Keep learning Chinese.

Keep other languages active.

Report in here once a month.

Report in other forum at least once a month about non-language-related habits.

 

I might set monthly themes or easy goals such as Watch CCTV New Year Program if I can be bothered to.

By the way, what day is that? the New Year is supposed to be on 31th Jan, is the program on 30th Jan?

[Meng Lelan]

I might set monthly themes or easy goals such as Watch CCTV New Year Program if I can be bothered to.

By the way, what day is that? the New Year is supposed to be on 31th Jan, is the program on 30th Jan?

 

roddy so massively enjoys the CCTV New Year Program and he would be the source to know.