The 2014 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[laurenth]

Yet another (late) quarterly update (see posts #18, #120 and #151 for previous instalments).

 

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

 

Pffff.  Only 3 novels and a half up to now (plus various other texts).

 

I haven't been able to maintain the rhythm of the first semester, i.e about 250 pages/month, i.e. about 1500 pages in 6 months. I read about 100 pages, maybe less, in July, August and September, which amounts to a respectable 300 pages, but it's a far cry from my stated objective. Maybe I suffered from reading fatigue: after finishing 璇儿's 天方夜谭 and then dropping the same author's 天方夜谭, I tried several novels and found them all way too hard to be enjoyable, which was frustrating.

 

In particular, I read about 25 pages of 圈子圈套, vol. II, and then stopped because I was looking up words more than reading. The worrying thing is that I did manage to read the entire vol. I two years ago... It took me 3 months, and it was my first novel in Chinese, if I remember correctly. Part of the problem (hopefully) might be that I'm now stricter, i.e.  two years ago, I would be happy if I could follow the gist of the story without understanding the  details, while I  demand more of myself now. Perhaps. Anyway, I've also started and dropped  an abridged version of 西游记, restarted and dropped 黄金时代, read a short story called "养蜂人" by sci-fi author 王晋康, etc. 

 

Now I'm reading  三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》, which is a very slow process, in part because I find that book noticeably harder than those I read earlier, and in part because I've been devoting more time to active listening. See below.

 

LISTENING: Intensive listening on 4-5 days/week.

 

Some good news here. WorkAudioBook has proven to be a very effective tool - if not to improve my ridiculously disappointing listening skills, at least to help me try harder to improve it. Apart from one week in July, I've been using it at least 4 times/week, 5 times/week most of the time, for almost four months, with podcasts from the BBC, the Deutsche Welle, RFI, Slow Chinese, etc.

 

I'm not sure my listening comprehension has improved just yet, but my regularity at working to improve that skill certainly has.

 

VOCAB: Skritter (characters) and Pleco (words)

 

I can only repeat what I wrote before: studying Pleco lists has been a daily routine for months and months now, with a daily dose of new words of about 10/day, which makes the SRS queue perfectly manageable.  I go on using Skritter to study isolated characters in the 2000-3000 frequency range.

 

OTHER:

 

In other news, as I felt that studying a language without interacting somehow felt too dry, I've registered with iTalki and will try to include one session per week in my schedule.

 

GUITAR:

 

I've played quite a lot in the summer and have noticeably improved, playing scales and arpeggios and learning to play jazz tunes I like with simple chord melody arrangements.

[Hood]

1. Study Chinese 1 hour everyday, with revision on Friday. Saturday is kept free.

 

2. Learn at least 50 Chinese characters, in a week. This can increase/decrease depending upon difficulty.

 

3. Report here once a week.

 

Techniques (nothing special here)

 

1. Keep a work progress journal

 

2. Don't get stressed when doing practice exercises

[edelweis]

October report:

Chinese: about 20 hours, a quite average month, despite 4 days of total exhaustion and going to bed with a totally blank study log for the day. I mostly dropped 听力 and 科普汉语 as I was really busy with my 报刊阅读 class. And I dropped the EdX 中级汉语语法 class too... I can always go back to these next month (or next year).

English: regular weekly Skype call with my language partner for pronunciation. It's a really good thing that he's so reliable, I don't dare let him down.

Other languages: nothing much, just a few Spanish exercises.

 

In November, I'd like to read one of my traditional characters children's books, and I might start a weekly Skype call with a Chinese partner. Maybe. I still have no clue what to ask her to help me with. Perhaps the "-ang" final, since it appears I say it all wrong.

[tysond]

September October Update:

 

Work is busy.  Didn't get a September update done.  Had a lot less time than usual for the last 2 months.  Also spent a few weeks away in a non-Chinese speaking environment, and went on a bit of an English reading binge while away.

 

The only thing I would say is - when things like this happen, having habits and routines around Chinese is very helpful.  I've generally kept listening to podcasts on the way to work, read emails and had Chinese books by my bed, Chinese magazines on the table, etc.  It helps a lot to keep 5-10-20-30 minute encounters with the language going even if not doing dedicated study.  Without that I'd be slipping behind.

 

Chinese Vocabulary Progress:

- With HSK4 vocab largely covered, I have the whole rest of the Chinese language to consider now.  I've studied quite a few words from reading, work, lists, textbook. podcasts, etc in the last 2 months, but haven't really kept track of them or used SRS on them very well.  I'm about 1 million reviews behind in Anki, I might just archive all my old reviews and focus on a bunch of new stuff.

 

Progress on Chinese Skills

 

- Listening:  ChinesePod intermediate texts are becoming a little dull, I can usually catch everything except for word of the day which is a relatively less common context word (like "ballet" or "corn").  And the lessons themselves use too much English.  I'm thinking of eliminating them as I can follow the Upper Intermediate lessons quite well and even the Advanced ones are usually understandable.  Also watching TV a bit more now to try to improve listening (yes, its 非诚勿扰).  I'd just like to point out that the youtube channel for this show has subtitles that can be extracted in SRT format (e.g. you can get them in text format using a ripping tool).  The timing isn't quite right, but they are pretty useful.

 

- Reading: My fun reading project lately has been 日渐崩坏的世界 http://image.baidu.com/channel/detailcomic?id=28, a fairly simple (and very popular) comic full of blood, guts, horror, murder, etc.   The language is pretty easy, the stories are... disturbing but keep your interest, the artwork is ... horrific, and each story is only 6-10 pages long.  Perfect for adding 30 minutes of reading before a restless sleep.  Not recommended for everyone, but if you love horror and can handle blood and guts, you might like it.  Apart from that I am doing textbook reading, technical articles every now and then.  Hard to fit in a solid session where I actually finish anything (which is probably why I'm enjoying the short horror comics).

 

- Speaking: Don't feel like I've made much progress here.  Reading out loud from text is certainly getting easier, I noticed I can almost read at a natural speed without reading every single word in detail, but I do make mistakes when I do that (他 becomes 你 for example).  Pronunciation is focused on nailing ju, lv which are a bit shaky at the moment.  

 

- Writing: I get to do a fair bit of homework with writing now which is helping to get feedback on characters that have become a bit weird.  Generally my teacher is positive about my writing as I think it's probably above average for my level (meaning: she can make out what I am writing).  But I think I need to spend more time writing sentences, I might spend some time copying out articles.

[laurenth]

Tysond, thanks for the link to 日渐崩坏的世界. That's just great - though I can't imagine reading that before going to sleep. On the other hand, frankly, things like 非诚勿扰 are even more creepy and disturbing, in my opinion. Yuck! Do you happen to know OTHER shows/series/movies that are provided by Youtube with soft subtitles?  Thanks!

[gato]

The show's not that bad. Much better than most shows on Chinese TV, which is a low bar, to be sure. You should give it a chance.

[tysond]

日渐崩坏的世界 is proving to be wonderful for exposure to all sorts of vocabulary about body organs, different ways to die, sicknesses, decay, cremation, creepy stuff like dolls, pregnancy and birth, violence, etc.

 

Regarding subtitles, I did some research.  If you search Youtube with "search terms, CC" you can just see videos with subtitles.  E.g. “爱情公寓, CC" will find a number of segments of the first episode someone has added subtitles to.

"舌尖上的中国, CC" will uncover first an official bunch of videos that just has English subtitles, but then a second lot "[bD] [720P] ...." that include English, Chinese and dual subtitles for seven episodes of A Bite of China.  

 

Or you can learn about cars, quite a few videos subtitles here (traditional):　https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-MByr5LRnWmVN94Ija4XJg

 

 

There's a lot of Chinese stuff with English subtitles, a lot of music videos with traditional subs, and a lot of Korean shows with Chinese subtitles, but I think there are probably a few interesting shows that might have subs available.

[Thomas H. Vo]

-Review NPCR 1 and 2

-Translate all texts from NPCR 1 and 2

-study NPCR 3 up to lesson 35

 

for 2005:

-study James Heisig's "Remembering the Hanzi"

-study NPCR 3,4,5

-get active speaking skills

[AdamD]

Bit soon for an update but it's been quite the month. 1, 2 and 5 are sealed off so I won't flog them now.

 

3. Be able to understand clear 普通话 speech without having to ask the other person to repeat all the time. This is by far the most difficult goal for me.

 

My recent week in China propelled this goal in the following ways:

 

a. My listening comprehension is measurably better.

b. I'm now very aware that class/textbook (CD/MP3) speech and real world speech are not even close to being the same thing. I'm now spending nearly all my listening time with casual and semi-casual speech: TV shows (mainly dramas with naturalistic dialogue), chat podcasts, talking to friends. I'm also refusing to break the chain, committing to an absolute minimum of 15 minutes per day.

c. I now also understand how speaking will help my listening, so I'm forcing myself to do a lot more of that.

d. If I don't know words, I don't know words. Only last week I realised that a lot of what I don't understand is merely words that I don't know. This is important because I'm beating myself up a lot less than I used to.

e. I'm restarting tutoring in a couple of weeks because I can now see exactly how and why it will boost my listening and speaking ability. I've got very clear goals, and my tutor is excellent, so I expect this to be a turning point.

4. Finish a book, even if it's only 100 pages. This goal is not about ability so much as finishing what I start.

 

I've settled on a 译林出版社 edition of Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell. It's peppered with words I've never seen, but because it's my favourite book and I've probably read it six times, I'm getting the gist of each scene after a short while. 300 pages is rather more than the 100 I had in mind, but because I know and like the story, I've decided to strike against the odds and try to finish it before 2015. Olle Linge's reading challenge is an excellent motivator: I've set a 15 hour goal for November and am already having to chuck in extra effort to meet that goal.

 

The final and crucial point I want to make is this: the mere act of posting goals in this thread has made a huge difference to my progress. Since August I've worked incredibly hard on my Chinese skills, and I started using a load of learning techniques I've never tried before, mainly because my goals have been hanging over my head ever since I posted them here in February.

[edelweis]

It's december already.

 

I temporarily stopped the English language exchange due to work - and my desktop computer promptly broke down two days later.

Now I guess I know where that bonus money will go...

 

However due to work I also haven't had time to replace it yet so I am making do with my old small travel eeepc which forgets the time and date and any other bios settings every time I shut it down (not to mention that I have to prop it up on shoe boxes to avoid getting a crick in my neck - the fedora live USB image crashes when I connect an external screen, and I don't dare surf the internet with WinXP any more, and the disk is full of stuff I don't want to delete so no installing Linux on it etc...).

 

I am trying to keep up with SRS on my smartphone but with the cold weather it's been spotty (no studying in the park).

Also I went to every newspaper reading session, but I may have to miss some classes in December... due to work of course.

And I don't have time or energy to review the articles between classes. Ah well.

 

That's all. I'm not sure whether I'll keep updating next year. Or maybe I will.

I am hoping for / taking steps towards some changes in my life but not sure what will actually happen.

[winterpromise31]

I didn't do too shabby in November - 16.5 hours of solid studying. This month I'm aiming to complete 12 lessons from YoyoChinese, which would put me at the halfway mark to completing the Intermediate Course. Looking forward to some forward progress!

[OneEye]

I haven't done very much dedicated Chinese study in the last month or two. I've read a few passages from 《古今文選》 and 《古代漢語》, but that's all. Of course, I use Chinese for work, but that's not the same as studying it.

 

I probably won't have a whole lot of time this month or next month either. We have a few products we're trying to get ready, plus a preview/mockup of the dictionary. Then in January we're going to the US for a meeting and to present our research and dictionary at a few universities. We've gotten really positive responses from some very high-profile academics about what we're doing recently, so that's exciting. I'll probably duck out of this topic and its upcoming sequel until I have more time to study.

[Meng Lelan]

I think this will be my last update here in this thread because I haven't done very much dedicated Chinese study in the last six months myself. After doing my summer internship teaching cane travel to the deafblind in Louisiana, I'm really at the crossroads of my life right now. I don't feel any interest in dedicated Chinese study and not interested in travel to Chinese speaking countries because I'm expending enormous energy looking for a career in teaching Orientation and Mobility to the blind/deafblind. My special education co-workers and I all have been experiencing an increase in bullying and harassment from central office special education administrators and that is taking a huge toll on me also. There's nothing I can do except find a new career and get out. So I'm suspending my Skritter account and the only Chinese related thing I do is read 三國演義 in the original along with the 3kingdoms podcast (actually, transcripts posted along with the audiotaped podcast that I can't hear anyway) and continue training in 中國功夫. Not going to be around Chinese Forums much for the next six months to a year, probably. 

[AdamD]

1. Pass HSK4: fail, but I learned the word list

2. 2,000 characters: pass

3. Understand clear 普通话 speech: fail, but I'm making slow progress

4. Read a 100 page book: pass (see below)

5. Incorporate Chinese language into my work: fail

 

I finished Nineteen Eighty-four this morning. All 323 pages of it, including the 30 page extract from Goldstein's book and the Newspeak appendix. I'm so chuffed about this goal that I don't feel so bad about failing three others.

[tysond]

December Update

 

Work has continued to be busy for the last few months – no November update.  Overall I have kept up a number of habits on reading, listening, watching Chinese, kept up my classes reasonably well. 

 

My sister and nephew came to visit which was great. They live in Sydney. With regard to learning Chinese it was interesting to spend time with them – she studied Chinese for many years but has become a bit rusty (her listening skill is excellent, but speaking is just a bit stilted as she doesn’t get to use her Chinese that often).  He is 7 years old, but studying Chinese a bit, his pronunciation is very good (tones are meaningful to him and he reproduces them very well) but vocabulary is limited (knows lots of words and animal names and stuff, but not good at conversation).  He picked up quite a few words -- and with his blonde hair was a real favorite of almost everyone he encountered.

 

I’ll use this post to summarize what I feel is my progress versus the year against my goals, which are below:

 

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.  [ Consider Achieved, but no tests ]

·        Be able to read comics comfortably for long periods with practically full understanding [ Considered Achieved ]

·        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). [ Still in Progress, Books are Hard ]

·        Be able to watch more difficult TV and movies  [ Considered Achieved, but… using subtitles as a crutch.  Still much room to improve ]

·        Improve writing of sentences and passages – write work emails in Chinese, continued to be able to write hanzi [ Little progress ]

·        Work on pronunciation issues including inconsistent tones and a few tricky sounds [ Good progress, Much improved ]

 

I’ll set some goals for 2015, keeping in mind I speak English at home, have to work during the day and only get 1-4 hours of practice/study in per day – so the goals have to be reasonable but challenging for the year. 

 

Chinese Vocabulary Progress:

 

I’ve been adding, in a non-structured way, a lot of vocabulary around anything that interests me.  It’s been more a process of branching out in a thousand directions, half learning many words, and allowing organic processes to solidify what comes up more than once.  When browsing the HSK5 lists I find I already know or can guess about half the words already.   Study time consists more of solidifying half-known words, understanding usage and nuance of meaning, and understanding relationships between words. 

 

My goal for the year was to get from HSK4-ish to HSK5-ish which I think I have achieved.  My teacher assesses me at this level, I now find the HSK4 texts quite simple, HSK5 comprehensible in the main part but sometimes missing key words.  Grammar / abstract concepts are my weakest area.  As I live in China I pick up a lot of nouns from just daily life.  Verbs aren’t too bad but there are a few that I need to guess, same with adjectives/adverbs – but context gives you a lot of clues (as do the hanzi).  Abstract stuff is hard to guess and if it’s critical to the meaning I sometimes have trouble.

 

I think I am also much better at reading transliterations (e.g. brand names, country names).  This comes from much better knowledge of characters in general, and much better knowledge of the ones that tend to be used to transliterate.

 

Progress on Chinese Skills

 

- Listening:  In 2014, this improved enormously.   Native content is at the “I get what they are talking about and the main points and get some of the jokes” level.  Full speed and full understanding is still a challenge.  Workmen, taxis, ayi, tour guides, colleagues, work meetings, etc all are generally 90% understood because I am familiar with context and they slow down a little or repeat themselves.  Random phone calls from telemarketers, radio in the taxi, news – this needs a bit of work. 

 

Handling accents/weird pronunciation/erhua has improved a lot too, using mostly the measurement of if my wife says “what the hell is he saying” versus me understanding. 

 

I use ChinesePod a lot and certainly find the intermediate texts are sometimes 100% understood, sometimes 80%.  Upper intermediate is 60-80%. 

 

I have been watching a few movies and TV shows lately, and can watch a whole movie and enjoy it (for example, recently watched The Continent 后会无期).  However I must admit that I seem to be leaning on the subtitles quite a bit – I read them at the same time as watching and combine listening and reading to get the meaning.  I still end up pausing to look up key vocabulary at times.  I also watched The Continent on a flight with English subtitles and was happy to see my understanding was good, sometimes better than the subtitles.

 

2015 - Next year I’d like to focus some more on listening to media and using subtitles less.  I want to be able to watch most movies and TV.

 

- Reading: A year ago I struggled to read the texts in my textbooks, use proper pronunciation, deal with the structure of the sentence, and understanding the meaning all in one go.  Even segmenting words, recognizing where the verb, subject, object, etc was had a bit of difficulty.   Now the texts in the textbooks are fairly straightforward and my reading is relatively smooth and after reading I often understand everything but one or two grammar items. I still mess up a few basics (for some reason 我， 你， 他/她 get confused as I read past them too quickly to register which one it is). 

 

Reading comics is enjoyable and only vocabulary limited to a small degree.  Novels are still hard due to so many unknown vocabulary items (e.g. in a recent text I was reading: dune, helmet, desolate, cliff, visor – these kind of words are all in one paragraph).   Computer games are getting easier and easier though as the vocabularly is kind of specialized but highly repetitive (inventory, production, save, settings etc). 

 

Menus were really challenging a year ago – but now are in three categories.  Food with English translations where I can read 75% of the characters to order in Chinese (obviously know what I am ordering) – e.g. Annies or a roast duck restaurant.  Simple Chinese menus where I know 75% of the menu and what it refers to (干煸四季豆 etc) – e.g. a noodle house or a donkey meat sandwich restaurant.  And fancy Chinese menus where Buddha jumps over the wall (or a thousand other descriptions) but I have no idea what it is – like reading a fancy French menu with schoolboy french – even if I can say it I don’t know what it is – e.g. DaDong’s fancy restaurant in Gongti which has all sorts of fancy dishes.

 

I’d guess I can reliably read 1800 characters (including handling quite a few multiple pronunciations), with about 1000 more sort of known but with varying degrees of familiarity.

 

For 2015 I’d like to keep working on reading articles, computer game text, comics and books – as a stretch goal I’d like to finish a novel in 2015.

 

- Speaking: Clearly progressed over the year.  I know my pronunciation of ju, lv, and r which are my worst syllables, are now either 80%+ correct, or rapidly corrected as I hear the mistake and re-say the sound.   X was unreliable at the start of the year but has not been corrected in 6 months.  Tones are much more accurate – saying the right one and saying it right and tone.  Still struggle a bit with sentences with multiple tone patterns at times.

 

I now no longer get generic over-praise on my Chinese, it’s more specific like “you sound very local” or “your Chinese is very Chinese” or “you sound like DaShan”.  I interpret this as being better than before but I know I still have plenty of room for improvement, because Chinese people who know me say “Oh Tysond still has a foreigner accent, but this other foreign guy over here, he’s really really Chinese sounding”. 

 

“Everyday Fluency” – if we define it as being able to open your mouth and just start talking and make yourself understood, is much much better.  Certainly I am finding talking to random people – e.g. drivers – much much much easier and those that I see again and again are very happy to have a chat and discuss different topics.  They see that I’ve made very good progress and basically say “Ok so you’re this good in 2 years you’ll be great in 5, we will have very smooth conversations then”. 

 

Plus I am also going through the phase of finding other (beginners) foreigner’s Chinese extremely grating.  (Sorry!  But pronunciation and tones are important folks!  I’m talking about you Zuckerberg).

 

Probably my biggest issue with speaking now is grammar.  My sentences are not super natural, order is sometimes weird, 了 may not be used in the correct places, etc.  This has very little impact on communication – people know what I am trying to say.  But it annoys me.

 

2015 Goal – Keep working on pronunciation to get more local sounding.  Improve sentence level pronunciation.  Focus more on producing grammatical sentences.

 

- Writing: I only really write as a result of Anki, which means I kind of evenly learn all characters (meaning very common characters are tested about as often as much less common ones).  So you kind of overweight the uncommon ones (Anki doesn’t really know how common any particular word/character is, all cards are equal).  So for some moderately common characters I’m surprisingly poor at writing, but for some fairly uncommon characters I’m quite good.

 

I’m still quite bad at writing at the sentence / paragraph level.  Sometimes in instant messaging people will ask me what I am trying to say (more often than speaking where they get the emotional/contextual/body-language content and can figure it out pretty easily). 

 

2015 – Improve writing skill.  It’s the lowest priority of all my skills but perhaps it will get more attention this year. 

[Lu]

Continue to actually learn more Chinese. Keep feeding Anki. Also start putting in chengyu again, not just words.

Partly done. I learned mostly words. Actually I now realise I haven't systematically added any chengyu to my Anki for over a year. This will go on the list for next year.

Translate another book and not miss the deadline this time.

Done! I made the (extended) deadline, the book is coming out this January.

Speak more Chinese and to that end, spend more time with Chinese friends.

Done. Regular meetings with a Chinese language partner/friend, as well as irregular meetings with other Chinese-speaking friends.

Continue to read Chinese, including books, and not only the one I'm translating.

Somewhat done. I could have read more I suppose, but I've read several books this year.

Get minor health problems sorted out (see optometrist and such).

Done, although not everything is resolved yet.

Try to make current profession financially feasible or else get a job.

Done. I made just above minimum income this year, if I'm not mistaken. Literary translation will not make one rich. But I'm not starving either.

Get up earlier, start work earlier, and get more done as a result.

This remains a continuous struggle.

Continue to run 5 km 1-2 times a week.

Did this for a while, but recently it's fallen by the wayside. This will be a good resolution for the coming year.

[edelweis]

My original goals for 2014:

 

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

Globally successful. I did get seriously stressed out a few times but it was not caused by too much studying Chinese, and when it happened I managed to rest without obsessing about how I should study Chinese instead.

 

Keep learning Chinese.

11/12

December was mostly off (and it's quite understandable given the circumstances), but globally, I'm almost done with HSK5 vocabulary recognition (the few remaining words are mostly due to the changes in the official list), and I did register for that newspaper reading class, and I feel that my listening has improved somewhat with both active and passive listening activities. And I did study a few chapters of 科技汉语听记, read from a book in traditional characters, shadow the soundtrack of a kouyu book, even if these activities happened in fits and starts.

 

Keep other languages active.

2.5/?

I am satisfied with my recent English pronunciation efforts (not so much with the results, but that's difficult to quantify anyway).

And I did make a serious attempt at reviewing Spanish grammar for a few months and read a novel in Spanish.

I can't remember much about the other languages but I think I did study a little bit in the first few months...

 

Report in here once a month.

12/12

 

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

0/12 (?)

[laurenth]

Quarterly update (see posts #18, #120, #151 and #181 for previous instalments) and self-assessment for 2014

 

NON-OBJECTIVES/NON-PRIORITIES/THINGS TO AVOID: "Speaking, writing, preparing for HSK 5, studying grammar, etc. and studying/maintaining other languages than Mandarin."

 

Bitter success here. I (mostly) resisted the urge to lose my focus, though I added some guitar in the summer (maybe that explains why I read much less Chinese around that time) and registered with Italki to practice some speaking. I've used Italki only 3 times in the last few weeks, so it's not even close to a level at which it could make any difference to my skills in Chinese. Obviously, for 2015, I'll have to decide if I drop that or if I can make it into a weekly routine at the very least.

 

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

 

I've read six (the sixth is almost finished in fact). So I haven't met the target, but the result is quite satisfying anyway.

The first 6 months were very successful, with about 250 pages/month, but after that, between Gu Long and San Mao, I got bogged down for three months and failed repeatedly to read more than a few pages of several books. 

 

After  三毛's《撒哈拉的故事》, I started reading 《哈利•波特与密室》, which is a shame in a way, because reading original Chinese literature is so much better in so many ways than reading translations. But I badly needed something lighter and easier (both the language and the contents) after the summer hiatus and 《撒哈拉的故事》. 

 

LISTENING: My original goal was 10 hours "of listening" per week. It was a failure. But my revised goal (intensive listening on 4-5 days/week.) was better  devised, in the sense that:

• quantitatively, I set a more realistic goal, and
• qualitatively, I switched to a form of more intensive, more focussed and, I hope, more useful listening practice, thanks to tools like WorkAudioBook, subs2srs and BeyondPod. They allow me to practice listening by slicing dialogues into pieces, looping through sentences, slowing them down, revealing the transcript only when needed, exporting words to a SRS program, etc.

 

After 6 months of almost daily exercises with WorkAudioBook, the bad news is that, subjectively, I don't think my listening comprehension has improved noticeably. The good news is that I was successful in setting a routine that might, just might, help me improve that skill eventually.  In addition, listening to podcasts such as Slow Chinese is fun and useful anyway because, even if my listening comprehension is not improving (and I so much hope I'm wrong), I'm learning interesting stuff in the process.

 

More recently, I've added another tool that may contribute to that objective: using subs2srs to create an Anki deck with a movie (白蛇传说). Maybe in 2015 I should try that with a show for which this most wonderful site provides a transcript (i.e. 奋斗).

 

VOCAB: Skritter (characters) and Pleco (words)

 

No problem here. I've kept on adding and studying words and sentences with Pleco on a daily basis for 365 days (collected from whatever I happen to be reading or listening to), while studying isolated characters with Skritter. Contrary to what I'd said only weeks ago on this very forum, I've also restarted using Anki (because of sub2srs) to study an audio deck made with the movie 白蛇传说.

 

GUITAR:

 

Absolute failure here: I played daily for four months (having a badly broken leg for most of that period helped a lot) and then stopped. Again. In my defence, I'd say that I can study Chinese on the move and in short bursts - in fact, I have no other option because I very seldom have long stretches of time (i.e. over half an hour) at home to devote to studying. I can't reproduce that with the guitar, for which I really need regular periods in a quiet place. Family life is not compatible with that for the time being. 

[rebor]

Ultimately I've been quite lazy in 2014. The only aspect of my studying I'd say I'm satisfied with is flashcarding. I decided to nuke my deck in spring/summer somewhere, and I haven't regretted it. It  has cleared away a lot of semi-useless words(for me at the time, that is!) and forced my to really learn old leeches that I've come across again since. I'm almost done with the HSK 6 word list and there's also some words from tv-shows and  books in my deck. 

I'm somewhat unsatisfied with my reading. The first half of the year contained little or nothing of it, but by late spring/early summer I resolved to finish a novel. I choose 活着 and though I cheated(Pleco reader) and didn't exactly finish it in a week(more like six months...) I stuck to my resolution. My reading improved massively during the course of this undertaking. I've since begun reading 圈子圈套 and even though I do lookups on every page, I feel I have a decent flow in my reading, which is a huge step forward from last year.  

Other areas of study(listening, writing, speech) were basically left alone to die in the woods this year. 

[renzhe]

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

1) Yep

2) Nope

3) Nope

4) Nope

Having finished 水浒, I should have a bit more time for pronunciation and reading practice this year, though.