The 2014 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[Meng Lelan]

No, I have 8 graduate classes (including the 2 this semester) and 6 undergrad classes left

 

 

So it would have taken two or three years to get a master's there.

[OneEye]

Yeah. I've known of people doing it in two, but even most Taiwanese take three to finish. MA theses can run as long as 300 pages in my field here, so most people take a full year to write the thesis.

[Elizabeth_rb]

I've re-worked my list, adding some things in and updating ones I've worked on recently:
 
Reading only texts (do exercises mentally and make notes from):
* Colloquial Chinese 2  
* Chinese in Three Months
* Practice Makes Perfect Basic Chinese
* Chinese Demystified  19.3/22 - read/worked through >12 chapters since last update
* Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar  Done!
* Elementary Chinese Readers 3  16/16 - just need to make notes from the >5 chapters since last update
* Elementary Chinese Readers 4  0.8/15 - new start
* Elementary Chinese Readers Supplement
* Revise Far East Everyday Chinese
Sit down and study texts (write the answers out in full):
* Finish 'Schaum' Chinese grammar  11.6/15 - did a few pages!!
* Basic Chinese - A Grammar and Workbook
* Learning Chinese Measure Words
* Fun With Chinese Characters Vol 1
* Fun With Chinese Characters Vol 2
Area Studies reading:
* Understanding Chinese Society  0/13 - just got it out and read the intro ready to start today
* Rebellions and Revolutions, China 1840-1949
 
Next update planned: 31 March 2014

[edelweis]

@elizabeth: congrats for finishing a book!

 

 

My February update:

 

Languages other than Chinese: at least 13 hours.

In February I started reviewing Spanish grammar more seriously and I might continue in March if I feel like it. I borrowed a grammar + exercise book set for this purpose anyway...

I also started (re?) learning English pronunciation from scratch. Undecided about the CPE.

Kept up with German, French, Arabic and dialects at the same glacial pace (about once a week each).

 

Chinese: 18 hours (not counting purely passive listening)

I kept up with SRS and tingli, but had trouble with reading (some of the short stories in my traditional characters book are well above my level and the 的得地底 thing made me scratch my head more than once. Oh, and the 那哪 thing too.)

I also added the vocabulary from the first math chapter of 科普汉语听记 to my SRS deck (only 1 year late).

Did some character review, learnt a few kouyu expressions etc.

In March I might dust off a textbook to do some exercises... if I feel like it.

 

In other news I am learning how to play mahjong in real life and added the fans to my SRS deck as well (after all I'm in no hurry to finish that HSK5 vocabulary).

[simpleasy]

My February update:

Looking back on this month I realize that I barely did anything...
Shame on me, I'll do better next month, I promise!

[AdamD]

Consider listening to unclear 普通话 speech to help you do this.  When you go back to clear speech you will rejoice in its clarity.

 

For finishing a book, consider a graded reader.  The ones by Mandarin Companion have been getting positive reviews.

 

Your unclear speech tip is fabulous. Thank you! I've tried (and failed) to persevere with mumbly 普通话 in podcasts, but I'd never considered using it that way.

 

I bought The Secret Garden in the Mandarin Companion range a few weeks ago. It's really clear grammatically, so it'll help me coalesce a load of principles I learned years ago but never really put to use.

[lakers4sho]

Wow, I'm really amazed by everyone here. It seems like everyone here is really committed to learning Chinese and have mountains upon mountains of books in their lists.

 

As for me? It's just recently that I realized that I really want to work on becoming fluent in the language. I'm a full time university student, and for the most part Chinese has been a side hobby for the past year and a half or so. I am taking the Chinese language courses at my school (USA), and am in the 3rd year of the series. I took 2nd year Chinese this past summer, so I'm still working on bridging the gap between grammar knowledge and actual fluency. I'm also taking a Chinese linguistics class.

 

I don't have as many books as most of you guys do. I'm new to this site, and my eyes just got opened to the wealth of resources available to learners. Here's what I'm currently working on:

 

1. 变化中的中国 - the textbook for my Chinese language class. We're now on volume 2, but the pace has been quite fast so I plan to re-work my way starting with volume 1 again, don't know how long it's going to take, since I'm already got my hands full just with keeping up with the class

2. Yufa! by Teng Wen-Hua, my primary grammar book, not as advanced as Y&R's Comprehensive but there are still lots of stuff that I need to go through before I move forward.

3.. 汉语口语指引 by Tian Shou-He, picked this one up from a sale at my school's bookstore, very useful

4. Mandarin Chinese by Mobo Gao - my Chinese linguistics textbook, I think it's really dry and boring, and reading pinyin is a pain, almost done with it.

5. A couple of rather elementary readers, which have been sitting inside the shelf for a while now:

a. 天上星星亮晶晶 (The Sky is Bright with Stars)

b. 新编中文课外阅读丛书 (Tales and Traditions)

The readers are really basic, but I'm using them to work on pronunciation and reading skills.

6. PopupChinese - plow my way through their podcasts, I'm currently going through the Elementary and Intermediate ones. Listening to them while on the bus ride is actually quick relaxing.

 

So yeah, I wish I could add more, but that's probably about as much as I could handle right now. My main priority right now is working on pronunciation and reading, so I'll probably be investing in readers for the time being. 

 

So, here's to a year of hard work and (hopefully) results (cheers !) ! 加油！

 

lakers4sho

[新墨西哥人]

Right after going over my goals here, I prompty got some nasty bug for two weeks and my Chinese study basically stopped. All I wanted to do was watch Netflix, (in English!)

 

All I did was some Skritter and maybe a little reading of Secret Garden (uh, like two whole chapters!) I'm up and running again, and getting back into the swing of things.

 

Also, I'm trying a time-tracker for Chinese study. I already use it for my work to track my hours so I'm used to the program and there is an app for iDevices which makes it convenient as that is where I do most of my studying right now. (btw, it's called Toggl, and is free). So now I have "Speaking Chinese", "Listening Chinese", "Writing Chinese" and "Reading Chinese" to time track. Although I haven't bothered tracking Skritter as it tracks it for me. My goal is to study them roughly equally. It may be I get tired of tracking but I think even for a few weeks will help me rebalance my studies. We'll see...

 

Also now I'm wondering if one of my goals should be to take an HSK test. I would have to go out of state though to take it (I go to Seattle once a year as it is). I was wondering what the point was, but after reading HSK threads it sounds like a good way to validate my learning and have a concrete way to track my progress (other than my tutor telling me I'm second year high school level, bleh!)

[Elizabeth_rb]

Second year high school level?  What does he mean by that?  (Out of interest/curiosity/sheer nosiness...)

[新墨西哥人]

She teaches high school Chinese , so she was saying I'm about the same as her second year students (Chinese II in HS in the U.S.) Although my knowledge of hanzi is superior, and my spoken is not as good - but not sure it's worse than the high school students. Hopefully she just meant not as good as my written. :-)

[lakers4sho]

So I'm guessing that's still HSK1 territory? 2nd yr high school Chinese afaik is equivalent to 2nd semester college Chinese (in the US)

lakers4sho

[新墨西哥人]

Yeah, I think of 2nd H.S. courses as being like 2nd semester of a college course. Probably is HSK 1. It's humbling to be such a beginner for so long! Although I really haven't put in the hours I would like to, I've taken long breaks here and there, etc. Still, I'm hoping to take it up to the n+1 level this year. (I guess that would be... HSK 2)

[Elizabeth_rb]

I see!  That was one of the possibilities that I thought of.  The other was that your Chinese was as good as a Chinese person in their second year of high school, which, considering I'd seen your posts about your level before, made me wonder how over-complimentary your teacher was being.  You know what Chinese friends can be like, you just say 'hello' with tones all over the shop and back comes how wonderful your Chinese is!!!LOL

[新墨西哥人]

Yeah I wouldn't believe anyone for a minute if they said I spoke Chinese like a Chinese high schooler! :-) Maybe my daughter could if we moved to China for a while and somehow kept it up back in the states again. I will be very happy if I can get to B1 or B2 level. And be able to read a Chinese newspaper...For now though, I'd like to be a solid A2 - I'm almost that in Pimsleur, but not real life  - and it doesn't count if you can't speak with real people who aren't your teachers.

[Elizabeth_rb]

Yes, that's what bothers me about the other languages I want to learn.  I have no-one to talk to in those languages and I'm not keen on setting up internet exchanges with strangers, so....

[新墨西哥人]

I keep meaning to write up a sign in Chinese to post in the local library to find someone to do a language exchange with. Or just start talking to strangers who I hear speaking Mandarin :-)

[Elizabeth_rb]

Good idea!  You could also try your local university/college and ask if you can place an ad there.  I used to work at a uni and would meet Chinese students every minute of the day.  I have local Chinese speaking friends, so I have no problem with that and I can do German with my German hubby, French with my French friends, Cantonese with Malaysian friends and so on, but no-one for Dutch or Norwegian.  I'll live...

[新墨西哥人]

Elizabeth, wow! I am so impressed with your polyglot-ness.

[Elizabeth_rb]

Oh, don't be!  I really only speak Chinese fairly well and German somewhat behind that.  My French I could pick up again after 6 years or so of study in school, and I did a year of Cantonese at uni about 15 years ago, (which I would like to revive).  The others are all 'one day I'm going to learn X', but probably won't unless we plan to visit a relevant country.  So, it's not that impressive, it just sounds it!

[ZhangKaiRong]

A little update on my status:

 

Due to the fact that audit busy season put me under quite great pressure (working 13-15 hours a day, including weekends as well) my HSK6 preparation progress slowed down a little bit, there were days when I just repeated the same flashcards over and over because I didn't have the energy to learn new ones from the vocab list Which is quite sad. I'm waiting for the end of May, when busy season ends and I will finally have some time to prepare more seriously. There are no great issues, I've solved some 模拟考试 and I achieved 43%, which is not that bad considering that I lack more than half of the new vocab from the HSK6 new words. 听力 is no problem, 阅读 is a b.tch, 写作 is also a lot more difficult than it was on HSK5, but I hope that I will manage it somehow.

 

I've been working on different projects at different locations in my city in the past two months, so I had to commute a lot, which has greatly contributed to my ChinesePod time. I've listened to around 70% of the 高级 podcasts, I understand more and more from the new tracks during my first listening, which is a good progress I guess.

 

However, I didn't have that much time to read articles on 财新 web. I need to dedicate time for that, I know, but on my commuting routes I mainly listen to the podcasts and chatting on 微信 (时差 is really annoying, I can only chat with my Chinese friends during the morning..)

 

Characters, OMG. Haven't written something by hand for ages, so I slowed down, unfortunately. Need to focus on this one.

 

I finished Eileen Chang's 红玫瑰白玫瑰. It took a lot of patience, her sentence patterns a little bit unusual for me, and there were a lot of 成语s. Pleco helped me a lot. Even though it was a short story, it took me two and a half weeks to finish it. Reading in Chinese for fun is out of scope for me I guess, at least now. After finishing the Chinese version, I read the English one too, which took about two and a half hours... It demotivates me, but I heard that patience is the key. Haven't touched Yu Hua's 活着 since last year, that will be my next project.

 

Contacting regularly with my Chinese friends progresses OK, in my limited freetime I often go and see them and eat together. I also met some new 换交生 (from HK and Taiwan), so I made some new friends thanks to Chinese.

 

I have already failed my most important goal this year: getting myself located to China by my company. I had some words with our company's CEO this week, who told me that according to the company policy, it is prohibited to apply for secondments before reaching manager position (which is a shame for one of the four biggest consulting companies). Reaching the position of manager takes at least 6-7 years of the above mentioned crazy work hours, which is not my cup of coffee, so I should think about a plan B how to get back to China as soon as possible. I originally planned to work two years here in my home country, but it seems that I won't have a chance to work in China before 2018