The 2014 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[老爷子]

My goal is to make sure I get decent score on the 普通话水平测试。 My goal is an 80,but we will see how it goes.

[edelweis]

In April: about 8-9 hours of Chinese study (mainly SRS) and around 4 hours of Spanish study (mainly grammar).  This is rather pathetic   but it's still better than nothing.

 

Chinese radio in the background daily - most of the time I barely get the topic. And now my other audio files (from textbooks and  Chinese teaching podcasts) sound terribly slow and unnatural.

I'd like to learn Chinese vocabulary at a much higher pace than 2-3 words a day, but that's rather unlikely to happen (?). I still intend to try and study more Chinese daily, we'll see how that goes.

 

I tested myself online and found out my Spanish is around level B1 which is not very high at all. So I intend to keep studying grammar and add vocabulary study and daily reading. I hereby renounce English fanfiction and news for the rest of May (too bad about that Star Trek fic this morning) and will read Spanish fanfiction and news instead (but this doesn't count as "study time").

 

Lastly I will get my hands on a translation textbook (en->fr) tomorrow and see what happens.

 

My Mahjongtime subscription expired. So I might study more out of sheer boredom... or cave in and renew it

[tysond]

Update end of April:

 

Summary:

- Have started attending customer meetings in Chinese (hard) 

- Finished reading another Chinese Breeze readers.  Have been reading parts of novels.

- Listening to around an hour of podcasts a day, also have done some shadowing

- Focused a lot of adding/learning vocab (over 400 words), from various sources - developed some new techniques for this

- Revised using clozed sentences (30-60 minutes a day)

 

Progress:

- My listening has definitely improved, able to follow meetings in Chinese on familiar topics at 95% comprehension.  "Tagging" unknown words and looking them up (or writing them down) while continuing to listen is now OK.  Still struggling with very casual conversation, unclear speech.

- Speaking has improved in that I'm able to bring in more vocab, be better understood, conduct more business in Chinese.  Talking with professionals and colleagues I don't know well is OK in Chinese now (on topics I am familiar with, if there are gaps I throw in english to cover gaps, which is OK and normal for even Chinese folks at the office but not with customers).

- Reading/Writing is improving over time - character recognition is definitely better.  Street signage, menus, subtitles, etc are about 80-90% understood and able to read out loud.   Handwritten and more formal texts are still very tough.

 

Journey to the HSK:

 

Vocabulary is one of my biggest blockers to further progress in Chinese.  

 

I have been adding vocab steadily throughout this month.  I revise vocab by adding sentences to Anki (I have thousands of sentences with audio ready to use from various sources including movies).  Then I cloze-delete the new vocab and play fill-the-gap.

 

Previously I was just adding from lists, but that was a bit boring.  This month I've started using Chinese Text Analyzer in my routine, which I find super helpful.   I've already marked around 1900 known words in the text analyzer, so what's marked as unknown is potentially interesting to learn.

 

So what I will do is find a text I want to understand better.  For example, the novel 圈子圈套 .  I grab the text, put it into the text analyzer.

Then I extract the unknown words and put them into a spreadsheet.  I have some formulas setup that lookup each words frequency (SUBTLEX), and whether it's in an HSK list.   I then look at the top 5 words per HSK list, and those outside, like this:

 

 

I simply pick and choose which words to learn (or re-learn if already encountered).  I will find an example sentence or two from Anki and add them to my revision schedule.   

 

When I get bored of this list... I change source material.  I grabbed the subtitles for The Dark Knight Rises, the transcription for an episode of 奋斗, an email from work, a transcript of a video from work, even the vocab list for the textbook I've used for the last year. 

 

Using this technique, I've increased my "known" words list from 1000 last month to around 1900 today (a lot of these I obviously knew already but I didn't have them on a list).  So now I know I only have around 230 words left on the HSK4 list that I haven't learned yet. 

 

 

[imron]

I have some formulas setup that lookup each words frequency (SUBTLEX), and whether it's in an HSK list.

Sorting against HSK (and/or other) lists is a feature I plan to add shortly to CTA. Ideally I'd like to get it to a point where people don't need to be exporting to Excel or any intermediate programs and can go straight from CTA to a flashcard program/SRS program.

[OneEye]

Wow, I haven't posted in this thread in over two months. Let's see...

 

1) I'm really regretting taking the dialectology class. The material is interesting, some of it very much so, but the professor is terrible. I've talked about how awful he is elsewhere, so I won't repeat it here, but I wish I had taken one of the other classes instead. My 書法專題研究 class is outstanding, so I'm happy about that.

 

2) Japanese is more or less going well, except for the last two weeks or so. I've been incredibly busy, and Japanese had to go on the back burner temporarily. I'm going to Tokyo for a few days next week to look at apartments, so hopefully I can brush up a bit before then and practice a bit while I'm there.

 

3) Still haven't started back on programming. Hopefully I'll have the time and brain power soon enough, because it will be really useful for some of the projects I've got in the pipeline. I think I'm going to start on MIT's 6.00x course on Python.

 

4) Taiwanese didn't happen. Cantonese is on hiatus for now. No big deal. They'll be there when I'm ready.

 

 

I mentioned that I've been busy. Translation work has picked up suddenly, so I've been doing a lot of that. I also had a midterm paper for my dialectology class that I spent a ton of time on, only for the professor to tell me when I turned it in, "Oh, after class last week I said not to worry about it, that instead everyone will have to give an oral report." So even though I was the only one in class to do the paper, it doesn't count and I still had to prepare a summary of a pretty technical paper for the oral report. I arrived to class today ready to give the presentation, then he wasted most of the class time rambling so I didn't get to do it. Since I'll be in Tokyo next week, I'll have to wait another two weeks before I do it, so I'll have to re-prepare when it gets closer to that time. I don't expect people to understand how difficult it is to write a paper or get a 30-minute presentation ready in a foreign language, but come on...

 

Well, I said I wouldn't talk about him, and here I am.

 

Anyway, the really big thing just came up earlier this week. A friend of mine asked a while back if I would be willing to invest in the company he was planning to start. I thought about it for a while (a few months, I think), then finally decided to go for it and asked earlier this week if he was still interested. He and his co-founder responded by asking me to be a partner, or a third co-founder, or something. I don't really know what the difference is, but I'm reading up on this stuff and learning as I go. Anyway, we're planning on turning in all the paperwork to found the company next week. I had to go get a chop the other day (after 3 years living here, I still don't have one) so that all the paperwork will be official.

 

I probably shouldn't say too much about what we're doing because I don't know how much they're wanting to divulge just yet. I can say, though, that we have a few projects planned and a major one already in the works, and that they're going to be a big deal for learners of Chinese. Anyway, the company is based in here Taipei, but I'll be able to do my part of the work from Tokyo when I move there. Rest assured that chinese-forums will be the first place to hear about it when we have a product ready.

 

So that's it for now. My goals for May are to make it through the month, pass my 書法專題研究 final, and make some progress in Japanese and programming.

[hedwards]

My goal this year is mainly clearing up all the holes in my language skills. Because of how focused I was previously on survival Mandarin, I've got a rather large number of holes to fill. Well, that and reading an actual Chinese book. I'm working on 卷发公司的案子 which I really should be able to read before too long, it's only got 400 unique words and 300 unique characters and I know more words than that already, just not those specific ones.

 

Also, I guess my other goal is to get back into a native environment, the US is starting to grate on me again.

[Hilde-07]

Here are my goals :

 

• Re-read the Chinese Breeze Greaded Reader Series an listen to the accompanying audio
• Repeat the already learned vacabulary and grammar
• Prepare for HSK4 (next year)
• Reading books, comics, short stories
• Improve my speaking-Chinese

[zhu]

my goal is simply to become fluent using chinese language with reading a lot of book, listening and speaking chinese.. 

hope one year again i could be fluent in chinese

[edelweis]

Updating because I am tired of May and I want a brand new month already.

Studied seriously for 19 days (only 2 missed days during that period) and then fell back into my usual habits. I don't know whether I exhausted myself with all that studying or something. Anyway, it's nothing new. Someday I'll try to find a pattern in my study habits variations. I aimed for 2.5 hours a day, with a deadline of 10pm on weekdays and 2pm on weekends (i.e. no more studying after that hour). If I try this again in June, I'll probably aim for just 2 hours a day?

 

Totals for May:

English: 7 hours (pronunciation + translation). The Brits really made a mess of the Latin alphabet, I really don't get why they are still using it. (and my pronunciation still sucks, and will probably remain this way, although I am slowly starting to distinguish the vowels when listening, instead of relying only on consonants and context.)

Spanish: 7.5 hours (vocabulary + grammar) and some fanfiction reading and TV watching on top of that. Spanish has way too many verbs starting with a and ending in ar

Chinese: 27 hours   well it's less than most full time students study in a single week but still... not too shabby for me. Still doing SRS and active listening almost daily and dabbled in reading, characters, spoken language colloquialisms etc. + passive listening every day.

Other languages: almost nothing (1h maybe).

 

In June: I don't anticipate much studying this first week due to having to clean out my pigsty of a flat and entertaining guests. Then I guess I'll try to pick it up again... I'd like to finish that first level workbook of Spanish grammar this month and perhaps study the 2nd chapter of the vocabulary textbook.

 

I have some money to spend on language learning. But I am undecided about how to go about it. I probably won't go to China because anything shorter than a month isn't worth the jet lag exhaustion and overall hassle (?)

So I was thinking about perhaps taking days off regularly in the Autumn term to attend university classes (but I would only be able to register for civilisation classes?) and/or Confucius Institute classes or even private classes, and why not Instituto Cervantes classes? or just the Spanish classes organised by my city hall...

Ah well this is probably just wishful thinking...

I guess I'll just keep at it at my randomly varying pace and perhaps someday in 5-10 years I'll find out I have studied 8000+ vocabulary words and can read modern Chinese more or less fluently.

 

Oh, it's been 5 years since I started studying Chinese already. Almost everyday I am alternately amazed at how I can understand stuff I couldn't make heads or tails of just months earlier, and disheartened as most of the native contents is still a big bunch of unknown or misheard words, bafflingly long written sentences, references to Chinese classics or whatever

[tysond]

Progress update for May:

 

Overall a pretty productive month - I was in Beijing for most of the month but did a five day trip to Yunnan and visited Lijiang and Shangri-La.  I managed to do quite a lot of self study and classes with my teacher as a result.

The trip to Yunnan was also good, although they definitely speak accented Chinese with some interesting changes - but I got the hang of it after a while and could follow a lot of the interesting stories of our driver, sometimes with assistance from our guide (who spoke somewhat more standard Mandarin and English).  

So each car trip had a good hour or two of listening and speaking practice, plus there's a lot less English available in these places so I was always reading place names, menus, signs in shops, etc.  

 

Other progress:

- Reading lots of bits and pieces of articles, short stories, graded readers.  Most of the graded readers around the 800-1500 word mark are not too taxing although there's a fair bit of new vocabularly to deal with (sometimes I just use the glosses and keep going, sometimes it seems useful and I add it to SRS).   My reading speed continues to improve - recently watched Star Trek Out of Darkness with Chinese subs and could read most of the sentences and see how they were translating, sneaking in some Chinese practice into an English movie.  And I am finding getting around Beijing is much easier these days as I can read so many of the street names, place names, etc.

- Listening is much improved now with Chinesepod intermediate dialogs being mostly an exercise in learning the 5-6 new words for the dialog (e.g. the topical stuff).  Upper intermediate is still challenging because the sentences are longer and there's quite a bit more vocab.  Most of my listening challenge is unfamiliar vocab which stacks up in my brain and breaks my flow of comprehension, especially abstract stuff.  I haven't been out on customer visits, but hope to do some more in future.

- Speaking has been getting some good practice at work with more frequent work meetings in Chinese.  However I still have a couple of lingering pronunciation issues I need to iron out - right now "chu" and "ju" are a little off unless I speak very slowly and deliberately.  I did recently have my teacher congratulate me on reading a new sentence out loud very well (all correct pronunciaiton and rhythm) which is nice because I can feel myself speeding up on reading sentences when they are mostly familiar words.  

- Writing is going well, I write everything I SRS, which takes longer but it's fun.  My writing is getting a bit faster and clearer but I'm still not spending much time write sentences/paragraphs.  I've been doing an average of an hour of SRS a day which is not really enough to get through my entire backlog, but keeps adding new words at a fairly steady pace.  It's about all the time I can afford anyway.

 

Vocab Progress

My short-term goal to learn the HSK4 vocab is going well, I have around 150 words left, and they are less and less frequent.  It's been a very worthwhile exercise, helping fill in a lot of words that are rather abstract but frequent, and you don't think you need (e.g. they are not nouns and verbs you can just slot into basic sentences) but actually come up a lot in business writing, articles, etc.  I've kind of been ignoring such words a lot of the time, and missing a lot of meaning.

If the new words are an obvious combination of well known characters, it's pretty quick.  If it's a very clear noun or verb, it's fairly quick.  But if it is an unusual combination of less well known characters I typically add two sentences invovling the word, and look for other examples of the characters so I can solidify the knowledge in a few different contexts.

Also adding lots of words from various other sources, although sometimes I'm just including them in sentences but not clozing them unless they are common (e.g. adding them for exposure, so I see & hear them when the more common words come up in clozes).   I'm trying to do this to build more passive vocabularly.  Similarly, I'm listening to mp3s of the soundtrack of movies I know fairly well, so I can be exposed and guess meanings and later on more formally study.

It's a bit disconcerting when I count words and find I still have a big gap to goals.  But there are 2200+ words in the Chinese Text Analyzer and I perhaps have another 500+ (maybe even more) that I am able to recognize but not produce reliably.  So I guess it's a slow and gradual process of lots passive exposure and then explicitly learning the most important things.

[OneEye]

My goals for May are to make it through the month, pass my 書法專題研究 final, and make some progress in Japanese and programming.

 

Made it through the month, did well on my final presentation for the 書法 class (the final exam is yet to come), made progress in Japanese. Didn't do any programming. That might have to wait until I move.

 

I went to Tokyo a few weeks ago to find an apartment. Found one. Spoke as much Japanese as I could while I was there, and I think I should be in a good place to really start learning intensively when I get there in August.

 

Anyway, on to my usual categories:

 

1) School is nearly finished. The only thing I have left besides attending class is the final exam for the 書法 class and a paper for dialectology. I have about three more weeks of class, and another two weeks or so after that to write the paper. Should be no problem.

 

2) Japanese is slow and steady for now. I'm using the iKnow Core 2000 course. I'll probably stick with this for now and then reevaluate once I get to Tokyo.

 

3) Like I said, programming isn't happening right now. I'm keeping this category though, because I'll be picking it back up.

 

4) I'm not going to be working on Taiwanese or Cantonese any time soon, except for possibly dabbling here and there. I won't have this category next time around.

 

The company I mentioned last time around is now starting to really get underway. We've been meeting almost every day to brainstorm and discuss future products, and we should be officially registered and operational by the end of June. The meetings are held almost entirely in Chinese and last pretty much the whole day, which is great, but tiring. Once I'm in Tokyo, I'll be Skyping in for meetings a few times per week, but the research will mostly be done in Chinese, so I have a nice built-in way of maintaining my Chinese. I'll also continue translating while I'm there so I have some sort of income until we actually have a product and some revenue. I'll also have to work in studying Japanese and programing in there somewhere, but I'm sure I'll manage.

 

Goals for June: finish school (and do well), study Japanese, don't go crazy, get ready for the move to Tokyo.

[Carrie]

Hi everyone, I've just joined this forum after learning Chinese as a hobby since September. I've attended a beginners class and am currently in an Intro to GCSE class which I've got four more weeks left. Hopefully getting involved with this forum will help me to strengthen my knowledge and give me more opportunities to practice what I'm learning I'm currently at a very basic level and my vocabulary is around 3-400 words. 

 

So my goals for June: (I think these are going to seem quite small compared to everyone elses!)

 

1) Listen to Chinese for at least half an hour per day. I've found the CRI Chinese lessons are pretty good, and then just having radio on in the background.

2) Practice writing for at least 15 minutes per day. 

3) Introduce two new vocabulary words per day. 

 

End of Year goals: 

1) Start a GCSE course

2) Have a vocabulary of around 1000 words

3) Be able to read a Graded Reader Level 1 book

 

I think these are all achievable if I still to my learning plan. 

[MPhillips]

...

[imron]

There's an existing thread on 水浒传, I'm sure you'll find it if you search. Renzhe will be most jealous if you get through it in 3 months.

[Lu]

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

Still feeding Anki and learning new words, but still not feeding it chengyu. Need to get onto that...

- Translate another book and not miss the deadline this time.

Still working on it. I can see the end of the book on the horizon, but the deadline is also looming, so not sure if I'll make it. But at least I won't be nearly as badly behind as with the last book.

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

Found a language partner and made a Taiwanese friend.　It's not enough really, my spoken Chinese is really getting worse.

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

Close to finishing another book, but only the third this year it seems, so I could read more. The difficulty is in finding something that keeps me interested past the first two-thirds or so.

In non-Chinese-related:

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

Partly done (optometrist part).

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

The other day I transferred money from my savings to my normal account and I realised that this was the first time I had done that in the past year (and this was after transferring three times that amount to my savings account a few months ago). I'm living like a poor student, but I'm not actually eating my savings, it seems.

- Get up earlier, start work earlier, and get more done as a result (which will help in not missing aforementioned deadline and in making aforementioned money).

I'm making another attempt to make 'getting up earlier' my new good habit.

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

I started again. Big race (5 km, woohoo) is in less than a month.

[traunk]

My Chinese Goals for the rest of the year are:

 

• Prepare for and pass HSK 4.
• More open ended Chinese conversation with a native.
• Read a novel.
• Review all the grammar I have learned in the last 6 months.
• Finish the PAVC series.
• Do more to increase my listening and Speaking.

[roddy]

Traunk, do you have any ideas on which novel? 

[traunk]

Roddy, 戰爭遊戲, Ender's Game is my pick. Wish me luck! :-) 

[roddy]

Nice choice! Good luck applying the sci-fi vocab in real life ;-)

 

If you have the time, it'd be great if you could post about it as you go - like laurenth did with his pulpy supernatural fiction. 

[imron]

If you have read Ender's Game and are highly familiar with it this might work ok, however keep in mind that if this is your first attempt at a Chinese novel then you'll be making things difficult for yourself by choosing a translated science fiction novel.

 

This is because the book will be talking about imaginary and non-existent concepts, meaning that the translation will also use terms that are imaginary and made up.  When you are reading in your native language, it's easy enough to recognise these things as imaginary concepts and move on.  For language learners, if you haven't yet reached the point where you can recognise such things it means struggling to parse sentences and trying to look up non-existent words in the dictionary.  This will have an effect on your enjoyment, which in turn will affect whether or not you can finish the book.

 

If you cannot yet parse sentences well and easily identify word boundaries for imaginary things then I would recommend reading several relatively ordinary novels first.  《活着》is relatively short and simple, and《圈子圈套》is also not bad if you want something with a more modern context.

 

Reading is definitely something I encourage though (see more of my thoughts about it here), and I can understand the appeal of wanting to read a story you are familiar with.  If you do start with Ender's Game and then find the things mentioned above giving you too much grief, remember it's perfectly ok to put it down and come back to it later once you have read a number of other novels first.