Weekly Intermediate Study Updates - join in!

[AdamD]

@Balthazar This one seems pretty good so far. It’s just a translation of ‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue. The language is basic (at the start, at least) because the narrator is young.

[AdamD]

This week I've just been having fun, writing traditional characters on paper and doing an absolute pile of online chatting on HelloTalk. My grammar is horrible, my reading comprehension is still semi-dormant and words keep not coming to mind, but I'm not panicking about anything at this stage.

I also had a 90 minute voice call with someone whose English was as rusty as my Chinese. It was embarrassing, awkward and slow, but it was well worth doing.

 

The only real downer has been the absolute tsunami of Chinese speakers on HelloTalk rushing at me to tell me (not ask, not suggest) to give up traditional Chinese. Some are trying to help but most are just trolls. I don't understand why people are like this.

 

A side point: I've persevered with bopomofo for so long that this week I started thinking in bopomofo instead of pinyin. That's a new thing and it feels weird.

[Flickserve]

3 hours ago, AdamD said:

The only real downer has been the absolute tsunami of Chinese speakers on HelloTalk rushing at me to tell me (not ask, not suggest) to give up traditional Chinese. 

 

This is a good filter. You can put in your 自己介紹 you don’t want to talk to anybody who says this. 

 

Some  of the younger ones also might not actually know 繁體字

[AdamD]

9 hours ago, Flickserve said:

You can put in your 自己介紹 you don’t want to talk to anybody who says this. 

 

Oh I did, nine times. Some people lecture me because they see it in my 自我介绍, others just don’t bother reading bios. Actually, 95% don’t bother reading bios.

 

Quote

Some  of the younger ones also might not actually know 繁體字

 

They really don’t! I find this endlessly fascinating.

[Flickserve]

I would just troll them back to be honest if they go on about it. Aren’t they proud of 5000 years of chinese history? Haha. 

[AdamD]

Yeah, I don't want to get involved. Online fights are the very last thing I want from language exchange.

[Flickserve]

I think I have a better position to argue because of some Cantonese ability and a heritage learner. 

 

However, I don’t use 繁體字 often。Maybe I will try and test the waters. 

[AdamD]

It might help you in Hong Kong, but really it could be enough for you to just know the major differences in the vocabulary you're already familiar with. I've chosen to break out the pencil and write everything, mainly because it's how I retain them.

[zander1]

Haven’t posted for a while, thought I’d do a brief update.

 

Studying is going well, been working through 《最好的我们》(the book, not the TV show which I have watched before) and have started using the absolute treasure trove of 知乎. I’d used it before, but only for looking up random questions similarly to Yahoo answers, never for more long form reading. As someone who used to be addicted to Reddit (particularly Ask reddit) it’s really great for both entertainment and also for picking up new random words. The answers that are voted to the top are usually quite detailed and are perfect for studying in that I have a very high level of comprehension with the occasional new chengyu or whatever. 

 

For TV shows, it was weird as I was really enjoying 甄嬛传 until I wasn’t. I think I just reached peak saturation on costume dramas for a bit, I’ll probably come back to it. Am now watching 白鹿原, which is good. Podcast I’m still cycling through my favorites, which with the amount of commuting I’m doing has meant a lot of listening! 

 

Excitingly I’m going back to China this summer to take part in Princeton in Beijing.

[mackie1402]

So in Jan I started studying a Bachelor Degree in Chinese online. I'm doing 45 credits per semester which is equivalent to 150% of a full time student, so add in running a business and it's pretty exhausting.

 

I've made huge improvements with my writing and grammar, which I'm happy with. Before I'd struggle to write a few sentences, and now I'm doing two to three 600 characters assignments every week.

 

The classes are so different compared to a summer class I took in China before. That summer was basically lectures every day of PPT explaining words. There wasn't much interaction with the class, so very little time to practice the grammar and vocab spoken. In these classes online, the teacher really pushes you to speak. It doesn't matter if its wrong, just try and speak. There are a lot of role plays and groupwork too which encourages communicating in Chinese.

 

I've been using Plecos OCR heavily to learn new words and it's been a life saver. Just screenshot the pdf we are sent and I can instantly add words to my decks.

 

I've also just started reading "All Things Considered" by Princeton. It's not a book I'm sitting down to study seriously, I'm just reading it before I sleep at night. If I don't fully understand it I don't stress about it, just try and enjoy it. I've found myself really consolidating grammar patterns just by reading like this.

 

On the downside, with Brexit looming, I could need to pay tuition fees starting next semester, and they're not cheap! However this semester has really pushed me to a new level, so I'm willing to pay the fees. Fingers crossed there's a grace period for current students. We'll see! 

[Flickserve]

I don't really 'study' as such.

 

I am happy to report a few positives.

 

Had a language exchange with a motivated a talkative person from North China this weekend.

 

I take my kid to badminton training and I met two mainland mothers who do not speak Cantonese. We talked about training systems and some admin issues and about the kids. I couldn't understand 100% but just enough to communicate with breaks and some umming and ahhhing with educated guesses.

 

My negative was a potential language partner having a disagreement over  the reading of some mandarin text sentences. She said they were not totally native. I said it is fine - everyone will have a sightly different personal version and opinion. She pressed the point further. In the end I said, it really is fine and I don't want to get into arguments. If she didn't think they were suitable, I would try to find some other sentences. I sort of got on a slight fuse  because I just had a very simple request for her which was now getting complicated. Probably not very nice of me but I haven't replied since because I just need a simple life.

[AdamD]

No real updates for the past week, other than that I’m staying the course with text conversation and writing with a pen. I dropped into a couple of group voice calls and dropped out because I couldn’t understand anything.

[AdamD]

Reading and writing: I'm getting my character knowledge back in order, and am also building on my knowledge of traditional. It's coming together steadily. Reading is only a problem when I don't know words or when the grammar throws me.

 

Listening and speaking: My speaking seems to be fine apart from terrible grammar, but my listening is as horrible and embarrassing as ever. I just tried calling a Chinese speaking company's helpdesk and it couldn't have gone worse. Watching TV has gone just as badly. Refusing to discuss this has been the best approach because it means I don't have to defend or justify being so crap, but it doesn't leave me any less upset about my failure in this regard.

 

Next week I'm going back to Taiwan but I'm not putting pressure on myself this time. I know very clearly what I can and can't do, and I won't be hoping for any miracles or sudden leaps in ability.

[imron]

5 hours ago, AdamD said:

I just tried calling a Chinese speaking company's helpdesk and it couldn't have gone worse

Phone calls are the worst - even with *good* listening skills.

[AdamD]

True, but I understood 5% at most.

[imron]

16 minutes ago, AdamD said:

but I understood 5% at most.

Based on average word frequencies, this means you understood all the 的s and nothing else

[Publius]

4 hours ago, imron said:

Phone calls are the worst - even with *good* listening skills.

One of my pastime is tuning in to LBC and listening to the host and phone-in listeners pattering on about -- you guessed it -- Brexit.

 

3 hours ago, AdamD said:

True, but I understood 5% at most.

After studying Italian for a year I was able to read newspapers and even Pinocchio in the original with the help of a dictionary. Then I tried a 10-minute newscast. Guess how much I understood? Exactly two words: buonasera (good evening) and Casa Bianca (White House). Not exactly a surprise because I had never leaned the language in its spoken form.

[mackie1402]

So most of us in China are all stuck at home with not much to do... What a fantastic opportunity to study! 

I've never had so much free time on my hands before! 

 

I went through my bookcase last night and thought I'm just going to finish some books before I go back to work. One goal of mine is to improve my reading speed, so I just want to do some casual reading at home. I found my collection of Graded Chinese Readers which come in 500 words, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500 and 3000. I remember reading the first story in the 1500 word book, but that was about it. I picked up the 500 words last night, and I finished the whole book of 15 stories this morning. Of course, it's way too easy, but at least that's one book done! They do add some interesting vocabulary, too! It was pretty interesting learning words like 电网 （electric fence），放风（prisoners exercise time）and 越狱（escape prison）. I feel like you get to understand Chinese culture a bit better, too. 

 

I'm just about to start book 2 which is 1000 words. We'll see how long that takes to finish. 

 

On another note, I'm still studying Chinese online. It's been about a year now and have just started my third semester. I'm quite looking forward to March as I'll start a Chinese linguistics course. I'll keep you all updated.

 

Stay safe!

[mackie1402]

Roll call! 
@AdamD @Flickserve @zander1 @BearXiong @CherrylS @sekkar @biyalan @Wurstmann @stapler

 

How's everyone getting on? 

I'm halfway through my book that I mentioned. Hoping to finish it next week. 

[sekkar]

Got a job in Shanghai and moved there last October! Unfortunately that means I don't really have time/motivation to study much anymore. The working language at my job is mostly English, but fortunately I still get lots of opportunity to practice outside of work.

 

My Chinese is at the level where I can function normally without resorting to English, but I should still do some studying to improve my writing and the more formal parts of the language.

 

Did an HSK 5 test for fun in January and scored 273, happy with the final result even if I did kind of crappy on the writing part.