Weekly Intermediate Study Updates - join in!

[艾墨本]

@Stapler,

 

Thanks for sharing your struggles with us all. And it certainly is a struggle.

 

If the TV show was too difficult, take something that is easier. Within language teaching, my goal is to always present content that is n+1 for the students. That is to say, only one level above where they are. Any more and it's too much. As I self study, Chinese Text Analyzer is really helpful for this so that I make sure to select appropriate readings and avoid ones that will just shut me down. 

 

Another thing I try doing is having clear lines: when am I studying something to learn its language content and when am I studying something to enjoy the content. When it's the latter, I don't worry about how much I understand or don't understand. I just let it breeze over me. It sounds like GTO is a good show for you to let just breeze over you. 

 

I do agree that it can be hard to work on some parts of the language while not in China: speaking and listening being the two major ones. However, I also found it easier to focus on reading and writing while not in China. I found reading graded readers particularly satisfying. I would often go with ones at a lower level than me just so I could have the satisfaction of doing something in Chinese that felt easy. 

 

Is there something you can pick up from the past that might feel easier now? How about relaxing the goal of improving your Chinese and enjoying reviewing what you already know?

 

Low morale is just a different kind of motivation when studying. It doesn't have to mean "stop".

 

*EDIT*: Went back and looked at some of your previous posts, Stapler. Helped me remember all the useful, helpful, and motivating words I've read in this thread that you wrote. Your post #41 was particularly helpful for me.

From your previous posts, it also seems you are afraid of having a reading level much high than your speaking and listening level. Have you done much with audio books? Read the book first and then listen to it several times and maybe even shadow the recording. One way you could use your strengths to support your weaknesses.

[imron]

Suddenly the huge feeling of "1000's of hours, many years, still can't even understand any kind of TV". It's very demotivating. I'm really starting to doubt you can learn Chinese outside of the country without the constant noise, interaction, etc. it seems like I'll never get enough practice and experience to get a basic level of fluency/communication where I can just enjoy using the language without it turning into a wall of noise. Ugh.

Seems like you've hit a plateau.  Don't worry, it will pass and there's light at the end of the tunnel.  See this thread for someone who overcame a similar feeling.

 

The other thing it might be useful to do, is to dial down the difficulty of what you are studying, like 艾墨本 mentioned with finding n+1 content.  Reading/listening/watching content too far above your current level can be demotivating.  Reading/listening/watching something at your level, with just a small amount of new words on the other hand is the complete opposite and can give you the feeling that you *can* actually read/listen/watch Chinese.

[Ino75]

@ stapler

 

If it can make you feel better, I choose to watch GTO because I saw it before in my own language, so I knew about the story and the main content. Now I have watched a lot of episodes so I am used to the way they speak and the speed of the speech but at the beginning it was not easy. What I do when I am really lost is to watch the French version (English version is also available on Youtube, I just checked) then watch the Chinese version again, so I know exactly what the episode is about. Then it is easier to get key words because I already know the content.

 

I can understand how you feel but I am sure you morale will recover soon. It is definitely possible to learn Chinese out of China. I find myself way more serious about studying Chinese when I am in my home country than in China because in France I force myself to have as much exposure as possible, if I don't, I am afraid to lose all the progress I made so far. Maybe some topics talked about it before, but it is not because you are in China that you will have the chance to practice your Chinese as often as you would like to. For instance, some days I was spending the whole day without speaking Chinese - beside basic stuff like "多少钱?, 谢谢...". I met people who spent 10 years in China and have a very basic level. It doesn't matter where you are, what makes the difference is your attitude.

I learned most of my Chinese out of China. And when I was in China, I was practicing/reinforcing what I learned on my own, in France. I feel like being in China is like singing live in front of the audience, but the rehearsal part is all you can do in your home country.

 

We all go through ups and downs I guess, I had my morale down a couple weeks ago but then recovered. If GTO is too had for you now, stick to easier content and come back to it later when you feel it will be more accessible. 加油!

[stapler]

Thanks for all the feedback and consolations. I was mainly just having a bad day (with Chinese) and wanted to vent. It's very therapeutic. I'm already "back on board".

 

There's nothing in particular about GTO that makes it more difficult or easier for me to understand. Like every other show I can follow if I'm reading the Chinese subtitles but I always try not to and focus on the audio. Then my comprehension goes from "okay" to nothing and it gets frustrating. I have this experience with all TV. So I've decided to completely axe looking at TV for a while (a long time). And go back to just focusing on beginner material (which unfortunately will never be as interesting as television )

 

My main problem with audiobooks is that I can't actually stay focused for too long. Boredom seems to quickly set in (I'm very impatient and lazy learner). And when I already know the story that becomes even more so. I can only seem to keep my audio attention alert when i'm doing something I'm interested in eg. Actually speaking to Chinese people where I sincerely want to know what they're saying and thinking etc. That said, maybe I should just be more disciplined. I've got some excellent audio material - the mp3s that come with the Sinolingua graded readers - that I might try. I probably need to ramp up the amount of Chinesepod I'm listening to as well.

 

Speaking of cpod, yesterday, I transcribed some upper intermediate lessons into my big notebook full of the phrases I'm recording multiple times. It's been very helpful for grasping all of the lesson. I'm just a bit concerned about where to go to after doing all the upper intermediate lessons. The  jump from the upper intermediate lessons to real native audio is still immense

 

I think the right attitude for now is to adopt a kind of "prepare for going to China to learn Chinese" mentality. It's perhaps unreasonable to assume I can really grasp the language on my own here in Australia. A more healthy attitude is to consider it laying the foundation for future, proper, study - even if that opportunity never arises.

 

one extra thought: I just realised that watching TV with subtitles is probably a great way to increase your reading speed - which I guess is especially useful for people who want to do HSK tests or something similar. I remember as a kid watching foreign shows with English subtitles really pushed up my reading speed. Definitely could be a useful exercise for Chinese too.

[Wurstmann]

If you want to get better at listening you have to listen. A lot.

So don't stop watching TV. If you keep on studying and watching you WILL get better.

There will be a day when you suddenly realize: "Wow, I just understood this whole sentence, segment, scene,..".

[laurenth]

While I was sinking in yet another bout of total despair at the lack of any visible progress in my listening comprehension level, I was offered a plane ticket to spend one week in Taiwan, and I took the opportunity to inject a  breath of fresh air in my study routine for a few weeks.

 

I've always wanted to become familiar with traditional characters, so that's a golden opportunity. I wiped the dust that had gathered on my copy of De Francis' "Character Text for Beginning Chinese" and "Character Text for Intermediate Chinese" (I had received them years ago from someone who'd stopped studying Chinese) and started reading one lesson/day. In theory, there should not be a vast quantity of new material in there as far as grammar and vocab are concerned (we'll see...), so I'm using the books as readers, to familiarize myself with traditional characters.

 

Also I discovered that the audio files of these books are available as podcasts, so I've been listening to that material. Finally something I can understand… Sigh, I have to go back to lesson 1, year 1 to find some comprehensible input…

 

Simultaneously, I started cramming traditional characters with Pleco.

 

Also, I restarted doing transcription exercises: I take a (nearly random) podcast, feed it into WorkAudioBook, loop through it and, after many many repetitions of each sentences, try to produce a transcript (in pinyin when I'm working on paper; in characters when I'm on the computer) as fully and accurately as possible. Deep inside, I'm convinced that it's a useful exercise though I've yet to see conclusive results.

 

Also, I would have liked to watch the 魔幻手机 series. A few months ago, it was available on Youtube, alas I've been unable to find it this week. For some reason Chinese video sites like Sohu have always been incredibly slow on my computer.

[艾墨本]

@laurenth

 

I've been thinking about doing  transcription exercises. I'm looking forward to updates on if you find it helping your Chinese at all.

As for Chinese video website, you actually need to VPN into China sometimes. I've seen an app on chrome that supposedly does this in a simple way, though I've forgotten what it's called.

 

Onto my update: I'm gonna make this a little shorter because I'm tired!

 

 

Reading: I'm still reading 草房子 and have passed page 100! This is exciting for me because it is the first time I've gotten into triple digits with a Chinese book. I'm loving the story itself and find it to be mostly comprehensible input. At this point I've picked out around 300 words to study along the way. I put the first 90ish into Anki. More on this in vocabulary section. I have remained mostly on goal with 20 pages per week. I fell a few short last week but am confident I can make it up this week.

 

Listening: I stuck on goal and have gone out once a week with Chinese friends. I learned the basics of calligraphy once and then spent a long long day with some co-workers and their talkative kids. I had to keep my Chinese on point with those kids the entire time. It was intense but rewarding. I was braindead the next day, though. 

 

Doing edX has fallen completely by the way side. I haven't been doing it. Reading and work is taking up that time. I am, however, now watching 欢乐颂 and am on episode three. It is so good! First Chinese TV I've felt is actually quality.

 

Speaking: I have not made time to check out 锵锵三人行. I think I will sideline that for awhile. I have tried shadowing a few podcasts in Chinese. I like it and want to do it more. I feel very busy as is, though. I will try adding this in next week and see how it goes.

 

I've felt more self conscious about my speaking lately, particularly how not-smooth my speech is how many tones I mess up. I think I need to just talk slower for now. My mouth and my mind aren't moving at the same speed.

 

Vocabulary: It's been going smoothly. I missed four days out of eighteen. But somedays I did close to an hour while most days I've done the minimum 20 minutes. However, a big change has been doing my "life" deck on Pleco of words I hear throughout my day that seem useful. My current setup of their SRS doesn't seem to repeat them enough, though.

 

Overall, these past few weeks have been successful. I'm happy with my progress but frustrated with my failures. I still have the same longstanding urge of suddenly waking up with fluent Chinese. I also get jealous whenever someone speaks a non-native language fluently. In many ways, studying Chinese has continually brought to the surface my character flaws and demand I face them.

[stapler]

@laurenth 魔幻手机 is on youtube

 

@ 艾墨本 - "I also get jealous whenever someone speaks a non-native language fluently. In many ways, studying Chinese has continually brought to the surface my character flaws and demand I face them." Me too. Not sure if it's a character flaw. More like a character benefit if it inspires you to keep on practicing!

[xit]

I have just finished reading the book~~~   Also finished the textbook today. Feeling epic 

 

Ok, overall I've been kind of busy and didn't have much time for Chinese. So I only focused on finishing these two. Apparently this book took me 6 months to read  Tho I was pretty sloppy in the first few months. It definitely had was too many unknown words and characters, so much so that it should probably be called skimming rather than reading. But, I managed to follow the main plot, to fully understand some parts with simpler vocab, oh, and, finish a whole book. Until I build up my vocabulary, this will be something I'll have to face head on, on a daily basis.

 

The textbook I finished is boya quasi-intermediate 1, I feel the texts in it describe my current level the best. It was interesting, easy to follow, I learned some new words, and also added some I could recognize but couldn't write. Also, a lot of the words seem to be HSK 5 level, which is perfect for me. I did kind of skim through this book, focusing more on my passive skills. I plan on continuing on with the next book, this time throughly learning all the words and grammar, as well as trying to incorporate them in my active skills set. I do have one objection with these books, which is that the grammar section isn't written for the students but for the teachers. This didn't seem to pose any problem when I was already familiar with certain rules, but then I came to some I hadn't quite internalized, and it was truly painful. So, I'm thinking of finding a grammar with a workbook, and use it to study. So, if someone knows a good one, based on my needs (aiming for HSK 5), feel free to recommend~

 

Right now, I have a 10 pages long story ready to be read next, I'll probably use it for vocab as well, but I'm in a need of a new book. I'm looking at the book of the month part of the forum, but I fear everything is too hard for me right now. I like these romance novels because even with the gazilion of unknown words I can still kinda follow along, it's like, oh he kissed her, they're living together, they're talking about this and that...The parts I don't understand don't affect my reading pleasure that much. Ok right now, they're making lunch, do I really need to understand the ingredients and the process behind it? At this point, no. I realize there's a lot of fault to my logic, but I feel it's also helped a lot with my grammar, being able to mentally separate the words in a sentence, and I've also noticed I'm reading those texts from the textbook a bit faster. Maybe someone in this topic can recommend a book that's fun to read, but not too hard and not too depressing (or not depressing at all).

 

Things I want to focus on next week: learning new words and grammar patterns.

 

I feel like I should celebrate, but not sure how...  

[imron]

I'm looking at the book of the month part of the forum, but I fear everything is too hard for me right now

Have you looked in to graded readers?  There's a big thread on them here.  The Mandarin Companion and Chinese Breeze series tend to have quite positive reviews on here.

[stapler]

The last few weeks have been pretty good for me after getting a little frustrated with TV. I've refocused on the basics and acknowledged that TV is something I will save until after "intermediate".

 

As before I'm basically "glossika'ing" everything. As I work through textbooks (the last part of David and Helen in China, NPCR 4, PCR 3 (none of which I find "challenging", but which are good materials for drilling basics), cpod dialogues, and even parts of the novels I'm reading) I write down all the sentences I think are useful or have some phrase I need to practice actively using. I have pages upon pages of sentences and record them 5 times over the course of a week then listen to those recordings and repeat after my own recordings on the bus. I can feel my speaking fluency improving, or at least I feel a lot more confident. But I think it's also having some very beneficial side effects for my listening.

 

I blasted through a reader called Chinese Graded Reader 2500 words. It was quite fun to downgrade from real novels to win an easy victory. Like when you're good at a sport and sometimes you just wanna crush a new player for a bit of fun to remind yourself how good you are (I'm a bad person). Comes with a CD with a few hours of continuous dialogue. I'm going to experiment with how I can use that for listening practice. The problem is the stories go for 30 to 60 minutes (and the last story comes with a 2.5 hour audio dialogue!!). Even in English I zone out after 10 minutes.

 

I also took the above advice and used Audacity to cut out the dialogues from the cpod upper intermediate mp3s. Having just the 2 minute dialogue feels a lot easier to listen to - especially after ive listened to the full episode a few times. Having the short dialogue, transcribing it, recording it, listening to my own recording of it, etc is making me crack the upper intermediate dialogues fairly well. I'm not intimidated by them any more. - I'm starting to enjoy just being an "intermediate" student, rather than causing myself unnecessary angst worrying about when I'm going to become "fluent"

 

Psychologically I think it's been important to refocus myself on the basics and not expect myself be "fluent" or be able to listening to real life Chinese conversations or television at this stage. I realise that if I can do that, it'll only be after many more years of doing what I'm doing now. Now I'm just enjoying being able to to use new phrases and words like when I first began learning the language. Dare I say, I'm actually just finding it more fun than a grind - which is what it was starting to turn into before. - I'm just enjoying being an "intermediate" student, rather than causing myself unnecessary angst by worrying about when I'm going to become "fluent".

[imron]

It was quite fun to downgrade from real novels to win an easy victory

I think this is actually a really useful thing to do (even better if you can do it with material that was previously too advanced).

 

It's a good way to give yourself a motivational boost.

[laurenth]

Just like Stapler, I've been downgrading my reading and listening these last few weeks. As I will spend  a brief  stint in Taiwan next month , I decided to take that opportunity to do something I've always wanted to do anyway: familiarize myself with traditional characters. So I took the two volumes of De Francis' "Character text for beginning Chinese" and "Character text for intermediate Chinese" that had been waiting on a shelf for many years and started reading.  Vol. 1 was very easy and I was able to read 1 lesson/day. Now I'm reading vol. 2; it's a slightly slower process, but going on well. I love these two books: text, drills and more text, no fluff. I also learnt to appreciate the audio files that accompany the books - they are extremely well done, and I'm using them for extensive listening, which I didn't intend to do at first. I also tentatively opened a third track for using these books and did some of the actual, intensive work a student is supposed to do with such a book: shadowing the audio, writing down the exercises, etc. But I doubt I will have the time to continue that in the coming months.

 

I also started cramming a list of trad characters in Pleco, but extensive reading with De Francis is much more fun and, I suspect, combining both approaches is much more effective.

 

For intensive listening, a couple of months ago, I purchased a few notebooks and decided to fill them with transcriptions in pinyin of interesting Chinese podcasts and to keep my nose to the grindstone until something noticeable happens to my listening comprehension. I transcribed shows about bugs, about shadowing (a Taiwanese guy learning English), about "unlearning", etc. Recently, I've been exploring Tedx in Chinese, as I assumed that, in such a context, people would make an effort to speak clearly.

 

Overall it's a rewarding experience: on first listening, I usually don't understand much (say 5%). After a few hours of hard work (looping, repeating, guessing, looking up - start again), it's generally much better, say 75-80%. Far from perfect but enough to get some sense of progress and to enjoy the ride.

[AdamD]

Can't believe I didn't see this thread. Perfect.

 

I've started reading an intermediate booklet about Australia that I found in a bargain bin. It's actually pretty easy, and there's a glossary for the more specific words like geographical features. It makes a change from persisting with a book in one hand and a dictionary in the other.

 

This week I've also spent more time exchanging voice messages on HelloTalk. Some days I do well and some days I'm terrible, but overall I'm leaps and bounds ahead of last year.

 

The plan for next week is to resume revising for the HSK 4 that I flubbed in 2014. I expect I've picked up a load of those words in the meantime.

[stapler]

Giving up on characters

 

When I first started learning Chinese one of my favourite activities was writing characters. I think I enjoyed it because it almost felt therapeutic compared to the torture of trying to get my head around the tones and grammar of Chinese. Learning characters was easy because I was lazy. What do I mean by this? Rote memory cramming is easy, and something you can do while watching TV. Something like listening or speaking practice on the other hand requires you to sit down, turn off distractions, and focus intensely.

 

In the first couple of years of studying Chinese I hit up Skritter pretty hard, getting up to around 5000 unique characters and going through the HSK 1-6 lists. Even though I had turned down all the options to make the reviews as infrequent as possible it was hard to keep on top of the review mountain. I often found myself having to put in an hour or more a day to keep up - especially after weekends where I had no time to review. I've sunk over 600 hours into Skritter and when I look at that now I realise how stupid that was. That's a lot of time that I could have spent doing something related to actually learning how to use the language.

 

Today I have decided to 'officially' stop trying to do character writing reviews. I have been doing them less and less over the last few months. And now I think it's appropriate just to stop all together.

 

I have no problem recognising characters and I can probably write 2-3k character from memory (and still get lots of practice writing these common characters through my other study activities). Investing 100's more hours into trying to remember how to write less common characters just isn't worth it. The only benefit I can remember was being able to "impress" people by being able to impress some high school kids in China by recognising and being able to write 毓. Having to put in an hour a day for this privilege is just way too much.

 

I think I began my journey to cease writing practice when at the beginning of the year I bumped into a Chinese postgrad who couldn't remember how to write 詭. If 'educated' Chinese people can't do it, why should I bother? And then I saw this on Youtube asking Japanese people on the street to write some characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJNxPRBvRQg

 

After these experiences I've decided that in the age of computers knowing how to write the most common characters is enough. And if native speakers cannot or have trouble writing why should I worry about it as well? Especially when other parts of my Chinese abilities are far from satisfactory.

 

I have today "officially" decided to leave hand writing Chinese character practice behind permanently. My only regret  is that I didn't do this earlier. So here's a farewell to practicing writing 簍, 寐, and 涎.

 

More Sentence Drilling

 

Instead of writing all those stupid characters for hours on end I should have been doing more mass sentence drilling. As I've talked about in pretty much all my other posts I've been really getting into writing down 100's of sentences and recording myself speaking them 5 times over the course of a week. I'm going to boost this now by having a native speaker record all the sentences I've been writing down (finally getting to use my 關係!) What's better, this guy has a fairly thick accent (to my ears) - but still completely standard, just not "teaching foreigners" level. I'm going to ask him to speak as naturally and roughly as possible. It'll be great to have some audio for the sentences as well.

 

I'm particularly looking forward to getting 100's of sentences from my copy of 中級漢語語法講義 (from the grammar course on EdX last year). This book still has lots of grammar points I need more practice with - particularly more "idiomatic" things, like when to use 朝 向 and 往. There's a table in the book which, while I can understand it, I can't internalise and get the 語感 about when and when not to use these words. Here's the table:

 

 

Whenever I'm hit with these parts of Chinese grammar the only way I can conquer them is to get the feel. This grammar book is good because (besides being dirt cheap) has lots of discussion of 'idiomatic' Chinese grammar rules I haven't seen discussed in the for-English-speaker grammar books (of course, I may have just overlooked them!)

[xit]

I'm free~~~ I can finally focus (most of) my free time to studying Chinese~ I'm half way through the book I'm currently reading, and this one is much shorter and easier than the last one. Funny thing, my reading speed depends on my concentration so much, whether I'm sitting or lying down, on a chair or on the bed, time of the day, how hungry I am,...  Today I went for an hour straight, and only managed to finish a bit over 6 pages, the drop of speed by the time i finished was huge... I've just finished lesson 6 of boya quasi-intermediate, from now on I think I'm going to add shadowing too. Maybe gonna try stapler's technique. In fact I just recently obtained a basic grammar with tons of excercizes and answers, and a book with synonyms, just started using those too, and I'm focusing on the stuff I'm already familiar with, so it's basicly like drilling.

 

I have a question tho. The only thing I actually study are the new words, for the rest you could say that I'm relying on osmosis. I don't study sentence patterns for example, I just do the excercizes, fill in the blanks, write the answers. It makes sense and everything, but the fact is I have been neglecting my active language. So, maybe I should actually try to learn sentences, maybe even some structures by heart? Can I expect that all my passive reading, listening and even doing the excercizes in the textbooks will somehow manifest in my written or spoken language?

 

The other day, I read an article by the hacking chinese guy about his experience learning Chinese. He mentioned that at one point he was studying Chinese for 10 hours a day. I am beyond inspired. So, I've decided to use this time to really go for it. I'm even gonna document how much time I spend, and see what it is exactly that's keeping me from studying. Does anyone have an example of how to organize full time Chinese study, without tutors or classes and outside of China?

[艾墨本]

It's been awhile since I updated.

 

The past month has been a bit of a pendulum. On the one end, there was about three weeks where I fell off the boat and was only studying any Chinese because I live in China. I wasn't reading or watching anything in my free time but instead was binge watching TV. Eventually, I realized I was simply burned out from a long semester and found healthy ways to rest and recover, ultimately getting back on my feet and then the pendulum was on the other end.

 

I had a solid week of reading 草房子 every night before bed and watching more 欢乐颂. I've come to love both of the stories. I've also had more effective Chinese conversations and picked up 书法. Not a language goal as much as a cultural goal. I'm already seeing 书法 in a different light and I'm happy that I am. Seeing the artistic angles of it and the difficulty in forming each of those strokes--respect. 

 

I also got back on my Anki game and caught up on the large build up of review words and even upped my daily new words from 5 to 10. 

 

It was all short lived, though. By the end of a week of doing good I had to grade all the finals I had just given and help students retake their finals if they failed or establish plans to improve over summer and retake a final before next semester. I also used most of my free time to say goodbye to friends for the summer. I'll be getting on a train tonight to head to Beijing for a week. I'm looking forward to my sleeper bed and a comfortable place to read. I hope to finish the last 70ish pages of 草房子 before I leave Beijing and find a new book while I'm there.

 

I will also continue working through my Anki cards. I've nearly finished (studied them until they are mature) the first 89 that I put in Anki from 草房子 and hope to add at least another 50 today. Altogether I marked 412 words through the book. I have 323 words to add to Anki still, but it will probably be closer to 250 once I comb through them and delete the ones that are a little out there. 

 

To clarify things for myself:

 

During my week in Beijing (a lot of time in coffee shops waiting for people) I will:

1) Finish reading 草房子: 10 pages per day. [edit 7/12] Finished reading 草房子! First complete Chinese novel. What a fun feeling.

2) Find a new book to start reading

3) Study Anki everyday: 10 new words and all the review.

4) Eat all the food that I can't find in my small town!

 

I was told I should keep my goals fewer, more precise, and more obtainable. Giving it a go.

[stapler]

The last week or two I haven't done any study. Overall I'm losing the enthusiasm to continue learning Chinese. The only thing that interests me is reading Chinese novels. Practicing listening or speaking just makes me want to keel over. When I hear people speaking Mandarin on the street or on the television I just zone out. The original kind of excitement/interest/energy I had about learning the language and the associated culture  has warn off; in fact I'm even starting to have some adverse feelings towards the language and its speakers. This isn't healthy for the study of the language. I think there's also a strong sense of underlying disappointment about ever diminishing returns on my study and still being so far away from anything resembling basic functional use of the language. I think I'm going to stop studying for now and wait for my interest to be piqued again.

[Wurstmann]

Could you watch this episode of 锵锵三人行 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apnVI1b6Vf8?

Do you understand what they are talking about? From what you write here I believe your level is above mine. 

I don't understand everything and if I were to look at the transcript I surely would notice things I misunderstood or didn't catch at all.

But my understanding is good enough to enjoy watching it.

 

Also try watching things you watched a year ro so ago that were to hard then. It's really motivating to see how far you have come.

I think at this intermediate stage we often don't realize we're making progress. So it's important to sometimes look back and compare 

what you knew then to what you know now.

 

Even if your motivation is really that low at the moment, I would advise against completely stopping your studies. Try to at least do your 

Anki reviews and to watch or listen to some Chinese stuff. 

[stapler]

No, not really. I watched it. I know they're talking about marriage and the general themes surrounding it. I can under a few sentences, many words, but nothing that gives me any kind of decent comprehension. I'd say I maybe understand 10% of it. Definitely not enough to enjoy it on any level.

 

I don't think I can even be motivated to do flashcard reviews at this point. With neither the wonder nor the need to know the language I can't continue with it. I don't think it's a big problem if I stop here. I enjoyed the ride for a long time but it has ceased to be enjoyable and perhaps time to move on. Again, I'll see how I feel in a few weeks time. Perhaps I'll have a change of attitude.