The 2017 Aims and Objectives Progress Topic

[艾墨本]

On 12/29/2016 at 7:38 PM, 艾墨本 said:

really want to do some of everything this next year, but I need to trim down my goals into something manageable and achievable. 

 

Primary Goals:

1) Begin a year of Chinese study at a university (preferably on the CIS or CSC scholarship).

2) Finish at least 4 books or 1000 pages before starting my semester at a Chinese university (i.e. 活着，兄弟，三体，欢乐颂，雅舍小品). I need to find a book that progressively nicely in difficulty from 活着 but is about modern times so that I can learn more presently useful vocabulary. 

3) Continue Anki studies every day, but adjust quantity to match present circumstances.

 

Secondary Goals:

4) Correct pronunciation so that it no longer impedes communication

5) Introduce most all of HSK 4 grammar to active grammar and begin moving HSK 5 grammar into active use. This means practicing creating sentences with grammar.

6) Create a daily habit of reading news in Chinese and watching CCTV.

 

I did not include any speaking goals since I've found just living in China enough to develop my speaking ability. I will need to focus on speaking in the future in order to develop a more native, professional, and clear tone. For now, I am just happy to be understood.

 

I will give myself until January 31 to modify, add, or remove goals. On (or near) January 31st I will create a more quantitative plan for February.

 

 

 

 

Overall, this year is progressing nicely. There are a lot of things I want to do but haven't. However, the things I am doing are my primary goals, and for that I'm happy.

1) I have applied to Beijing Normal with a CI scholarship. If all goes well I will here back from them in the coming weeks. 

2) I have already finished one book (许三观卖血记) and I'm working through my second book (活着) and have lined up two more books for after that (圈子圈套，从出生到六岁宝宝能力训练与早期教育). So far my page count is at about 300. Finishing all four books will put me at 800-900 pages. 

3) I've been good at doing Anki and have brought around 300-400 words to "mature." Overall, I've studied 2/3 day, but this is more so due to a month that I was traveling and not doing Anki and less due to daily failures. 

 

4) Progress on pronunciation is slow as always. I've been working on my "ng"s recently. The wiki on Chinese phonology has been very helpful. I am very rarely not understood due to pronunciation, but it still does happen. The bigger problem is when I jumble up a grammar pattern or forget to use a word. But the latter is a problem when I speak English as well. I'll get so excited about what I'm saying and starting thinking faster than I speak and words don't make it from thought to sound. I can't help but laugh when it happens.

5)I haven't put any amount of effort into this. It does seem to be happening naturally, but I really should spend more time in my HSK grammar book. I did one lesson from it and found it quite helpful.

6) Yeah, this just isn't happening. I blame the current US political climate for this one. My hour of news time per day is done in English out of necessity. Too much to cover and not enough time.

 

I have been watching more Jackie Chan Adventures in Chinese on iQiYi which come in nice 18-minute episodes. Great for meal time.. I also watched Moana in Chinese and was happy to find I understood nearly all of it. I was also quite impressed with the dubbed voice acting, props to Disney for that. 

[Shelley]

I had a small interruption to my NPCR progress as I took the 6 week edX Mandarin course level 3 (see my blog) but now I am going to get back on track with NPCR.

 

Two people on the forums have been very kind and I am now the proud owner of NPCR level 2 in simplified and traditional. I will start with the simplified version and I will add the traditional versions of characters to my learning list.

 

I have also started Skritter again and am trying to catch up so I am learning the same lesson as I am in the books.

I also received some of the Chinese Breeze books, I didn't realise how much help is given, so looking forward to starting these. They also have a CD with them, this is exciting, it will add more things to listen to.

 

Overall I am happy with what I have been doing except for my lack of Speaking, yet again I have failed miserably to talk more. I intend to try harder now I am back on track with NPCR.

 

[imron]

10 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

So far my page count is at about 300. Finishing all four books will put me at 800-900 pages.

As well as counting pages, you can also keep track of character count.

 

All books published in mainland China list the number of characters in the book.  See here for details.

[Lu]

9 minutes ago, imron said:

As well as counting pages, you can also keep track of character count.

 

All books published in mainland China list the number of characters in the book.  See here for details.

I think those are not necessarily correct, though, and the number of 字 as reported in the book is significantly higher than the actual character count. I suspect commas and such are included as well. So only for personal use, to compare with other books and such. Of course, counting the number of pages is also very imprecise.

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, I would direct Imron towards any software which might be capable of calculating the number of Chinese characters in a given text . Need to lop at least 20-25% from the official 字数 to get the real one. I suspect even paragraph marks and spaces get included in the 'official' counts.

 

[imron]

Yes, but it's like that in all books so it still provides a nice base. 

[winterpromise31]

I'm embracing the idea that if I write something in public, I'll follow through. ;) I wasn't sure where else to post this, as I don't want the commitment of updating a blog and have seriously trashed the idea that I am intermediate level (I used to post in the intermediate progress thread). I finished an online course quite awhile ago, including the intermediate lessons, which is what made me think maybe I was at an intermediate level. But now that I have two Chinese speaking daughters, I know for sure that I am still a beginner. They talk in circles around me...

 

I'm going back to the beginning to try to fill in some holes. I've always struggled with committing myself to a study resource, because the next one I find might be even better than the one in my hand. But people on this forum keep recommending that you pick a resource and stick with it so that's what I'm doing. I dusted off my DeFrancis Beginning Chinese Reader only to realize that there is an actual schedule in the preface so that BCR and BC compliment each other. Whoops. I'm way ahead in the Reader so I'm concentrating on BC until I'm in the correct place in the schedule and then I'll proceed with both. When I'm not feeling the brain power for textbook study, I've been working through Popup Chinese Absolute Beginner Lessons. My grammar level is way above these lessons but I'm finding at least one vocab word in each lesson that I've never learned. 

 

I, with much trepidation, deleted my Anki deck. Taking an adoption trip to Taiwan and then another to China killed my flashcard reviews. 2/3 of the cards in my deck were overdue and suspended. Rather than spend months trying to catch up, I deleted the whole thing. I now have three decks - a shared deck for the BCR textbook, a shared HSK deck, and a custom one with a few selected words that I've run across on Chinese websites and want to learn. I'm mostly concentrating on this website (https://www.travel.taipei/) as we plan to take our oldest to Taiwan for a heritage trip in three years when she graduates from high school. So far I've learned most of the words in the website menu and plan to start "reading" articles soon.

 

I'm also feeling very deficient in character recognition so I just ordered Remembering the Hanzi to add into my study routine. I completed Remembering the Kanji when I tackled Japanese so characters are not overwhelming but I feel like I've forgotten a lot and need to start over. Just trying to cram vocab via Anki isn't working that well so I thought it would be good to start over on characters. 

 

So that's where I'm at. A renewed motivation to study, aiming for at least 45 minutes a day, and with a methodical approach instead of the piecemeal approach I was taking before. I've been logging my study time since day one and am currently at 391 hours. Hopefully with this new methodical approach, I'll start to feel like I'm actually making some solid progress. If anyone has any feedback on my plans, feel free to comment! Suggestions or comments would be much appreciated!

[Shelley]

After a very busy first 3 months of the summer trying to waterproof our outbuildings and prepare them for the winter, then the very sad news in the middle of August of the suicide of very close friend of ours, I am getting back on track.

I have experienced the death of friends and my parents through illness, accident and old age but never through suicide. It is very different. it left me drained, unable to concentrate and tired.

 

My study has been very erratic because of all this. It seemed all I could do was small snippets here and there. One of the reasons it affected my chinese studies more than other things in my life is because in the last few weeks of his life he had asked me to help him start to learn chinese. Of course I was delight to have a fellow traveller and someone to share the delights of chinese with, we took some early steps with suggestion for text books to buy and apps to get (NPCR 1 and Pleco of course) joining Chinese Forums and learning 你好 all round with everyone joining in:)

To top it all off, I nearly fell off my seat to see a new forum member joined after my friend died with his name. I can not explain how weird this was because it was only after the funeral did we find out he had finished his PHD and was a Doctor (not medical, engineering or something) so @DrWatson are you really not the Dr. Watson I knew? I thought, oh no, we have a forum ghost, which as I don't believe in ghosts is odd.

 

Now though the sheds are watertight (nearly) and my grief is slowly diminishing and I looking forward to getting back to some serious study, reporting back here and updating my blog.

 

I have been trying to work through lesson 15 in NPCR and learning about changing money at the bank. I have just finished trying to learn the characters from this lesson but its been hard going. I may have to redo some of the lesson to get it to stick.

 

I understand what you mean @winterpromise31 when you say putting out in the public domain to help gee your studies along. Your review study schedule looks doable, how have you been getting on with it?

 

 

[abcdefg]

Sorry for your loss, @Shelley. Sounds painful.

[Shelley]

Thanks @abcdefg the healing takes time, I am surrounded by friends and support which always helps. Thanks for yours.

[Flickserve]

@Shelley

 

Take care.

[winterpromise31]

@Shelley - I am doing terrible. lol Life with my two adopted teen girls has been really rough and my Chinese studies are taking a backseat. I'm staying on top of flashcards and that's it. I listen to my girls yell in Chinese a couple times a day so I'm getting listening practice. ;) But I've been driven to think about why I am learning Chinese. I started learning Chinese because I was planning to adopt from Chinese speaking countries, not for a love of the language or the culture itself. My girls have learned enough English that we don't rely on Chinese to communicate any longer. So my Chinese is not necessary. I love learning languages but I'm not sure that Chinese is what I would pick if I didn't have that practical application. I studied a year of Latin and two years of Spanish in high school. I studied two years of Japanese in self-study and now three years of Chinese in self-study. I'm at a crossroads, unsure if I should continue with Chinese or go back to Japanese or pick another language entirely.

 

And I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. That sucks. 

[Shelley]

@winterpromise31 I think its important to remember that if you don't have to learn a language it is not as easy to stay motivated and if you are learning because you are passionate about it you will have the motivation required.

 

So don't stress, enjoy your girls and learn a language if it pleases you.

 

It would be nice to know if you choose to stay with chinese or something else, if, ever, you decide on something it would be good if you posted a quick note about it.

 

And thanks, life is slowly returning to some sort of normality.

[DrWatson]

On 9/29/2017 at 5:49 PM, Shelley said:

so @DrWatson are you really not the Dr. Watson I knew? I thought, oh no, we have a forum ghost, which as I don't believe in ghosts is odd

 

No, I was active on this forum years ago, but had to take a hiatus from Chinese while I was going to graduate school at night. And I just happen to really like reading Sherlock Holmes.

 

I am very sorry for your loss!

[winterpromise31]

@Shelley, you are definitely correct about motivation and needing a love of the language! That's what I am trying to figure out right now. My life is in such upheaval (parenting adopted teens is enough to drive anyone crazy) and my therapist says that I need to make sure self-care (which is what I had labeled Chinese studies...) needs to actually be self-care. Right now I'm not sure that it is. Listening to my kids yell about how I'm a terrible parent, understanding enough to know the gist of what they are saying, is not cultivating a love of Chinese. I've been to China and thought it was ok. I loved Taiwan and hope to return there someday. But I'm not sure planning a week or two week long trip years in the future is enough to keep me motivated. I'm doing a lot of self analysis and figuring out where to go from here! In the meantime, I'm staying on top of my flashcards in case I decide to continue this Chinese journey. ;)

[Wurstmann]

I'd argue that motivation is not that important. It will come and go. If you want to learn a language (or get fit, learn how to draw,..) you need discipline and do something every day, regardless of whether you want to or not. So the first step is to figure out if you want to learn Chinese. ;)

[Shelley]

40 minutes ago, Wurstmann said:

So the first step is to figure out if you want to learn Chinese. ;)

 

I think that you do need a reason, motivation to learn Chinese or anything. Once you have decided you want to learn, then yes discipline is as necessary as passion and desire.

[Shelley]

9 hours ago, DrWatson said:

really like reading Sherlock Holmes.

So do I, I have read the complete collection in the last few years and thought that when I was ready for some thing challenging I might try reading it in Chinese.

 

I am sorry to have mistaken you for a newcomer, welcome back. it was just odd timing but his name was actually Dr.Watson.

[Mati1]

Sherlock Holmes - Mandarin Companion Level 1

[Shelley]

Thanks @Mati1 I remember seeing this before and thinking I am not sure how I feel that this is Holmes, but I download the free sample and I will see how it goes.