November writing challenge anyone?

[Kelby]

So, November is National Novel Writer's Month. Because I've been neglecting my Chinese around work and important things like TV, I figured I'd forego trying to cram a novel into 30 days and catch up on the HSK 5 study I've been putting off. It's not novel writing by a long shot, but I did the math and if you're taking the HSK 5,  that's only like 4,800 characters if you do the essay portion of the test daily.

 

Anybody interested in setting some goals and keeping each other accountable for a month?

[edelweis]

Interesting challenge!

Who will correct your essays? teacher? tutor? 网友?

[Kelby]

I'm lucky enough to have a live in tutor in the form of my wife. I'll be posting the essays to Lang-8 though, because I don't want to bother her with my writing all the time 

[edelweis]

ok thanks. I need to check whether I can login into lang8 - I've forgotten my old password.
What about the essay topics, where do you intend to find 30 of them?

[Kelby]

I have a textbook full of level 5 questions. I'll do some poking around Baidu and see if I can't find a list of questions for public use. If people are interested I could share the questions from the book each day too. 

[edelweis]

interesting, which textbook are you using?

[Kelby]

I'm going to use one that I found on dangdang.com, called 21天征服HSK五级写作·语法 (can't attach a photo for som reason). It has a bunch of excercises in it and it's supposed to be a crash course to improve writing skills quickly, but I'm just going to pick and choose exercises that lend themselves to a decent length essays. 

[edelweis]

Thanks. I'll think about it. Hope there are more participants.

 

[edelweis]

Well, I have my Lang8 password, so I guess I'm ready to participate.

A single 80-character "essay" per day will be enough for me

 

[Kelby]

Awesome

 

I decided to pull things back a bit and do an essay a day, two when I can stomach it. My first one is here on Lang-8 (unedited right now). Glad to know I have at least one person to keep me honest, lol.

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因为小时候我爸爸经常出去劳动，所以我不像别人那么介意干活，这几年不管家里的事情有多脏多累我都愿意自己去做，比如说，上个月客厅里的沙发坏了一脚，虽然我很想忽视这个小麻烦，但是我还拿出来了家里的工具，花了自己的时间把沙发修好。我认为如果一个人有本事，最好靠自己的能力面对生活中的困难。

 

 

I figured it could be called NaChiWriMo (National Chinese Writing Month). Maybe in a few years, I'll be able to pull off  ChiNoWriMo (Chinese Novel Writing Month).

 

[edelweis]

Well done you!

I also posted my first entry on lang-8 (it's more like a journal entry than an essay ) same username as here.

明天见！

 

Edit: I totally forgot that posting Chinese on lang-8 in the evening (Western Europe time) is less conducive to immediate feedback than posting in the morning.

[Kelby]

Got way over my word count today. Feeling pretty good so far

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我小时候受了一次深刻的教训，那时候为了鼓励我和哥哥好好学习，妈妈经常给我们做饼干。有一年在去参加家长会的路上，妈妈问了我和哥哥这次成绩怎么样，哥哥自豪的说了自己的成绩不错，可是我的成绩并不理想，虽然我知道说成绩不好，但是不懂事的我也得意的笑了起来，说了我的成绩耶很棒。开完家长会我们沉默的回了家，到家之后我回了自己房间紧张的等妈妈过来吵我，可是，她并没有吵我，过了几分钟我听见妈妈开开心心的叫，“快来吃饼干！“ 到了客厅之后我伸了·手为了那盘子上最大的饼干，可是妈妈先迅速把它抢走了，说”不行，你乖乖的到一边坐，看我和你哥哥享受成功的甜味“，到现在我还觉得那次被惩罚的”味道“最苦。

 

 

[edelweis]

Done. It's a short rant about file eating USB keys.

I tried to post this morning but I wasn't feeling inspired

Again tomorrow.

 

[Tony Hung]

Your writing skill is great! Your first essay is great while the second one has some obvious mistake.

 

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我小时候受了一次深刻的教训，那时候为了鼓励我和哥哥好好学习，妈妈经常给我们做饼干。有一年在去参加家长会的路上，妈妈问了我和哥哥这次成绩怎么样，哥哥自豪的说了自己的成绩不错，可但是我的成绩并不理想，。虽然我知道说我的成绩不好，但是不懂事的我也得意的笑了起来，说了：「我的成绩耶也很棒耶。！」开完家长会我们沉默的回了家，到家之后我回了自己房间紧张的等妈妈过来吵教训我，可是，她并没有吵教训我，。过了几分钟后，我听见妈妈开开心心的叫，“快来吃饼干！“ 我走到了客厅之后，我伸了手为拿了那盘子上最大的饼干，可是妈妈先迅速把它抢走了，並说”不行，你乖乖的到一边坐，看我和你哥哥享受成功的甜味美“，到现在我还觉得那次被惩罚的”味道“最苦。

 

So, after my modification, this is the article below:

 

Quote

我小时候受了一次深刻的教训，那时候为了鼓励我和哥哥好好学习，妈妈经常给我们做饼干。有一年在去参加家长会的路上，妈妈问了我和哥哥这次成绩怎么样，哥哥自豪的说自己的成绩不错，但是我的成绩并不理想。虽然我知道我的成绩不好，但是不懂事的我也得意的笑了起来，说：「我的成绩也很棒耶！」开完家长会我们沉默的回了家，到家之后我回了自己房间紧张的等妈妈过来教训我，可是，她并没有教训我。过了几分钟后，我听见妈妈开开心心的叫，“快来吃饼干！“ 我走到了客厅之后，我伸了手为拿了那盘子上最大的饼干，可是妈妈先迅速把它抢走了，並说”不行，你乖乖的到一边坐，看我和你哥哥享受成功的甜美“，到现在我还觉得那次被惩罚的”味道“最苦。

 

In English, "shout" means someone speak loudly or speak in a bad tone. You may found "吵" as its translation. But in Chinese, "吵" means only speak loudly or argue with others. The situation is that both of you may shout to each other. In this article, I use "教訓", this pattern is more likely to be like a single way shouting, just like your mom shout at you. And "罵" is also a same meaning here if you want to change the pattern you use.

 

That's all, hope I can help you.

 

PS. I'm a Chinese native speaker, but we use Traditional Chinese in Taiwan. There is slightly different from Simplification Chinese in China, a really small different.

[edelweis]

Done. Friday night pizza (yum).

 

[edelweis]

Done. And I even have leftover pizza as a prize.

[ouyangjun]

This thread motivated me to go back to my lang-8 account.  Appears I last posted there in 2014.  I was actually thinking of starting a blog on here in Chinese with no specific topic except journaling when I got a chance.  I figure that if I know other people are potentially reading what I'm writing, it will give some form of motivation to periodically write and get better.  The one thing that's held me back is I don't want to spam the blog section with a non-topic blog/journal about nothing.  So possibly I can get back into lang-8, which may have the added value of regular corrections of my surely many errors.

[edelweis]

Done.

 

@ouyangjun

Same here, it wasn't as hard as I expected to get back to Lang-8, only that website is declining, I hope they open the registrations back soon.

Would you mind sharing your Lang-8 ID? I did a member search but could not figure out your account.

Maybe we should add that info to our CF profiles.

 

[Kelby]

Wow, thanks so much for the corrections and feedback @tonyhung ! I can't say how helpful it is to have someone look through my writing like that. 
 

@ouyangjun, I'm so glad to hear we've got you motivated. My Lang-8 account has been dormant for way too long too, haha. 

 

Straight up, I'm falling behind. It's the 6th and I've got all of 3 mini-essays up. Looking to do a couple of double up days to get ahead. Celta planning is tough though, so what can  you do. Everybody 加油！

 

 

[edelweis]

@Kelby : well, there's still 24 days in this month!

 

I'm done for today. Somehow ranting about work is more inspiring than random HSK5 topics