The 2019 Aims and Objectives Progress Topic

[lakesandrivers]

1. Prepare four drafts, every quarter as a milestone, for a science fiction novel I will finish writing by the end of this year.

2. Prepare for Australian medical school admissions test at end of March.

3. Prepare in advance for semester two Chemistry, Cell Biology and Neuroanatomy. Already marked the relevant chapters in the e-books.

4. Hit HSK 6 in July, after the exams above.

5. Keep on workout, running, swimming and basketball.

[Alex_Hart]

3 hours ago, lakesandrivers said:

1. Prepare four drafts, every quarter as a milestone, for a science fiction novel I will finish writing by the end of this year.

 

This demands a brief introduction! Care to tell us something about the plot?

[BearXiong]

Happy new year guys, hope you all achieve your goals!

 

Last year I planned to learn 5 words/day and finish going through a 3000 character deck. The latter I accomplished, but the former I only maintained for about 10 months, after which I felt like I needed to get my character/word reviews down so I stopped.

 

This year I hope to:

1) Learn 3 characters/day. That would get me to over 4000 characters by the end of the year, which I think'll help a lot with reading. The characters will be ones I've encountered in context. (I just worked out that Pleco flashcards has an option where the flashcards are automatically created in a chosen Anki deck, which is exactly what I wanted!)

 

2) Read for a minimum of 10 minutes daily. I'm guessing I'll end up averaging a lot more than 10 minutes, but I think 10 minutes sounds easy enough for me to build a habit and do consistently. I want to improve my reading speed at least to a point where I can comfortably read subtitles.

 

3) Learn 3 words/day via Anki. I'm starting to reach a point where I can learn words through reading/listening, but I still think Anki's just too effective to give up.

 

4) Get better at speaking. Speaking clearly lags behind the other skills for me, and probably always will. I don't have any concrete plans here.

[emuboy]

I thought I may as well write down my goals to see how I compare at the end of the year.

 

1. Maintain 1-2 hours of Chinese study during weekdays and 3-4 hours Sat/Sund for the year. Really want to be able get my listening and speaking skills up a bit more by the end of the year (hard to get an objective measure for these skills - originally thought about taking HSK 5 but after reading around it seems to not test what I'm really working towards right now, maybe later!).

 

2. Pass first year of med school ? 

 

3. Keep working on my fitness - started running after a chest injury last year and loved it; hopefully going to try and fit 2 half marathons into the year

 

4. Work on my (abysmal) social skills

 

@lakesandrivers gl with GAMSAT mate, pure torture lol

[lakesandrivers]

11 hours ago, Alex_Hart said:

This demands a brief introduction!

 

这个嘛。。暂时不好说，说不好，不说好。嘻嘻！

 

2 hours ago, emuboy said:

gl with GAMSAT mate, pure torture lol

 

Might be for the last time. So many decisions, so exciting 宁做太平犬，莫做乱离人

[Lu]

21 hours ago, BearXiong said:

I'm starting to reach a point where I can learn words through reading/listening, but I still think Anki's just too effective to give up.

What if you feed Anki with words you encounter while reading/listening?

[BearXiong]

Lu, I think adding words encountered while reading/listening is very effective and what I plan to do. I guess I just meant learning those words through repeated encounters without SRSing them. For example in the last couple of months when I stopped adding words to Anki I still learnt a bunch of words naturally, but I think if I made flashcards as well I'd have learnt even more.

 

My word deck has close to 6000 words. So far most words that I know are the ones I added to Anki. I'm hoping to transition away from that, where I use reading as a natural SRS and way to learn vocab, and have Anki as merely a supplementary tool to help learn hard to remember words. Not sure if it'll work but that's what I've been thinking.

[Flickserve]

23 hours ago, emuboy said:

 

1. Maintain 1-2 hours of Chinese study during weekdays and 3-4 hours Sat/Sund for the year.

 

That's seriously some commitment when also studying medicine. However, if this includes casual interaction with Mandarin speakers on language exchange or social events, then yes, it's possible for that weekday routine ....but I definitely have my doubts on 8 hours of Chinese on weekends. 

 

I remember going to Brisbane about 20 years ago. I dropped into a badminton club and there were already quite a few mainlanders there. Badminton is a really popular sport amongst Chinese people and I can imagine even more now hitting the courts. 

[edelweis]

My Chinese language goals for 2019:

 

1) 15' of active study everyday.

For now, reviewing characters and vocabulary immediately after breakfast.

 

2) listen to Chinese tv or radio everyday.

I've subscribed to Chinese TV channels, but if I'm away from home I'll be listening to Radio Beijing which has easily downloadable programs (I especially like 新闻天天谈. Usually I'm happy if I can understand what the guest does and what the general topic is.)

 

3) list all my Chinese / Chinese learning books and get rid of those that are useless to me.

[Flickserve]

Listening:

A) go through some of those cartoons filling up words that I know but didn’t realise they were being used. I actually prefer them without subtitles and then ask someone next to me what was being said. 

B) go through the cartoons to learn new words

C) keep in contact with the mandarin speakers in my network group but this is only going to be for 1Q

D) glossika helps with some vocabulary

E) will try to get through a drama (hmm, this might be a two year objective)

 

Speaking:

A) Glossika repetitions

B) Shadowing

C) Try to detail what characteristics I have that makes people say I have a Hong Kong accent to my Mandarin as opposed to a ‘foreigner’ one. 

D) I get a few mandarin interactions at work- try to put more effort into noting what other people say around me and writing down good sentences to use.

 

[Tomsima]

40 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

E) will try to get through a drama

 

good goal, what kind of thing are you thinking? maybe we can recommend one and you can get started right away. Get all your key vocab down in the first episode, then just sit back, and gradually piece the story together. If you like 武俠 I just finished watching 天龍八部 (this one) which I found really enjoyable and stress free. I'm currently on a bit of a 金庸 spree, watching 鹿鼎記 (this one) at the moment, which is pretty funny and might be good for you comparing the Cantonese and Mandarin too.

 

47 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

B) Shadowing

 

good goal, good luck

[imron]

On 1/5/2019 at 3:16 AM, BearXiong said:

Not sure if it'll work but that's what I've been thinking.

You might find this post (and linked threads) useful.  In short, yes it does work and in my opinion it's far more effective than Anki alone, and in fact should be prioritised over SRS reviews e.g. if you have 30 minutes free, you'll be better off reading for 30 mins than doing Anki reps for 30 mins.

[murrayjames]

I resolve to read one million or more Chinese characters in books and articles in 2019.

[Flickserve]

4 hours ago, Tomsima said:

good goal, what kind of thing are you thinking? maybe we can recommend one and you can get started right away. Get all your key vocab down in the first episode, then just sit back, and gradually piece the story together.

 

I am far below your level with those ancient history dramas. I can’t even do those In Cantonese.

 

Nevertheless, my resolve is to force myself to watch more media even though I am a rare media watcher. Just need to build up my basic vocabulary base with cartoons and other media.

 

For dramas, I want to start off with 北京愛情的故事。I watched a bit of that a while ago and found it interesting but my level was far too low at that time. See how it goes from there. There is plenty of media out there such as 快乐汉语，

[imron]

On 1/6/2019 at 12:47 PM, murrayjames said:

I resolve to read one million or more Chinese characters in books and articles in 2019.

An excellent goal that is both super inspiring and also not as difficult as it sounds.

 

This is probably around 4-8 novels worth (depending on the size of the novel, which typically range from 125,000-250,000 characters), and reading a book a month would get you around 3-4 million characters by the end of the year (see here for some more specific figures).

[murrayjames]

@imron Yes, the goal seems very doable! 1,000,000 characters a year is only 2,750 characters a day. Do you still read a book a month?

[imron]

2 hours ago, murrayjames said:

Do you still read a book a month?

Not for a while.  I hope to get back in to it soon.

[Geiko]

Your posts are super inspiring, thank you all! 

2019 is my tenth anniversary of studying Chinese. I won't be able to travel to Asia to celebrate it, so I want to make it a special year in another way. My first goal will be to sit HSK 6 again. It will be my fourth attempt, and I won't be sad if I fail it again, but it would be cool to pass it. I already got 179/300, so why not aim at 180/300? I'm not that ambitious

I'll have to:

1. Improve my reading speed. I'll use this book. I bought it a long time ago and never read it, so it's a good moment to start it. 

2. Improve my listening skills (my huge problem). I've found this youtube page  with short pieces of news, two to five-minute long each, and I want to work with them. 

3. Refresh my handwriting skills, because I'll probably take the paper-based HSK. I have restarted sending postcards to my Chinese and Taiwanese penpals, so I won't focus at this particular skill until a couple of months before the real exam. 

4. Related to 3, improve my calligraphy with the 凹槽练字宝 type of books. 

5. Keep on reading one book per month. Last year I lost my motivation in autumn, but I still managed to read 1332千字 in Simplified Chinese and 1000 pages in Traditional Chinese. Last month I discovered a series of books about Chinese culture aimed at teenagers, with around 200千字 each, which are easy enough for me and also super enjoyable (I plan to write about them on the forum when I finish the first volume, don't worry!). I plan to read as many of them as possible, so maybe I'll postpone adult novels. 

6. Keep on watching Taiwanese dramas, but just for fun, because they haven't helped me to improve my listening skills: their vocabulary is too limited, I can guess what's going on even if I'm not paying attention...

And for goals non-related to Chinese, I want to run a half marathon. I started running last year, I already feel comfortable at 10 km races, so running a half marathon would be pretty cool. Have you heard about the Great Wall Marathon??? That would be AMAZING! ?

[Yadang]

I aim to read (on average) one book a month at 95% comprehension (I'll actually probably more than 95% comprehension - but I will pre-study the vocab with CTA such that I know 95% of all the words). 

 

Ok I'm cheating a bit because I've already pre-studied the words for 許三觀賣血記 and half of the words for 兄弟(上). Still, it will be 12 Chinese books more than I've ever read in my life, so I'll be happy with that.

[querido]

1. get started studying again

2. get back to where I was before in terms of word counts and books, but...

3. with a program concentrated on listening comprehension *first and above all*.

 

Yes, I've been saying the same thing since 2014. Need a completely different attitude/workflow.

 

My inspiration for today was imron's "consume content you are interested in" (instead of, dutifully, whatever comes up next in a text or podcast series). It would actually be the first time I've tried it systematically.