The 2019 Aims and Objectives Progress Topic

[Geiko]

4 hours ago, Yadang said:

Ok I'm cheating a bit because I've already pre-studied the words

I don't think it's cheating, but rather a very efficient way to study new words and review them in context. And if it's cheating, I've done it too and will keep doing it as long as it works for me,  and it does. ?

[Lu]

17 hours ago, Yadang said:

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).

That's not cheating, that's studying! Your goal is to read and understand a Chinese book, right? Then this is legitimate steps on your way to that goal. Cheating would be if you read a translation and then claimed you'd read the Chinese.

[Yadang]

 

21 hours ago, Yadang said:

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).

 

17 hours ago, Geiko said:

I don't think it's cheating, but rather a very efficient way to study new words and review them in context.

 

4 hours ago, Lu said:

That's not cheating, that's studying!

 

I agree it's a a good way to study new words - I was meaning cheating in regards to the fact that the words I pre-studied for 許三觀賣血記 and for 兄弟(上) were studied in 2018, but I'm still counting both books in my goal to read 12 in 2019 (I'm currently reading 許三觀賣血記, and will follow it with 兄弟(上))

[Lu]

I actually find that a very good way to read Chinese books: get a head start before officially starting and then read your part for Tuesday on Monday (or your February book in January). It feels good to be ahead. And if come December you're still on schedule and really want to be harsh on yourself, you can just retroactively start your year of reading in November 2018.

 

Regardless: there are no bad ways to count how much you've read, there is no cheating possible, just read and rejoice in your ability to read. And post about it.

[imron]

1 hour ago, Yadang said:

in regards to the fact that the words I pre-studied for 許三觀賣血記 and for 兄弟(上) were studied in 2018, but I'm still counting both books in my goal to read 12 in 2019

Still not cheating.  The words you learnt for these books will also appear in many other books.

 

P.S.  Make sure to stick with 兄弟.  It's slow going at first and the first half is not as good as the second half, but the second half wouldn't be as good without the things that happened in the first half.

[Yadang]

5 hours ago, imron said:

P.S.  Make sure to stick with 兄弟.  It's slow going at first and the first half is not as good as the second half, but the second half wouldn't be as good without the things that happened in the first half.

 

Hmmm... and I was just thinking I might skip the second half.... Maybe I'll read the first half, read some other books, then come back to the second half later in the year... Thanks for the heads up!

[imron]

Nah, read them one after the other, that way it will be fresh.

[∞保罗∞]

2019  ∞

 

新年新希望 - 目标是进步神速 - 从中级到高级？

 

第一。    通过HSK四考试 （三月二十三号）， 通过HSK五考试 （大概十一月十号）

 

第二。    每个礼拜  - 13.5 小时上课 （5 + 4 + 1.5 + 3）
                                  -  15    小时电视节目和电影， 上网时评
                                  -  10.   小时 听力 （在开车去办公室的路上）
                                  -  10.   小时自己复习
                      共同：48.5

 

第三。    去中国五次 - 大概三月左右。 带我的太太和孩子去台湾流游。

 

第四。    阅读一些本书在我的中文图书馆。

 

谢谢你饿动力。

[edelweis]

8 hours ago, ∞保罗∞ said:

共同：48.5

very impressive

 

9 hours ago, ∞保罗∞ said:

去中国五次 - 大概三月左右

go 5 times in March, or go for the 5th time in March?

[Flickserve]

10 hours ago, ∞保罗∞ said:

第四。    阅读一些本书在我的中文图书馆。

 

了不起。

 

你在中国还是另外一个地方？

[∞保罗∞]

4 hours ago, edelweis said:

go 5 times in March, or go for the 5th time in March?

Hey Edelweis cheers m8 - meant to say : 我今年想去中国旅行五次。。。总共3个月 (其实我以为这个新年新希望太（ambitious） 哈哈哈 - 肯定没有办法。

 

2 hours ago, Flickserve said:

了不起。

 

你在中国还是另外一个地方？

谢谢你Flickserve - 虽然现在在另外的地方-在都柏林， 但我已经订了机票去中国从四月一号到四月三十号

[milkmints]

Time is scarce these days but I'm hoping to make some good progress this year!
Reading: I've been using CTA to make word lists to study for books I want to try reading (to live, diary of a blood salesman etc) I've started to read To live already so I'll be trying to read at least a few pages daily. According to CTA I only know about 85-86% of the words In most of the books I run through the software. Is there a good percentage to aim for before taking the plunge into full out reading mode? (example books are works by yu hua, candle in the tomb, daomubiji)

Listening: I've been watching more TV these days and pretty much just planning on keeping exposure up as much as I can. Hoping to finish a bunch of series and have improved comprehension of daily conversations.

Speaking: Going to Hong Kong in march for a week so I'm hoping to get some speaking in. (Also will try to hunt down more physical books while I'm there)
 

[Yadang]

4 hours ago, milkmints said:

According to CTA I only know about 85-86% of the words In most of the books I run through the software. Is there a good percentage to aim for before taking the plunge into full out reading mode?

 

These are similar to my numbers. I've been aiming for 95%, and so far (not that I'm very far along), I like that number. The reason I chose it was after reading this post in Hacking Chinese. When I read through the examples, I thought that while the 98% example was certainly more comfortable, the gains don't outweigh the losses. That is to say, while it's more comfortable to read at 98% comprehension than 95%, the number of new words I would have to study is way larger than for 95% and it's just not worth it. You might be able to make the same argument for 95% vs. 93% or something, but to me, reading the 90% example in that post shows that I definitely want to be above 90%.

 

Some will say that this is too stringent and that this gets in the way of actual reading.

 

Another thing I consider is I look at the number of instances a given word shows up in a text (which you can also see using CTA in the word list - I sort it by cumulative %frequency and then look at both that column to see the number of words I have to study to reach 95%, and I look at the frequency column to see how many times a given word shows up in the text) . If many of the words leading up to 95% comprehension show up only once or twice in the whole book, I consider that book too hard. The reason is that I think I have to see it several times in a text to learn it. If I only see the word once in that text, I'm not going to learn it very well. I'd rather choose a different book where I have a higher chance of remembering most of the the words I've studied. 

[imron]

6 hours ago, Yadang said:

That is to say, while it's more comfortable to read at 98% comprehension than 95%, the number of new words I would have to study is way larger than for 95% and it's just not worth it.

Two things to keep in mind is that the acceptable percentage of unknown words for each person will be slightly different, and also that due to segmenting errors, the number from CTA will only be ball-park level approximate rather than 100% accurate, so maybe it says 95% for the whole text, but for most sentences you're actually up around 98%.

 

Segmenting errors aside, the numbers generated by CTA should be accurate enough that relative comparisons are valid e.g. if CTA says text one is 95% and text 2 is 98%, then text 2 should be easier even if the real amount is 95% (because the real amount for text 1 would maybe be something like 93%).

 

Which is to say, there are errors in the segmentation, but the errors are consistent

 

[milkmints]

6 hours ago, Yadang said:

If many of the words leading up to 95% comprehension show up only once or twice in the whole book, I consider that book too hard.

You bring up some good points! With daomubiji for example I forced myself through quite a bit of the first one and that brute force exposure was super slow going but i did end up learning a bunch of words (albeit mostly about zombies etc) But I'd definitely want to have more of a base before wanting to jump above my level that much again. I think I'll try to aim for low 93-95% for stuff from now on. I just double checked and I'm at 89.47% for To Live, so working through some of that high frequency vocab should bring me up closer

@imron I'll have to experiment which what range feels like an acceptable unknown word percentage to me! The flashcard burnout is real, so books should be a welcome challenge.

 

[imron]

In my experience, if there's a book you really want to read, but you find it a little bit too difficult due to all the new words, you'll be better of reading several easier books first and then coming back to the original book later.  The book isn't going anywhere, and will still be there once you've finished the easier ones, the difference is that by reading the easier ones first you'll pick up a bunch of vocab that will make reading the original book much easier, only you'll have done it without nearly the same amount of struggle.

 

It's also important to realise that reading requires more than just vocab acquisition.  There are skills and stamina required for long-form reading that you can only get by doing lots of reading.  By building up your reading skills and stamina on the easier books, you'll make the original book that much more of a pleasure to read.

 

5 minutes ago, milkmints said:

The flashcard burnout is real,

See here if you haven't already.

[imron]

24 minutes ago, milkmints said:

but i did end up learning a bunch of words (albeit mostly about zombies etc)

Assuming you keep doing regular reading, then one day in the not too distant future, you're going to be reading a book that has nothing to do with zombies and one of those zombie related words will show up.

 

A memorable example of this for me was when reading 《碧血剑》by 金庸 and there were peasants revolting, wielding their various farming tools, one of which (锄头) was a word I'd learnt when reading 《活着》.  When something like that happens it really helps reinforce the word.

 

Which is to say, if you're doing enough reading, you'll encounter 'rare' words often enough.  @murrayjames is planning to read 1,000,000 characters this year (eminently doable - even with say a low reading speed of 100 characters/minute, you'd need to read 30 min a day to reach that target).

 

If you look at frequency data from JunDa, and plug in the frequency for say the 4000th most frequent character (i.e. not a very frequent character at all), at 1,000,000 characters/year you'd still be likely to see that character approximately 2-3 times.

 

[murrayjames]

Quote

24 minutes ago, imron said:

A memorable example of this for me was when reading 《碧血剑》by 金庸 and there were peasants revolting, wielding their various farming tools, one of which (锄头) was a word I'd learnt when reading 《活着》.

 

 

I learned “锄头” from《活着》too! Also “田埂” and “骰子”.... Those words stuck out because they appear many times in the beginning of the novel.

[imron]

8 hours ago, murrayjames said:

I learned “锄头” from《活着》too! 

?

It's a clear example of what I mentioned above about bulking up vocabulary on easier books (活着), that then makes more difficult books (basically anything by 金庸) easier to read.

 

I'd be interested to hear if 锄头 comes up any time during your 1,000,000 character project

[milkmints]

2 hours ago, imron said:

It's a clear example of what I mentioned above about bulking up vocabulary on easier books (活着), that then makes more difficult books (basically anything by 金庸) easier to read.

金庸's work is on my "one day I'll get there!" list so thats very encouraging! thanks for all the feedback
I like the idea of having daily reading as a form of srs to replace flashcards. I've spent a lot of time in the past copying contextual sentences for vocab into anki, and at some point realized I could have been actually reading new sentences instead.