The 2022 Aims and Objectives Progress Topic

[alantin]

 

I have been following the goals for 2021 thread with fascination, though I didn’t get to the band wagon properly then. This time no-one seems to have set up a thread for goals for 2022 yet so here goes.

 

My overall goal for 2021 was to begin reading books and begin to have meaningful conversations with my tutors all in Chinese. I largely attained those goals, but this time I wanted to make more detailed plans for 2022 so I can properly reflect on them later. Also, my goals are basically about keeping doing what has worked for me so far, though I want to make a little bit better commitment to writing in the future.

 

I have planned different allotment of daily study time for each of the four activities (reading, listening, speaking, and writing) with their respective expected results.

 

1. Reading

The goal for 2022 is to read 60 minutes a day, finish the first five books of the Wheel of Time and reach the average reading speed of 190cpm. This is basically what I've been doing over the last two months so this shouldn't be a problem.

 

2. Listening

Listening is the easiest of all the goals for me to attain. I'm planning on keeping listening to my recordings of my chats with tutors and anything else I find interesting while commuting and taking walks for at least 60 minutes a day. I'm not sure about what kinds of results I should expect in a year. Also, my listening comprehension is already quite good, but I still can't fully understand random videos or podcasts. The main problem being the vocabulary, not parsing what I hear. So, I'll consider this a success if a year from now I can follow and enjoy an audiobook on a familiar topic, that I haven’t read or listened before.

 

3. Speaking

Living outside of China, this is currently the most difficult one for me to get in larger quantities. I'll continue taking on average about 4 free chat sessions with iTalki tutors each week. I think four hours a week is a good compromise where I can afford them and I can also see real improvement over time. Each session will give me on average about 25 minutes of talking time and it also provides about the same amount of active listening practice. They are also the perfect opportunity for me to activate the passive vocabulary I accumulate from the input activities. I can now have these sessions completely in Chinese (a year ago I was struggling to switch over to Chinese from talking 80% in English myself) but I'm still at a loss of words with unfamiliar topics and I’m bad at explaining around the words I don't know, so I often must look up words or ask how to say an English word in Chinese. I expect to be able to reduce thinking time while speaking and to stop using English altogether. Also, I expect to see further improvement in my pronunciation. I'm fortunate to have two tutors who are quite strict at correcting pronunciation, and they tell me I've improved a lot over the last year, though it is difficult for me to notice myself.

 

4. Writing

When I say "writing" I specifically mean "write with a pen by hand on paper". I found a good way to practice this by repurposing the vocabulary in context anki deck by Mandarin Blueprint to the purpose. The one I'm currently using has about 7000 sentences, 5000 most common words, and 1600 most common characters, ordered so that the cards gradually introduce new characters and words in context while repeating the old ones over and over. The original purpose is to cloze out a word in a sentence and then see if you know it or not, but since each card has audio, I tweaked it so that anki reads the sentence for me and I write it on paper only looking at the text if I run into a character I don’t know how to write. I'm not very strict about grading the cards since there is a lot of repetition in them even if I only always clicked "Good" on each card". I had good success with this type of practice earlier this year, but I got busy and stopped doing it. Now I'm going to commit to doing this for 20 minutes every day and I expect a year from now to be able to write about 5000 most common words and 1600 most frequent characters from memory. Having a passable handwriting wouldn't be bad either, so on the side I'll continue to practice with the handwriting practice sheets by 大块头.

 

I also chat often with a few Chinese people on WeChat, but I'm often lazy and write to them in English. I've noticed that if I do that, they'll usually type me back in English, even though they know that I can understand anything they text to me in Chinese. So, I have also made a resolution to type everything to them in Chinese from now on. That should give me a hefty amount of additional Typing time, but I'm not going to plan for it. I’m going to try to estimate and keep a record of.

 

 

 

Altogether these activities should give me about 1025 hours of Chinese study time over 2022 of which about 36% (365 hours) should be reading, 44% (452 hours) listening, 8% (87 hours) speaking and 12% (122 hours) writing). That is 80% input activities and 20% output activities.

 

 

 

The writing section is the only new routine I need to establish, though I tried it for about a month already this year, and the listening part is the easiest to go over quota. It is all something I've done already and, while I don't mind any extra, I’m still going to make my best to hit each sub quota to keep the four skills in a balance.

 

 

What are everyone else’s goals for 2022? ?

 

 

[suMMit]

I can do so much more today than I could a year ago. I'm looking forward to making even bigger strides in 2022.

 

Courses:

Complete HSK4上 and HSK4下

Complete Chinese Made Easier book 4

Complete Yoyo Chinese Upper-Intermediate

Finish the second half of Growing Up With Chinese (have done the first 50)

 

Reading:

Finish reading all of the Chinese Breeze Level 2 and 3 books

Read all Intermediate level Du Chinese 

Read all of the Level 1 Mandarin Companion books

 

Listening:

Watch an episode of 家有儿女，I apartment, 非诚勿扰, or similar program at least every other day

Watch more Chinese movies with wife

HSK 4 上/下 workbook

Chinese pod Intermediate 

 

Speaking:

Regular Lessons on Italki following HSK 4 Standard Course and Chinese Made Easier

1-2 Italki sessions a week discussing various topics using Chinese Pod transcripts

 

Real Life:

Continue speaking with my wife in Chinese as much as possible

Not hitting the WeChat translate button unless absolutely necessary

Go for a walk in Beijing at least once a week with the sole purpose of striking up conversations with random people. (in park, different neighborhoods, etc)

Sign up for some kind of outside interest class that is taught in Chinese (ie. photography, cooking, ??) 

 

 

 

 

[Fithen]

Didn't set any goals for 2021 but will be doing so for next year! They are:

1. Only read books in Chinese (outside of required reading and finishing the one book I'm currently reading).

2. Log all my language learning with a web dashboard I made for myself recently.

3. Reach a B2 level of speech in Mandarin. I'd say my reading and listening abilities are pretty near to this level, but speaking is barely at B1.

Fingers crossed I achieve them!

[黄有光]

I have very clearly defined goals for 2022. 2021 was an incredibly productive year. I added ~10.000 words to my passive vocabulary. I read 7 books from cover to cover. However, 2021 was all about children's books, because that was all I could feasibly read. This year, I have a much better selection of books to look forward to. Here's some of the books I'll be able to choose from this coming year (native literature in bold):

1. The Wandering Earth, by Cixin Liu（流浪地球）
2. 1988: I Would Like to Speak With the World, by Han Han（1988：我想和这个世界聊天）
3. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton（天外病菌）
4. Animal Farm, by George Orwell（动物庄园）
5. The Secret Garden, by Frances Burnett（秘密花园)
6. Cat Country, by Lao She（猫城记）
7. Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Jones（魔幻城堡）
8. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro（别让我走）
9. The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowling（哈利波特）
10. Heroes Don’t Cry, by Gu Long（英雄无泪）
11. Ender’s Game, by Orson Card（安德的游戏）
12. The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov（永恒的终结）
13. Foundation, by Isaac Asimov（基地)
14. Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur Clarke（与拉玛相会）
15. The Man in the High Castle, by Philip Dick（高堡奇人）
16. Dune, by Frank Herbert（沙丘）
17. The His Dark Materials Series, by Philip Pullman（黑暗物质）
18. The Mandate of Heaven, by Qian Lifang（天意）

I certainly won't be able to read all of these, so my goal is to read at least ten of them. I am particularly excited about Heroes Don't Cry, by Gu Long, The Mandate of Heaven, by Qian Lifang, Foundation, by Isaac Asimov, and The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton -- none of which I have read before, in any language. If anyone has any other recommendations for native literature in the genres science fiction (that aren't by Liu Cixin), thriller, fantasy, historical fantasy, or historical fiction (I especially love gripping political intrigue), please let me know! I keep a pretty exhaustive reading list.

 

In addition to reading at least ten books, I also would like to add another 10.000 words to my vocabulary next year. I also want using Chinese to become a habitual part of my everyday routine -- when I look something up online, I want to be looking it up in Chinese. And I want to be doing that because it's easy and natural and because of force of habit, not because I'm "making" myself do it.

 

I also would like to finally hire a tutor for conversation practice, but if I don't get around to that I won't be terribly disappointed.

[imron]

On 12/26/2021 at 10:20 PM, alantin said:

This time no-one seems to have set up a thread for goals for 2022 yet so here goes.

The responsibility for this falls on whoever wants to do it first. ?

[Moshen]

Am I the only person here who wants to be able to read Chinese news and Chinese blogs rather than fiction? 

 

In any case, in 2022 I plan to continue with Chairman's Bao articles (their HSK 4 articles are easy for me, their HSK 5 articles are usually hard) and also try a year's worth of Du Chinese.  In addition, I'm going to go through all the graded readers at my level that I can find.  I have already started this and I think that will help a lot with getting more fluent - not panicking when I see a big block of Chinese characters that includes some words I've never encountered before.

 

And depending on how the pandemic goes, I may try to finish up the HSK 5 course using the standard books and Zero to Hero.

[Fithen]

On 12/26/2021 at 6:12 PM, 黄有光 said:

If anyone has any other recommendations for native literature in the genres science fiction (that aren't by Liu Cixin), thriller, fantasy, historical fantasy, or historical fiction (I especially love gripping political intrigue), please let me know!

If you're up for more lighthearted and digital content, you can't go wrong with the xianxia fantasy novel 修真聊天群. It's been well-received both by the Chinese reading world as a whole and individual people (as well as myself) who have read/are reading it. Just note that being a webnovel, it's incredibly long - around six or seven million characters if I recall correctly.

 

Another good book, if you're not much of a fan of the Daoist/traditional Chinese elements, is 第一序列. It's another, shorter webnovel, that falls into the post-apocalyptic and comedic categories, detailing a character who's developed superhuman abilities.

[alantin]

On 12/26/2021 at 7:35 PM, imron said:

You could consider splitting out your 2022 goals in a new thread if you like and reap the glory ?

 

Nah, I think a general thread is going to be enough for me. Don't really see what glory there is to reap..
And I also think that one major point in the exercise is seeing other peoples goals too and them going after them. Maybe that can create some sense of accountability to push you to go more after your own goals too. ?

[alantin]

On 12/26/2021 at 7:48 PM, Moshen said:

Am I the only person here who wants to be able to read Chinese news and Chinese blogs rather than fiction? 

 

I'm also interested in the news and blogs and also in reading what work related stuff the Chinese speaking world writes, but for the time being I feel that familiar novels are easier to approach. I've been thinking about making it into a project to copy by hand all Chairman's Bao articles in order starting from HSK1. I think they all also have audio? Maybe I'll make that into a goal next year.

[Woodford]

I suppose that now I'm in the middle of my 5th year of serious Chinese study (20-25 hours a week since Fall 2017). I studied very casually the year before that (maybe 3-5 hours a week) by auditing a college course from Fall 2016 to Spring 2017. So that provides context for where I am now! I tend to read 60-90 minutes a day (I've read maybe 40 graded readers, followed by 19 native-level books), review SRS flashcards 45 minutes a day (getting very close to 20,000 vocabulary flashcards), and actively listen to YouTube videos around 45 minutes a day. 

 

Reading Goals

 

I want to keep up mostly the same pace I've been going, at least until this Summer. I'm in this odd halfway zone, where I feel like reading is getting a lot easier, but I still have some work to do. The easy/moderate native-level novels are feeling quite good, but the higher, more complex, more literary stuff tends to give me some trouble still. But of course--I've only been reading novels for 2.5 years, so what else would I expect? This year, I want to ramp up the difficulty and read some of the harder stuff (as judged by CTA's unknown vocabulary count):

--"A Muslim's Funeral" by Huo Da
--"Life and Death are Wearing Me Out" by Mo Yan

--"A Fortress Besieged" by Qian Zhongshu

As a "bonus" if I feel extra ambitious:

--"Wolf Totem" by Jiang Rong

--"White Deer Plain" by Chen Zhongshi

And somewhere in there, I want to read Lu Yao's "Ordinary World," all three volumes. I think his writing style is much easier (so it might not do much to stretch my skills), but I've heard it's a very good book. And having read his other book, "Life," I believe it.

All the above books are total behemoths and require a very large time investment to read. Up to this point, I've limited myself to 300-page books, on average. I hope that after this next big push, my reading skills will feel more confident. I'd like to get to the place where although I'm far from perfect, I do have a general competence in reading modern Chinese literature. 

 

Listening Goals

I've had a pretty workable system, where I practice listening to Chinese videos with subtitles. Progress is slow and frustrating, but it's happening. I just need to stick with it on a daily basis. I deleted my English language podcasts a week or two ago, leaving me with only my Chinese ones (I'm having major withdrawal symptoms from the English ones!). The frustrating thing is that I can understand large chunks of the Chinese podcasts, but never enough to really engage with the content. I don't know if it will happen this year, but I'd really love to turn a corner on my listening skills and actually...well...understand stuff. Not just chunks of content, but long stretches. Without subtitles or repeat listening or other such aids. So this year, I'd like to just keep up the active listening for at least 30 minutes a day, using podcasts for passive listening.

Writing and Speaking Goals

This will hopefully be accomplished by sessions with iTalki tutors. At this point, I'll be stepping out of my comfort zone significantly. Quite frankly, I was procrastinating in getting to this step. To ease myself into it, I'll be doing an English and Chinese "exchange" discussion with a Chinese friend, starting next week. I've seen a few tutors on iTalki that seem really promising. With the many hours I've already invested in this language throughout the years, I don't want to stop short of speaking and writing. When people ask, "You study Chinese? Oh, can you speak it yet?" I don't want to have to keep answering, "No." I want to use the language and go places with it, starting with the large community of Chinese people already living around me. A week or two ago, I got into a conversation with a very lonely Shanghai man in his 70s or 80s who doesn't know any English and is living in the USA with his daughter and son-in-law. He seemed extremely happy to have somebody to talk to, but because of his accent (his original language with Shanghainese, not Mandarin) and the noise in the room, I could barely understand anything. It just felt really bad to disappoint him. Maybe if I keep practicing, I'll be good enough to engage with him someday!

This year, I'll be happy if I've started an iTalki routine at all. If I'm having 3 sessions or 3-5 hours a week, that will be really awesome. I think this year could shape up to be an adventure, if I allow it to.

[Tomsima]

On 12/26/2021 at 5:48 PM, Moshen said:

Am I the only person here who wants to be able to read Chinese news and Chinese blogs rather than fiction? 

 

I've certainly noticed a big uptick in how many are reading fiction at the moment - perhaps something related to being able to 'travel' in China without being able to go there? Either way, the majority of my reading has been Chinese news by a long way for some years now - its varied in content but repetitive in style, so very useful for practice. That being said, I too have been delving much more into fiction this year, and have noticed a significant increase in cognitive strain that you just don't get with 'media Chinese'. The latter in particular wants you to understand the information, so is often written in an accessible style: good for practice, but not so good for growth.

[Tomsima]

Here are my goals for 2022:

 

1) Keep up the steady, daily work with Cantonese. 30 mins a day minimum on shadowing until summer rolls round. Then its on to booking speaking classes over the summer.

 

2) Read these books (some recent recommendations, some others very overdue!):

 

1. 鲁迅全集（坟，热风，呐喊）鲁迅 (1923-7)
2. 老残游记  刘鹗 (1907)
3. 恨海  吴趼人 (1906)
4. 子夜  茅盾 (1933)
5. 四世同堂  老舍 (1944)
6. 儒林外史  吴敬梓 (1750) (yes, if I manage this one I will be amazed)

 

edit: 松隐漫录 replaced with 四世同堂. I've decided to stick to 偏白话文 books this year, 2023 may end up being dedicated to reading Qing dynasty 文言 literature as a result.

[markpete]

Wow, everyone here is dedicating way more time than I think I'll be able to in 2022.    But I'll keep plugging away, anyway. Here's what I wrote up for my 2022 goals after a frustrating HSK exam result a couple weeks ago (exact same total score as 2.5 years ago):

 

Plan for 2022:

Most important goal is to be able to have conversations with people.  My weak areas are listening skills, vocabulary, and production (speed and correctness using appropriate vocabulary). 

 

Plans starts Dec. 12, 2021.

 

Goals for listening skills:

·       3 hours per week of conversation (e.g., meetups or lessons) or focused listening.  Watching Mandarin Corner or similar videos with subtitles counts as half time.  Unfocused listening counts as 25% time. 

·       15 points per day -- Understand all of a passage in one pass without referring to the text.  After one month, can count a passage as new again.

  [So far, this takes me about ~35 minutes per day.]

o   HSK short passages (15-20 seconds) – 1 point

o   HSK long passages (30-40 seconds) – 3 points

o   One minute of stories or Mandarin Corner videos (60 seconds) – 5 points

o   2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-minute passages: 12, 20, 30, 45 points

 

Goals for vocabulary:

·       500 new high-frequency words or useful phrases.

·       Bring all of the hard [for me] HSK 5 words back into flashcards in rotation.

·       Up to date on cards 90% of days.

 

Goal for supporting work:

·       90 minutes per week of supporting work (including reading).

·       No Quora or Imgur 90% of days.  [Those are time-sucks for me that just take away from time I have for anything, including Chinese.]

[phills]

On 12/27/2021 at 1:48 AM, Moshen said:

Am I the only person here who wants to be able to read Chinese news and Chinese blogs rather than fiction? 

 

I'd like to read more news too, but I actually find that harder than books.  First, it's shorter, and it takes me a while to warm up to a particular topic / subject matter.  With news, by the time I'm warmed up, the article is over.  So I'm constantly on first or second gear with news, which feels frustrating.  Second, I find all current news click baity & overly sensationalistic these days (any language), and am generally turned off by the style. 

 

But I still like the idea of getting more practice reading "news-like" material.  What I'd really like is a collection of Old News, like maybe recounting some historical events from the 20th century through news clippings, all piled up in a row so I can get used to the subject matter and ramp up to a level of mastery through it.  I've seen, e.g. WW2 books in English compiled that way, but I don't know if there are any Chinese language books like that. 

 

Has anyone seen any materials like that?

[malazann]

blogs seem like a fun way to read chinese. Stuff like this 在美国贴吧上，一堆老外被学中文逼疯了。。。 (qq.com)  is relatively accessible (compared to the news)

[Publius]

On 12/27/2021 at 2:00 AM, Fithen said:

If you're up for more lighthearted and digital content, you can't go wrong with the xianxia fantasy novel 修真聊天群. It's been well-received both by the Chinese reading world as a whole and individual people (as well as myself) who have read/are reading it.

Yeah, it's recommended by many but when I tried it, it was so unbearably boring I dropped it before reaching the supposedly good part.

 

For lighthearted webnovels I recommend these instead:

 

史上第一混乱 by 张小花. It's a 反穿 story in which the protagonist, a modern city dweller who works at a pawnshop, is tasked with taking care of various historical figures who suffered wrongful death due to clerical error and are therefore smuggled into his world to take up temporary residence as a form of compensation before they go on their journey to reincarnation. What ensues is hilarious. (铁掌无敌王小军 by the same author is a wuxia comedy in a modern setting that is also worth recommending.)

 

异常生物见闻录 by 远瞳. It can be loosely classified as science fiction. A young man looking for job is chosen by an eccentric goddess to be her representative on Earth. His first job as an employee of the Time and Space Agency of a vast cosmic empire involves providing accommodation to strange creatures such as werewolf and vampire who turn out to be refugees from a neighboring universe. (The author's first book 希灵帝国 is not very good but his third and current one 黎明之剑 is quite interesting. It's a 西幻种田文, i.e. Western style sword and sorcery fantasy with a time traveler's empire building story arc, but there's also a latent sci-fi plot that was not fully developed the last time I read it.)

 

大王饶命 by 会说话的肘子 (same guy who wrote 第一序列). Basically I hate 系统文 (it reflects laziness and lack of imagination in a new generation of writers who grew up playing nothing but video games) but this one is exceptional because it's sufficiently funny. Another exception is 我修的可能是假仙 by 明月地上霜 because the "system" in there really isn't doing much.

 

从前有座灵剑山 by 国王陛下 is a xianxia fantasy, the details of which I've already forgotten, only the impression that it's pretty good. It has a TV adaptation.

 

我家徒弟又挂了 by 尤前 is another xianxia fantasy but written by a female writer for female readers from a female point of view. It's supremely witty and funny, which I find quite unique and refreshing based on my limited experience with 女频 webnovels.

 

Last but not least, 万界圆梦师 by 棉衣卫. The protagonist works for a company with cutting-edge technology to send their clients to parallel universes to fulfill their wildest dreams, such as to have a child with 李寻欢 (a character in Gu Long novels), or learn 葵花宝典 (from Jin Yong's 笑傲江湖), or bring back Thor's hammer, or become a superhero in the Marvel universe, you get the idea. On each trip he can arm himself with two skills/abilities provided by the company that at first glance seem totally ridiculous and useless so he has to be really creative and think outside the box and on his feet. There are so many side-splitting scenes in it that it is hands down the best 搞笑小说 ever but I suspect basic background knowledge is required of a wide variety of fictional works.

[Fithen]

On 12/27/2021 at 10:37 AM, Publius said:

Yeah, it's recommended by many but when I tried it, it was so unbearably boring I dropped it before reaching the supposedly good part.

 

Admittedly, the opening is quite slow-paced, but it does pick up and get quite funny later on.

 

In any case, thank you for sharing your other recommendations, they all look very interesting. Glad to see another by 会说话的肘子 on there, may be looking at that one next! While his works aren't anything very novel or creative, almost every chapter leaves me chuckling.

[Lilac]

For 2022 I want to do more of what I did in 2021 which is more reading and listening. This year I read more than I had before and while it was a challenge and I had to look up many words, I think I have built the foundation to make big improvements next year. 

 

I mostly focus on listening and reading (input) more than output and have found that I'm happy with what I can output when I do decide to.

 

I first took the Zhtoolkit word test in 2020 and since then I have been taking it to have a rough estimate of my vocab size. I noticed that this year my score increased significantly. I'm sure it's due to the reading I have been doing. Here are my past and current scores (I've also included a screenshot of my results in Jan 2021 (left) and Dec 2021 (right) if it's useful to anyone). 

 

Scores:

May 2020: 2873  ± 936

Jan 2021: 3760 ± 966 

Dec 2021: 8367 ± 1345 

 

 

I'm not sure how accurate the scores are so I do take them with a gain of salt. I've never taken classes which means I've been self studying since I began. I'm quite happy with the progress I've made. By the end of 2022 I would like to score over 10,000. 

 

2022 Goals (Jan 2022 will be the start of my 4th year learning Mandarin!):

- Reading: Read 1 million characters in books, articles etc and improve reading in traditonal characters

• I have found so many books I want to read that happen to only be in traditional characters so I would like to improve my recogniziton of them so that I have access to even more books to read

- Listening: Watch & listen to native material like videos, audiobooks & podcasts 

- Speaking: Weekly audio logs or 2 daily speaking challenges where I speak every day for a month

• I've done this in the past and it's what helped my improve my ability to speak comfortably

- Vocabulary: Setence mine at least 5 cards a day and create new cards with audio every week. 

• I only started properly setence mining with Anki 2 weeks ago and I've found it to be very useful to learn new words while reading and hearing setences that use those words! 
  • Essentially I take a word I have saved in pleco either from a book I read or video/podcast I listened to, I then go to the Chinese zero to hero dictonary to search up the word and find videos where it has been said. I then use sharex to get an audio clip of the sentence I want and use it to create a card on Anki. 
• Each sentence card has around 1-3 new words so this should help me increase my vocab if I am consistent 

Overall I just want to increase my vocabulary so I can enjoy the books I read and easily understand what I hear!

[Jan Finster]

On 12/26/2021 at 1:20 PM, alantin said:

Altogether these activities should give me about 1025 hours of Chinese study time over 2022 of which about 36% (365 hours) should be reading, 44% (452 hours) listening, 8% (87 hours) speaking and 12% (122 hours) writing). That is 80% input activities and 20% output activities

 

On 12/26/2021 at 7:39 PM, Woodford said:

5th year of serious Chinese study (20-25 hours a week since Fall 2017)

 

This is an impressive goal/dedication from both of you!!! Knowing (Alantin) / assuming (Woodford) that you are not students anymore (with unlimited free time), how do you guys manage to squeeze that much time into your daily routine (aka "life")? (20-25 hours per week is "half a job" (!)) ? Do you guys ever sleep? ? I am honestly curious and aside from time, where do you take the mental energy from? (Is this mostly all-weekend studying?) 

 

 

On 12/27/2021 at 3:23 AM, markpete said:

Wow, everyone here is dedicating way more time than I think I'll be able to in 2022.  

Don't worry, I sympathise!

 

On 12/27/2021 at 1:40 AM, Tomsima said:

• 松隐漫录  王韬 (1875)
• 儒林外史  吴敬梓 (1750) (yes, if I manage this one I will be amazed)

Sounds quite advanced. A bit like me trying to finally approach Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (in English) (in my case just to "tick that box")

 

[PerpetualChange]

Been thinking about this. I'm not sure what my goals should be as I round into my 12th year of study. So I guess one of my goals will be to figure out a few things...

 

• I'd really like to explore the idea of studying Classical Chinese. Perhaps in conjunction with learning more about Chinese literature and history. As some people here know, I completed a Master's degree in Chinese literature. I've always felt a bit like a pretender about it, since I'd only had studied Chinese for a couple of years when I started that program, and relied very much (almost exclusively) on translations. I don't think there's anything wrong with that - but I've always felt a part of me wants to go back and do it "for real" this time. Now that I'm reading novels, it seems like I could probably start dipping my toe into native materials about these subjects, and also the literature itself... Maybe @Tomsima could offer some pointers here. 
• I'll continue novel reading, but my listening continues to lag behind. Weirdly, the better my reading gets, the less of a challenge listening is - because the vocabulary is there, then it really does become a matter of needing people to "slow down". But I do think I should somehow back a couple of hours of listening per week into my routine - I just have to find out how, since I don't care much for watching News, listening to podcasts or watching YouTube in my native language, let alone doing it as a "fun" learning Tool. 
• Time to explore another language - and unlike in year's passed - consider taking a class. Something about the classroom setting and having the enthusiasm of others to feed off of is so vital for me early on. I've taken stabs at self-studying Japanese, Swedish, and Cantonese so far. Still working on the Canto, but for the other I was never able to get beyond the early stages (maybe the equivalent of half a semester's worth). 

 

On 12/26/2021 at 1:39 PM, Woodford said:

"A Fortress Besieged" by Qian Zhongshu

I've got this one on my reading shelf. Might do it at some point this year also. 

 

Other stuff on my potential reading list: 

傾城之戀  張愛玲

平凡的世界 路遙

紅高粱家族 莫言

 

Pt 2 of 蕭十一郎 古龍

 

As well as the books read as a forum a year or two ago... 

 

Will be happy to do 3 or so of these.