My Chinese study journey and progress

[williamwu123]

Mastering Chinese has always been a lifelong dream for me since I was 18. I am now 31 and I have been a lurker for well over 10 years and actually live in China for the last 2 years, but Chinese has not improved at all (mostly due to work and other personal factors). I can communicate basic convo's in Chinese but struggle much more than that. At this point, I am pretty ashamed of my ability and so have resolved recently to refocus on studying and improving (also alongside the fact as of a 1-2 months ago, I no longer work and so I can fully focus on this). 

 

I am starting a mini-journal to document my journey. I found this super helpful with another big project that I did in my life (long story for another time). My goal is to be near-native fluency for general everyday use - in particular, being able to converse and make friends at a deeper level on specific topics. 

 

I have hit the books again as of 1 month ago. At that time, my vocab was basically HSK 5 level (i.e., 2,500 words). Listening was OK (heritage speaker) but struggled a lot with unknown words. 

 

I have spent the last 30 days focusing on vocab via Anki, working through the HSK lists (HSK2 at this point). 30 days later, I've largely studied most of HSK vocab for HSK lvl 6 (i.e., hitting the ~5,000 mark). I've been punching out roughly ~100 new words per day, which is equivalent to ~1.5 hours per day and ~800 reviews per day per day. Stats below. 

 

I have spent a little time to reading but have not managed to get much progress on this. I went through one Korean drama in Chinese using LanguageReactor and tried my hand with a manga (used an IPad to take screenshots and then translate unknown words via Pleco / ChatGPT). Next plan of action is to focus on blogs / news articles etc. Obviously I hear the consenus that I need to be converting to reading naturally as opposed to Anki. 

 

Will update this on a regular basis over time. 

 

[abcdefg]

On 10/6/2024 at 10:04 AM, williamwu123 said:

I've been punching out roughly ~100 new words per day, which is equivalent to ~1.5 hours per day and ~800 reviews per day per day.

 

100 new words a day sounds like a whole lot. When I lived in China, I made a point of using my new vocabulary throughout the day when interacting with local people. But my goals were more modest, so this involved only 10 or 12 new words a day. 

 

Good luck with your project! Welcome to the Forum!

[Explore Chinese]

Any updates on this? Curious on the 100 new words a day part! I'm currently prepping for HSK5 exam and 100 words a day would blow me out of the water, so curious if the amount of new words it's possible to study each day correlates to the level of the learner. 

[williamwu123]

Hi there - I've spent the last month continuing to be largely focused on vocab (I would say ~75% of my time on Anki learning vocab and ~25% on books / movies). I know the standard advice is to get more into native content rather than Anki and I'd like to transition to be more focused on native content but so far haven't been able to. The reasoning as follows:

+ I'm making good progress on vocab and have got into a good rhythm (and it gets significantly easier, more on this below)

+ I haven't found reading books effective yet in terms of learning vocab when compared with Anki. I tried graded readers but they are incredibly boring. On the other hand, I downloaded 三体 (the book) but have only got about 35 pages out of 900 so far. Personally, I find reading books at this level a little difficult because you are slowed significantly by the volume of new words and the frequency of these new words aren't high enough for "natural spaced repetition". i.e., you get too many "easy words" in most blocks of text and the unknown words, while of high frequency in total, are not frequent enough on individual word basis to get much repetition. 

+ On a more general level, I struggle with learning from native content because of vocabulary limitations which hinders comprehension which then hinders repetition speed. I still need much more vocab to be able to understand radio / movies without having to pause every so often. In particular, my reading speed isn't very high (not fast enough to read longer subtitles yet when watching a movie wihtout pausing) and most of this is derived from the fact that there is unknown vocab / characters for which I either don't know or my recall speed isn't quick enough. As such, movies aren't enjoyable as well because I have to pause every other second.

 

From a vocab perspective, I'm now ~3,500 into the ~5,000 vocab list for HSK7-9 and should be done HSK7-9 in the next 2 weeks. Note that this means just learning the word and definition NOT being able to actively use the word. My plan is to allow active learning to occur once I see it in context via books / movies enough time but right now I need to be able to read / understand enough and read / understand at sufficient speed in order for books / movies comprehensive to occur. I"ve been punching out on average ~100-150 new words per day over the last month (some days I'll do 0 new words, some days I'll do up to 400 new words). 

 

Note that learning vocab (by HSK 7-9) definitely becomes incredibly faster past HSK5 and 6 and that's why I'm able to maintain the very high pace. The reason for this is that ~80-90% of vocab in HSK7-9 is just new words that use existing characters that you already know. As such, learning new vocab is very easy if you know the underlying base characters, ranging from the very obvious (e.g., the word streetlight is literally just street + light) to being a bit more subtle (in which case, they are almost like memonics). Most of the new learning is really on new characters of which there is an upper limit to how many characters there are (roughly, HSK1-6 is ~2000 characters and ~7-9 is a further ~1000 characters, and based on what I've seen you need ~3500 to recognise the majority (99.9%) of characters in a book / movie). Hence, my goal is within the next 1-2 month to fully learn all normal characters. After I'm done with HSK9, I am going to focused on the drama subtitles words that were provided in another post in the forum (by my calculation, there are ~15000 words in that list and 2300 unique characters, but only ~250 characters not present in the HSK1-9 that I am in the process of completing). 

 

My Anki review stats below - note on a good day, I'm probably spending about 4 hours on Anki to learn 400 new words (noting that I think Anki has a loss of about 1/3 of the time due to minor procrastination or whatnot perhaps not recording time, actual time actually translates to 6 hours in front of Anki). So far, I have struggled to spend more than that 6 hours on Anki a day as my brain gets fatigued so I have not been able to study much more than this a day yet, despite wanting to punch out 12 hours+ a day on Chinese. So far once I hit that limit per day, I have no option but to watch simple Chinese movies or do other things.

 

I was testing trying a Chinese teacher but to be honest with my current focus I didn't find it much more useful than using ChatGPT and so have put that off for now. Note my speaking is probably still like HSK 4 level. Personally I'm better at focusing at one thing and finishing it up than trying to improve multiple skills all at once. I also signed up for HSK 5 level test in mid November but given tests are not my main focus (being native level is), let's actually see what happens there. 

 

Would welcome any feedback on my study methods and how to get more hours in once the brain is fatigued. 

 

[abcdefg]

On 11/2/2024 at 7:15 PM, williamwu123 said:

+ On a more general level, I struggle with learning from native content because of vocabulary limitations which hinders comprehension which then hinders repetition speed. I still need much more vocab to be able to understand radio / movies without having to pause every so often.

 

I admire your dedication and I certainly do not consider myself any kind of language-learning expert, but I must wonder whether you might be demanding too much perfection from yourself and it is hindering your progress. I watched tons of Chinese movies and listened to tons of radio programs and podcasts, satisfied to just grasp most of the content and enjoy the overall process. I focused on the entertainment value of the movie or radio show instead of on the language per se. 

 

Even when I'm reading newspaper articles and books in my native language (English,) I don't force myself to understand every single word. I guess or infer meaning from context and keep moving along at a speed which allows the activity to be enjoyable instead of bogging down and becoming a laborious exercise. 

[williamwu123]

Open to thoughts here but my goal here is to master Chinese at a native level in the fastest time possible (I can already grasp general gist of things but I'd like to really take that to the next step with more infrequent vocab). 

 

If I am just "absorbing things" then yes, I will learn, but the rate of language acquisition is significantly slower than if I am active learning. I think this maybe works better for words that appear frequently enough but at the level of HSK7-9 words which don't really appear more than 10 times per million words, I would literally need to watch like 100 movies to learn 100 new words by osmosis. Reading would be somewhat faster as I can look up words but still inferior in speed to active learning (for active Anki learning, I calculated I spend about 1-1.5 minutes in total Anki time per new word including re-reviewing time before it enters mature vocabulary). I could learn those hundred words in a fraction of the time via active learning (a matter of a few hours) even if a lot of them don't really stick or aren't in active vocab until I see them in the right context. 

[abcdefg]

I understand. Your goals are different from mine. Your task is more demanding. I wish you great success! 

[lordsuso]

Your approach looks very similar to mine. I was also unable to consume "easy" content due to boredom (graded readers, tv shows for kids, etc), so I went all in with flashcards for a while to unlock native books. I spent ~4 months doing 1h30min of flashcards per day (I reviewed ~7k words in total, ~60 a day on average). It was brutal but it worked for me, the first book I picked up after those 4 moths was 流星·蝴蝶·剑 by 古龙, and I was able to enjoy it (with the help of a pop-up dictionary and tons of patience). Keep it going!

[Explore Chinese]

I think both @lordsuso and @williamwu123 have both mentioned a really prominent problem at the later stages of Chinese learning, and one I'm also struggling with.

 

Learning vocabulary feels necessary before engaging with native content, but learning words without context also has limitations in helping you reach native content (at least in my opinion).

 

On 11/3/2024 at 12:15 AM, williamwu123 said:

Note that this means just learning the word and definition NOT being able to actively use the word. My plan is to allow active learning to occur once I see it in context via books / movies enough time but right now I need to be able to read / understand enough and read / understand at sufficient speed in order for books / movies comprehensive to occur.

 

I'm really interested to see how you comprehensible books / movies are after the intensive vocabulary review. I'm stuck in the place @lordsuso mentioned. Easy content (for me that's childrens content) is boring and hard to stick with, but adult native content is too incomprehensible to be useful. So I'm interested to see different ways of bridging that gap.

 

Thanks for sharing!

[lordsuso]

On 11/3/2024 at 10:40 PM, Explore Chinese said:

Learning vocabulary feels necessary before engaging with native content, but learning words without context also has limitations

 

Learning words is not a black and white thing, the more you encounter and use a word the better you "know" it. In order to consume native content, you need to know many words, but a very basic knowledge is enough (pronunciation + translated main definition). 

 

Some people like to learn the words without any context, some with some context (this is me, I always have one example sentence in my flashcards), and some like to go more in-depth with multiple sentences/texts and grammar lessons. And depending on the person what appears to be the fastest route is not always the fastest in the long run!

[Explore Chinese]

That's true.

 

I think I heard on the "you can learn Chinese" podcast: "there are no wrong ways to learn Chinese, just faster and slower ways".

 

My take away from this is that grinding through vocabulary is hard. Reading native content is also hard.

 

Pick which "hard" you prefer.

 

I just downloaded a couple of children's books. I'll do a little bit of both and see if that works for me.

Edited November 5, 2024 at 03:46 PM by Explore Chinese
Typo

[Hijinks]

I love this thread William - it also looks like we're in relatively similar boats! It sounds as if you're going through Anki at absolute rocket speed if you're learning 100 words a day; are these all completely new words/what percentage (roughly) are words that you've had exposure to in the past?

 

@Explore Chinese - If you're finding native content inaccessible due to vocabulary issues, it might be worth trying Migaku. It allows for all words in Chinese subs to be clicked and turned into in-context Anki cards (with the sentence/audio from the video you're watching, a definition and some ChatGPT explanatory notes on how to use it etc). I'm currently going through the Chinese version of Arcane (双城之战) on Netflix, and this is making it far more feasible/enjoyable for immersion time. 😊

[abcdefg]

That looks like a powerful tool, @Hijinks. I was not aware of it. Thanks!

[Explore Chinese]

Seconded, thanks for sharing @Hijinks, looks interesting and will definitely check it out.

[williamwu123]

On 11/7/2024 at 4:00 AM, Hijinks said:

I love this thread William - it also looks like we're in relatively similar boats! It sounds as if you're going through Anki at absolute rocket speed if you're learning 100 words a day; are these all completely new words/what percentage (roughly) are words that you've had exposure to in the past?

I would say of the HSK7-9 vocab list, almost 100% is "new" in the sense that I haven't come across them, but ~80-90% are derivative words of existing characters that I already know. 

 

I came across a post about 10 years ago in this forum that talks about reading speed vs # cumulative characters read - very interesting read. 

 

Migaku is really great for Netflix - the only problem is Netflix is relatively limited in terms of Chinese movies so would love to get one that works for Youku / MangoTV etc...

[Flickserve]

An alternative method to learning to help using Chinese to a native level is to learn a skill under a native Chinese speaker and then using the language to teach that skill in Chinese.

 

I used to learn badminton in Cantonese under a coach. A lot of the more technical terms I could not understand and I would have to have someone translate for me. Through the process of repetition, that completed the first stage. I got quite good and decided to try for the coaching course which was again, all in Chinese, I had to get someone to translate a lot of the manual and that pushed me through another level. Then I ended up teaching some badminton using Cantonese. Because I would have full Cantonese discussions with the coach especially when it came to discussing tactics, there's a lot of two way interaction.

 

I don't do it for mandarin because basically I am based in HK where everyone speaks Cantonese but if I were in mainland China, that's probably something I would do combining my interests in sports with language.

[abcdefg]

@Flickserve--I have admired that strategy of yours for many years now and gradually adopted it myself, learning and practicing my hobbies completely in Chinese. Chinese tea, Chinese cooking, Tai Chi, gym workouts with a coach/trainer (in Kunming,) etc. You have taken it further than I ever did, into the realm of teaching others those skills in Chinese. I sure that final step would have been extremely helpful in solidifying and refining use of the new terms and using them in two-way interaction. 

 

ETA: The other thing I had intended to comment was that even when one doesn't achieve as high a level of skill in the sport or hobby activity as you did, one can still reap significant language benefits. In Tai Chi, for example, I was a "forever beginner" but still found "practicing in Chinese" helpful. 

[Lu]

On 11/14/2024 at 9:21 AM, Flickserve said:

I used to learn badminton in Cantonese under a coach. A lot of the more technical terms I could not understand and I would have to have someone translate for me. Through the process of repetition, that completed the first stage. I got quite good and decided to try for the coaching course which was again, all in Chinese, I had to get someone to translate a lot of the manual and that pushed me through another level. Then I ended up teaching some badminton using Cantonese.

I think this would be extra difficult in that every person learns things differently, so a teacher/coach/instructor needs to be able to explain things in various different ways. I am a pretty decent amateur rower, I am pretty good at teaching people how to row and I'm really good at English, but teaching someone how to row in English was a real challenge for me, even when rowing vocab was not the issue. (We managed, the rower learned it.)

[Flickserve]

On 11/14/2024 at 9:32 PM, Lu said:

I am a pretty decent amateur rower, I am pretty good at teaching people how to row and I'm really good at English, but teaching someone how to row in English was a real challenge for me, even when rowing vocab was not the issue. (We managed, the rower learned it.)

If you learnt rowing in your native language and then used English to teach, that would be difficult.

 

If you learnt rowing in English and then used English to teach, you would be using the language much better. 

[Hijinks]

@williamwu123 - the masses (read: me) demand an update!