Up to Hijinks: A Long-Term Chinese Progress Thread

[Hijinks]

*steps out of the lurkerzone*

 

Hello everyone, and welcome to a thread designed to document my Chinese progress.

 

Quick Backstory:

 

I lived and worked in China for two years a long time ago, and came out just shy of HSK 5 level. I speak/listen to Chinese every day for work, but haven't read anything beyond extremely daily conversation/IM topics in forever. I haven't deliberately practiced Chinese in roughly four years. My vocabulary is pretty bleak as a result, and has probably regressed to around 1500-2000 words tops. I now have a few months to play with where I'm likely to have afternoons free, and I want to use this time to improve/resurge my Mandarin as much as I can, and - above all else - get into good habits with it.

 

My Current Level:

 

I took a HSK 5 mock a few days ago and scored 170/300, with the following breakdown:

 

 

My listening is by far my strongest suit, and I found the audio somewhat slow. My score reflects a broader problem - my reading has become so poor that I occasionally couldn't recognise the multiple choice answers in the listening section, dragging the score further down. I rarely write, but I believe this score could be improved through extensive reading and deliberate grammar practice when necessary.

 

Study Plan:

 

Immersion & Anki. Rather than studying Mandarin with textbooks (again) or single-word, contextless flashcards (again), I'm going to try and seriously take a leaf out of the AJATT book - that is, immersing myself in Chinese as much as i can. I'm using Migaku to generate in-context flashcards in Anki with audio, tones and explanations. I'm getting flashcards from a mixture of native content (predominantly Chinese-language dubs and subs on Netflix or native content on YouTube) and from the HSK vocabulary list(s). I'm aiming at learning a minimum of 20 new words a day for the next three years. I'm happy for this to be more on some days and less on others, providing that works out as the average.

 

Healthy Competition. A friend of mine is moving to Taiwan, and we want to see who can make the most progress in a year. We're each tracking our time spent doing Chinese on Toggl Track, and can see how much progress the other has made in a given time period. No prizes for winning, but joint progress and accountability are nice.

 

This thread. I'm going to post here at the beginning of each month to lay out my progress in the month prior. Update posts are likely to be fairly brief, and will cover what I've watched, read, and screenshots of time spent and Anki stats. I know I find long-term progress logs like that inspiring - if you're reading this (and this post is old), then I hope you find this inspiring, too. 😊

 

Goals:

 

The main aim is to reach practical fluency in Mandarin. This is not a short-term endeavour, and I expect this to take years. I am budgeting three years for this, at which point life is highly likely to become far more demanding of my time. I would like this to culminate in passing the HSK 7-9 exam with a HSK 8+. The more 'concrete' goals along the way are:

 

Next Six Months:

• Have 1000 mature Anki cards
• Have 2500 mature Anki cards
• Pass the HSK 5 with a 'strong' score (250+)

 

Next Year:

• Have 5000 mature Anki cards
• Pass the HSK 6 with a 'strong' score (250+)

 

Next Two Years:

• Have 10,000 mature Anki cards
• Have 15,000 mature Anki cards
• Pass the HSK 7-9 with a 7+ grade

 

Next Three Years:

• Have 20,000 mature Anki cards
• Pass the HSK 7-9 with an 8+ grade

 

Bonus Goals:

• Have 25,000 mature Anki cards
• Have 30,000 mature Anki cards

 

I consider 30,000 mature Anki cards as being the effective 'end-game' of me actively studying Mandarin. I doubt going that deep is necessary, but I do think that would give me a level of fluency that's actively uncommon amongst learners of Chinese as a second language. I believe the long-term consistency is feasible (although will take discipline), and the immersion focus sound.

 

I'd love to hear any feedback you lovely forum-dwellers may have - any advice on how to manage time, and any lessons learned from failures that you've seen/have made yourselves from which I could benefit. I hope this makes for good, fun and consistent reading over the next few years. 😊

 

 

[abcdefg]

Welcome to the forum! Clearly defining your goals the way you have is have is half the battle. And it looks like you have mapped out an excellent strategy. 

[becky82]

Can I suggest adding "daily reading" in there?

[Hijinks]

On 11/7/2024 at 1:20 AM, becky82 said:

Can I suggest adding "daily reading" in there?

 

Absolutely, and I'd love to pick your brain on that front! What kind of content have you found enjoyable, or do you find has been the most useful (for lack of a better word) in your own Chinese-learning journey?

 

On my side re: reading, I'm strongly considering doing the bulk of it through film/TV show subs (that is, reading subtitles while I watch stuff I enjoy). For active practice, my Anki flashcards include full sentences on the front side (with a word highlighted), like so:

 

 

...and full translations/pinyin/pictures/usage notes on the back, like so:

 

 

The idea being that I read each sentence in full before checking for understanding (not just the target word, but the sentence in which it's embedded) as a way of keeping up my reading chops. I'm very open to the idea of bringing in news sources, comics, stories and the like to help bolster usage as I go further, and would love suggestions on that front. 😊

[williamwu123]

Will be following this thread with interest.. good luck! I started off at around the same level 2 months ago although I'm now full time focused on Chinese (or as much as I can timewise until I get brain fatigue each day)...

[becky82]

On 11/7/2024 at 11:04 PM, Hijinks said:

Absolutely, and I'd love to pick your brain on that front! What kind of content have you found enjoyable, or do you find has been the most useful (for lack of a better word) in your own Chinese-learning journey?

 

Me?  I've read all sorts of things.  I like learning things, so I usually go for things like science.  At the HSK5-ish level, I felt Matilda (and other Roald Dahl books translated into Mandarin) and grade 3/4 语文 textbooks were good choices.  But mostly it's about finding something I consider interesting, so I actually read it and try to understand its meaning.

[Jan Finster]

Ambitious goals are inspiring.

Everyone has a different method, but I am puzzled by the obsession with Anki. The main bottleneck for virtually all learners is listening skills, that is fast native speech with possibly non-standard pronunciation. It will limit your conversation immensely if you do not understand your interlocutor. 

 

In terms of vocabulary, I would define what topics interest you and what topics are you likely going to talk about. If you are heavily interested in history, then I would focus on that and ignore medical or technical vocabulary until you need it. I have zero coding skills and I invest zero time learning the Chinese words related to having a conversation about coding.

Finally I suggest just using Lingq or similar devices for reading. You will likely acquire vocabulary more efficiently that way than by flashcarding. 

 

I am German and know probably 30K plus words in English. I am quite certain I have learned fewer than 500 of those words by flashcarding over the years... 

[Lu]

Anki is so nice and measurable, though. All those hard data! You can track your progress perfectly! But I agree with Jan that Anki should be a means, not an end.

 

OP, why do you want to learn how to read, what kind of texts do you want to be able to read? Go and practice that. Novels, non-fiction books, newspapers, policy documents, it doesn't matter: read what you want to learn how to read, and extract your new vocab from those texts. If you want to read about developments in insulation materials, there's no point in first learning five different words for 'sad', and vice versa. Of course, if what you really want to learn to read is subtitles, you're on exactly the right track.

[Hijinks]

Update Post: 1st December 2024

 

Hi all, and happy December! Here's a quick update post on how everything's been for the past month, and how things will look for the month ahead as we cruise into 2025. I spent 73.5 hours learning Chinese in November 2024.

 

 

Media Immersion List (all in Chinese):

 

- The entirety of Arcane (奥术/双城一战) in Chinese. Tears were shed. I might watch it again.

- The Wandering Earth (流浪地球). I've seen it before in English, but this time just in Chinese with Chinese subs.

- Chicken Run 2. Somehow, it's both dubbed and subbed in Mandarin on Netflix. Thanks to that, I learned the wonderfully descriptive '急着赶去投胎吗?' as being the equivalent of 'do you have a death wish?' in English.

- A lot of Chinese YouTube. The Marmot videos, while political, are subbed and have been handy for spoken Chinese.

- The Chinese Unfiltered podcast, alongside a few other podcasts found by just searching for topics I'm interested in in Chinese via Spotify (I listened to a cool one on Hollow Knight by typing in 空洞骑士, for instance).

 

 

December 2024: Plan of Action

 

For the most part, I plan to simply continue. However, within that, I'd like to:

- Start burning through the HSK 5 vocabulary list. It would be nice to learn some words from this daily in order to help with a future HSK 5 attempt. Some of that vocabulary has naturally come my way already by right of immersion, and as I've taken/prepped for the exam before, I don't think this will be overly challenging.

- Increase the amount that I'm listening to. While the amount I put in is respectable enough, it could've been a little bit more. I'd be pleased if I could hit 85 hours total in December.

 

 

Vocabulary Learned & Stats:

 

I picked up a lot of vocabulary from the above media resources - especially Arcane and Marmot videos - by using Migaku for flashcard creation. Outside of vocabulary via immersion, I took the liberty of adding any words I'd since forgotten from the HSK 1-4 lists to shore up any weak points. I've now covered all vocabulary from HSK 1 to HSK 4. Anki is currently taking around an hour a day to complete, which is reasonable and sustainable. I'm aware this will 'ramp' in future as more cards are added, but I don't project this as becoming too lengthy (unless I decide to go buck wild and add i.e. 30-35+ new words a day, for instance).

 

Stats-wise, I've maintained a 31-day streak (well, 32 days including today) and have averaged 27 new words per day. By sheer good fortune, I have exactly 800 words/Anki cards in my deck. None have been overly difficult to practice, but a good portion of the new vocab is either a) vocabulary I learned years ago and had simply forgotten or b) comprised of characters I already know.

 

 

Statistics Screenshots (as data is beautiful)

 

The first three screenshots are from Anki, showing new cards added per day, review ratios, and number of new-vs-mature cards. The 'failure' rate is somewhat artificially high, as I tend to always click 'again' the first time I see a new word after adding - even if I already know it. The last screenshot is from Timery (a third-party app for Toggl Track) which I'm using to log time spent learning Chinese. I'm not tracking time spent speaking Chinese, although I spend around 2-3 hours/day doing this for my work.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 2, 2024 at 06:48 AM by Hijinks
Turns out I'd left a paragraph unfinished. Whoops.

[abcdefg]

On 12/1/2024 at 1:54 AM, Hijinks said:

Thanks to that, I learned the wonderfully descriptive '急着赶去投胎吗?' as being the equivalent of 'do you have a death wish?' in English.

 

That's a good one! 

[williamwu123]

Thanks for the update.

 

How do you listen to podcasts on Spotify (assume there are no subtitles or program similar to LanguageReactor / Migaku) for unknown words?

 

I've spent time in Netflix mostly (haven't done Youtube yet) but given the limited Chinese options I spent the last month watching Korean / Japanese content and just putting Chinese subtitles which isn't the greatest setup. 

 

Will use the time tracking software going forward!

[Hijinks]

On 12/2/2024 at 4:09 PM, williamwu123 said:

How do you listen to podcasts on Spotify (assume there are no subtitles or program similar to LanguageReactor / Migaku) for unknown words?

 

I just listen! I don't use podcasts for actively learning new vocabulary - I just put on a podcast with headphones whenever I got for a walk or have odd tasks around the house. SBS Mandarin (Chinese news), GGTalk (a Chinese gaming podcast - albeit now defunct), and 故事FM for a little bit of everything.

 

Also, big shout-out to radio.garden (that's a URL!) as a listening source. Hover the map over Beijing, and you can listen to live radio whenever, wherever.

 

Video-wise/for unknown words, I'm mostly using Netflix and occasionally YouTube. I'm supplementing both with HSK word lists and the HSK Standard Course passages/textbooks. I'm trying to figure out whether Migaku works with Bilibili (which requires an account in order to view soft subs, which in turn requires a phone number... it's a lot of faff for another day).

[becky82]

On 12/3/2024 at 2:49 AM, Hijinks said:

Also, big shout-out to radio.garden (that's a URL!) as a listening source. Hover the map over Beijing, and you can listen to live radio whenever, wherever.

 

Radio Garden is great, although last time I mentioned it on Reddit, someone suggested radio.cn instead.  It has more channels, and you can listen to previous broadcasts as if they were podcasts.

[Hijinks]

Update Post: 5 January 2025

(apologies for the slight delay with this one!)

 

In a Nutshell:

 

I ended up losing ~two weeks in December. This was due to a mean chest infection that wiped me out for a week followed by the gap between Christmas and New Year. Festivities and lingering grossness led to me putting off Chinese more than I should've. I've since caught back up on Anki, have restarted adding words and watching plenty of content. 

 

I also haven't been tracking time quite as diligently lately. This is as my regular tracker expired at the end of 2024, and I put off making a new one for a few days. It's now set up and ready to go. 😊

 

Also, as of December, I've turned on FSRS on Anki. It's heavily reduced the number of reviews needed while still maintaining the same level of retention. Very pleased with it.

 

Media Immersion List (all in Chinese):

• Arcane (奥术/双城一战), again. I regret nothing.
• YOLO (热辣滚烫)
• A sea of YouTube channels. MoneyXYZ, Anthony看世界 and 即凉 have all been great.
• I've just started on the Chinese version of the new Wallace & Gromit film. That's champion, that is!

 

January 2024: Plan of Action

• Get back into better habits. I dropped the ball while I was unwell and over the festive period. Rather than let this become chronic, I'd rather put the effort in now to get back up to pace.
• Review what went wrong in December to make sure it doesn't happen again in January. This predominantly involves listening to/watching more English-language media than Chinese. To counteract this, I'm going to use ColdTurkey to whitelist Chinese-language channels that I enjoy, and otherwise block the website.
• Re-complete the HSK 5上 textbook. I'm currently on Lesson 8, and haven't found it challenging. Migaku/Anki has been an incredible help. I am finding that content from other sources (read: TV and media) is sticking better so I'm not wedded to the idea of learning all vocabulary from the HSK 5-6 textbooks, but for now, I do believe it provides a very useful foundation.

 

Vocabulary Learned & Stats:

 

As with last month, I learned a healthy amount of words from both native content and the HSK 5 textbook series. My average was awful, however, due to being unwell and then non-diligent over the holiday week. Over the last month, I have added a sad 7 cards/day and have a total of 1,168 cards to review. Very low though this is, I'll take slow progress over no progress any day of the week.

 

Statistics Screenshots (as data is beautiful):

 

My very sad 'only 7 new cards/day' graph. Womp womp womp.

 

Reviews. Turning on FSRS made catching up far easier than otherwise, and has heavily lowered reviews without compromising retention.

 

Just missed 1,000 mature cards last month. So close!

 

Total logged time. 37 hours logged over December, evenly split between Anki and listening.

 

 

[abcdefg]

Sounds like you are "back in the saddle now" as we Texans say. Glad you are making steady progress. Thanks for the update. Lots of us are pulling for you!

 

On 1/5/2025 at 1:47 AM, Hijinks said:

Also, as of December, I've turned on FSRS on Anki. It's heavily reduced the number of reviews needed while still maintaining the same level of retention. Very pleased with it.

 

It's been a long time since I used Anki (switched to Pleco) and I didn't recognize "FSRS." Never used FSRS myself. Looked it up. Seems it's a more highly-refined scheduling algorithm. For anyone else reading this who was stumped, here's a good explanation:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/15mab3r/fsrs_explained_part_1_what_it_is_and_how_it_works/