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.