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For several years, my primary goal with Chinese was to be able to read a Chinese novel as I would an English novel (not necessarily understand every word, but understand 99% of it without the help of a dictionary). Over the past few years, I mostly achieved this goal and was starting to feel a bit lost as to what I should do next. Looking back at the 2024 thread, I stated that "what I really want to do now is USE output for something fun so I can get better (publish a Chinese language blog/vlogs, contribute to Chinese message boards or social media, etc...)." Although I did publish one Chinese language vlog in 2024, I really just continued to do more of the same type of input-based studying I was doing before: learn vocab, read novels, and watch Chinese TV. However, in an odd twist of fate I was offered a job in Taipei this year (completely unrelated to the fact that I can speak some Chinese), which I accepted. After the first month living there I realized: (1) to my great surprise, people seem to have zero issue understanding what I'm saying. After almost ten years of studying in the US, I was afraid my tones and pronunciation were terrible. Maybe they are, but I can at least make myself understood, which is all that matters to me. (2) I can understand some people 95% of the time, some people 50% of the time and some people 0% of the time. I have no idea if it's the accent, speed of speech or what, but some Chinese is still completely incomprehensible to me. I'm hoping this improves with exposure. So now my goals for 2025: (1) Learn the traditional characters (I am already 80% of the way there with this, but I still need some practice). (2) Get better at parsing a Taiwanese accent (I can much better understand mainland TV shows vs Taiwanese TV shows). (3) Third, and most importantly, I want to be able to work in Chinese. The company provides translators, which I rely on for Chinese-language meetings, but I want to be able to do what some of my coworkers can do and get by in both languages (English and Chinese) without a translator. To do this I think I need to learn more business-specific vocab and get more comfortable with fast speech. So, if by the end of the year I can get by in my job without a translator, I will consider myself successful. I probably have a 50/50 chance at achieving this, so I'll call it a stretch goal.

The first mock tests book for HSK7-9 is out. A little unintuitively, you can scan a QR code on the translation page of each test to get audio for the listening part and speaking part, as well as PDF's for the translation (since at least my book has it in Korean rather than English). Unfortunately it's all in a WeChat mini app, so I downloaded everything to make it available here. Translation: attached to this post for download (English, Russian, Spanish, and Japanese) Audio: Available here in a YouTube playlist. (I'd like to make the audio files available, but they are too big to post on the forum. PM me and I'll email them to you directly) 全真模拟题 01 - 翻译 - 俄语.pdf 全真模拟题 01 - 翻译 - 日语.pdf 全真模拟题 01 - 翻译 - 英语.pdf 全真模拟题 01 - 翻译 - 西班牙语.pdf 全真模拟题 02 - 翻译 - 俄语.pdf 全真模拟题 02 - 翻译 - 日语.pdf 全真模拟题 02 - 翻译 - 英语.pdf 全真模拟题 02 - 翻译 - 西班牙语.pdf 全真模拟题 03 - 翻译 - 俄语.pdf 全真模拟题 03 - 翻译 - 日语.pdf 全真模拟题 03 - 翻译 - 英语.pdf 全真模拟题 03 - 翻译 - 西班牙语.pdf 全真模拟题 04 - 翻译 - 俄语.pdf 全真模拟题 04 - 翻译 - 日语.pdf 全真模拟题 04 - 翻译 - 英语.pdf 全真模拟题 04 - 翻译 - 西班牙语.pdf 全真模拟题 05 - 翻译 -俄语.pdf 全真模拟题 05 - 翻译 -日语.pdf 全真模拟题 05 - 翻译 -英语.pdf 全真模拟题 05 - 翻译 -西班牙语.pdf

I am in awe. Both the learning and the building flashcards is a lot of time and effort you're putting into this. I can imagine it paying off very nicely, but the effort is intimidating. I've been using Chinese professionally for some years now. My previous goal was to be on some sort of stage as myself (not as interpreter), talking about Chinese literature and/or translation. I've achieved that. The goal I couldn't set for myself was to win some kind of award for translation; that is too dependent on the quality of other people's work, so not really a goal I could work for. But I did get a nomination for such an award, so I achieved it anyway. My next goal is to help someone new become a literary translator as well, with mentorship or teaching or some other way. Not necessarily in 2025, but it's the next thing to aim for. Goals specifically for next year: - Read more Chinese - Do something with/for Taiwanese literature - Learn katakana, so I can make sense of more Japanese text, just because it would be nice to be able to.

I apologize for the length, I wrote this throughout the years to keep track of my progress, but I actually enjoy this kind of posts (planning is more fun than doing) so I wanted to share it in case anyone else does. As a disclaimer, this is not advice, it's a very flawed and personal schedule so follow any of it at your own risk! MY BACKGROUND In my final year of university I decided to pick up Chinese as an optional course. After ~6 months of basic Chinese classes, I spent the next ~6 months as an exchange student in Shanghai and passed the HSK3. Then I completely abandoned the language for about 3 years, although I did travel to China a couple more times as a tourist and was able to get around for the basic needs. MY GOALS Learning Chinese is purely a hobby, other than the occasional vacation to China I don't expect to ever need it. My main objective is reading and listening comprehension to enjoy Chinese media (books, audiobooks, movies, tvshows, podcasts...). It would also be nice to speak somewhat fluidly, or at least be able to have basic thoughts in Chinese. Also, I don't want to spend any money (other than buying media), and I don't have any interest in hand-writing or calligraphy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHASE 1 (~1 year): BASICS Like I said in the background section, I was lucky to learn with a teacher (and partly in China), and we did tons of listening, speaking, grammar and hand-writing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHASE 2 (~4 months): VOCABULARY When I decided to re-start learning Chinese (after a 3-year gap), I first tried to consume content at my level: graded readers, short articles, TV shows for kids, etc. However, it was boring as hell, so after a couple of failed attempts I gave up. I was only motivated by native content for adults, and since the main obstacle was a lack of vocabulary, I decided to focus entirely on flashcards for a while (~4 months). Flashcards (~1h30min/day). At the end I had reviewed ~7k words, including all the HSK 2.0 words. I definitely didn't "know" them at this point, the objective was crude memorization so that I could read native books without constant look-ups. Once you encounter the words a few times in the wild, that's when they seem to move into your long-term memory. Grammar. I manually made ~500 grammar flashcards from the content on the Chinese Grammar Wiki website. I still review them from time to time. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHASE 3 (~1 year): IMMERSION (MOSTLY READING) This is where the fun started. I practiced reading and flashcards consistently, never skipped a day. Listening on the other hand... I probably missed more than half the days. Reading (~1h30min/day). I replaced my usual reading time with reading in Chinese only. I recommend an e-reader for intensive reading, the pop-up dictionary and translation tool are very handy to avoid frustrations. Still, the first chapters of the first book were brutal, it took me forever to read a single page. For extensive reading I recommend comics, you can't use a pop-up dictionary so it forces you to keep going, and you can guess most of the meaning from the visual cues. I strongly recommend sub-vocalization (or even reading out loud), it helps to internalize the sounds and practice quick tone changes. Semi-passive Listening (~30min/day). I also started listening to podcasts, mainly while cooking/workouts. Listening was very frustrating in the beginning, my advice is to simply plough through and eventually your brain will adapt to the speed. Audiobooks. Once I was able to read at a decent speed without too many dictionary interruptions (around book 5 or so), I started to read while listening to the audiobook version. I don't do this for every chapter/book, but I really recommend it because it forces you to maintain focus and read faster, while getting some extra listening practice. If you don't want to bother getting actual audiobooks, I recommend the Microsoft Edge TTS, it's honestly very good. One advantage of TTS over humans is that you can adjust the speed while maintaining normal diction (no sped-up or drawn-out syllables). For those interested, I will now describe my personal setup. I still read on my e-reader, but I listen to the audiobook on my phone (which I can pause with my headphones). I use the app TTS-server (https://github.com/jing332/tts-server-android), which uses the aforementioned TTS engine and has some neat options (e.g. having a separate voice for narration and dialogues). Then you can simply open the epub file with any reader that supports TTS, I use Legado (https://github.com/gedoor/legado). Flashcards and pronunciation (45min/day). I practice throughout the day on small chunks of time (breakfast, commute, poop, waiting in general). I do the last 15min in the evenings at home, where I also review my pronunciation: I say out loud the words and example sentences, and I compare against the TTS sound from the app if I have doubts. I use an app that I made as a personal project, I doubt it's any better than the popular ones so I don't have any particular recommendation. I have two decks, a "current" deck (~150 words) and a SRS deck. Every day I review the current deck twice (once from hanzi, once from English definition) + 100 SRS words (from hanzi). Every day I remove a few words from the current deck (the ones that I feel I already memorized, usually ~30) and replace them with new words. I also add a couple of words to the current deck from the SRS reviews. So on average I go through 150+150+100+30=~430 flashcards/day. Flashcard maintenance (~1h/week). Regarding the vocabulary, I add words from frequency lists (low priority) + words I highlighted in the ebooks (high priority). The process is completely automated: the highlights get exported from the ebook (alongside the sentence if I also highlighted it, otherwise a script selects a random Tatoeba sentence if available), and a python script generates a text file with the definition and pinyin (CEDICT + hycihai dictionaries), the pinyin of the sentence (google translate API), and the translation of the sentence (DeepL Translate API), which I can then import into the app. Although I don't really spend any time making the flashcards, I do notice errors while reviewing, which I note down and fix manually (it takes ~1h/week). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHASE 4 (~1 year): IMMERSION (READING & LISTENING) I never skipped a day of reading, but wasn't as disciplined elsewhere, probably missing around 25% of the flashcards and listening days, and more than half of the output days. Reading (~1h/day). When listening to audiobooks, I tried to focus exclusively on the audio from time to time: listen (without reading) > read and check what I misunderstood > listen again (without reading). Semi-passive Listening (~30min/day). TV Shows (~45min/day). Once I was able to read fast enough (around book 10 or so), I started watching tv shows (with Chinese subtitles), one episode per day. At first I relied completely on the subtitles, and I gradually tried to focus more and more on the audio (same procedure as the audiobooks). Output (~10min/day). At this point I felt ready to start practising output, so I gradually shifted my internal voice towards Chinese. I started doing this in the evenings, because I read just before bedtime and my brain usually rambles on in Chinese while falling asleep. Also, I talked to ChatGPT Voice for ~10min/day, right after my evening flashcard-pronunciation session. I like to have casual conversations with it, also role-playing scenarios. I probably should have spoken with tutors instead, but I am very cheap and shy so this works for me. Flashcards and pronunciation (30min/day). Slightly different routine than phase 3, every day I reviewed the current deck only once (~100 words) + 150 SRS words + ~30 new words. At the end I had reviewed ~37k words containing ~4.6k unique hanzi, which is probably around the low-end estimation of what an educated native knows, including ~30k frequent words (from multiple frequency lists) + ~3k chengyu + ~4k non-frequent words from media. Again, I don't know all these words, and probably never will. I estimate I currently know (passive written recognition) ~3.5k hanzi, ~25k words and ~1k chengyu. Flashcard maintenance (~1h/week). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHASE 5: MAINTENANCE As I write this I am starting this phase. I am mostly satisfied with my current level (I wish my listening was better, my personal assessment: B1 speaking, B1~B2 listening, B2 reading), so I will just engage with Chinese naturally (the same way I do with English) and hopefully keep improving and reach my ultimate long-term goal of B2-C1-C1 some day. Immersion. I will continue to read books in Chinese (but not exclusively, I will rotate languages), listen to podcasts/audiobooks, and watch tvshows/movies from time to time. Output. I will continue to think in Chinese and chat with ChatGPT Voice. I won't put pressure on myself to chat with ChatGPT daily, just whenever I feel like it. If I ever decide that I want to boost my speaking skills, I'll probably resort to tutors. Flashcards and pronunciation (15min/day). After 2+ years of pretty intensive reviews, I am finally done with frequency lists. I will continue doing SRS reviews (110 words/day) and will only add new words and chengyu from books, which I don't anticipate to be more than a few hundred per year. I might also switch to traditional characters for a while, from what I've heard the transition should be easy enough. Flashcard maintenance (1h/month?). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINAL THOUGHTS A few points I would like to discuss in more detail. Thanks for reading and I hope you found something helpful! - Motivation is king. Regardless of whether a schedule is more or less efficient, my advice is to find a routine that you will actually stick to. For instance, I know I should have done more listening and less flashcards, but I did what worked for me. - On flashcards. You are probably thinking that ~37k flashcards are way too many, and I agree, especially if your goal isn't reading novels. But just to reassure the beginners that might be reading this, learning new words gets exponentially easier. Also, while for most cards I expect to recall the exact definition, for some of the newer and rarer ones I don't: is it a fruit/flower/insect/mineral? is it an archaic/wuxia/scientific term? is it a name/transliteration/loanword? can I make a close-enough guess of the pronunciation? I view flashcards as a tool to quickly make connections between components-characters-words, and I believe volume to be very beneficial because more data allows your brain to make more connections. For example, 过敏 (allergy), 敏感 (sensitive) and 敏捷 (quick) will no longer be three independent words with three different meanings, but rather you'll see the similarities and gain a nuanced understanding of 敏. So in the end, I prefer to review many words with a lower retention rate, rather than fewer words more often. Regardless of how many flashcards you have, what I do recommend is to actively focus on these connections: When you review a word, actively remember words that share the same characters, characters that share radicals/components, different readings/meanings of the characters, etc. Now, having said all this, anything beyond the 25k-th card was most likely useless, but I would never admit that publicly. - Native novels are easier than you think. I think many beginners see native novels as a rather distant goal, but the truth is that nowadays you can give it a try pretty early on with the help of a pop-up dictionary (probably at some point during your second year, once you know 3k words or so). Maybe you like wuxia like me, check out Gu Long. Webnovels?, check out the heavenlypath website. Old-school romance?, check out Qiong Yao. Mystery?, check out translated Japanese authors. There are entry-level novels for every genre, and the first novel will always be pretty hard regardless of when you start. - Listening practice is ruthless, you either understand the audio or you don't, and you won't for a loooong time. Like I said in phase 4, most people recommend active-listening drills of the form "listen > listen + read > listen", but to be honest I didn't really keep up with them (I hate repeating stuff). My guess is that my current approach (semi-passive listening + listening while reading) will eventually get me to an advanced level (advanced podcasts and strong accents still sound like complete gibberish to me), but it will take much longer. So if you want faster results and have loftier goals do some active listening! - Beware of the mental exhaustion. I was prepared for the big time investment (I estimate I've spent ~3000h in total), but I wasn't ready for the energy investment. I basically had to set aside any other hobbies that required any mental focus. Engaging with Chinese doesn't "hurt" anymore, which is liberating. That being said, I did not expect that learning Chinese would be as fulfilling as it has been, I would do it all over again even if it costed twice the amount of time and effort. - Breakthrough moments. Looking back on phase 2, even though I didn't retain most words, I remember having a big "aha" moment: "oh so this is how you combine hanzi to make words". The next breakthrough came in phase 3, tones just "clicked" and went from being the most daunting thing to an obvious never-thought-about-again thing, I still don't know what happened there. I've had two more gradual breakthroughs since. One concerns grammar, at some point I just became much better at parsing sentences into words, and seeing what each word was doing (including the tricky particles such as 了 or 才). I realized this when I was able to easily spot proper nouns that I didn't know (names of cities, people, etc). The other concerns listening, it's a great feeling when you go from understanding random words to complete sequences. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOKS (In reading order. I am not proud of it, but I currently "find" the ebooks online.) R review D difficulty * still reading 1 - 流星·蝴蝶·剑 by 古龙 (1973, R 4/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 230k) 2 - 秃秃大王 by 张天翼 (1933, R 4/5, D 2/5, #hanzi: 35k) 3 - 卻上心頭 by 琼瑶 (1981, R 3/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 70k) 4 - 多情剑客无情剑 by 古龙 (1968-1969, R 4/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 400k) 5 - 聚散兩依依 by 琼瑶 (1980, R 2/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 75k) 6 - 白馬嘯西風 by 金庸 (1961, R 4/5, D 4/5, #hanzi: 60k) 7 - 秃鹤不是一只鹤 by 曹文轩 (1997, R 3/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 15k) 8 - 血鹦鹉 by 古龙/黄鹰 (1974, R 3/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 205k) 9 - 活着 by 余华 (1993, R 4/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 80k) 10*- 金刚经说什么 by 南怀瑾 (1992, R /5, D 4/5, #hanzi: 180k) 11 - 病毒 by 倪匡 (1995, R 2/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 60k) 12 - 射鵰英雄傳 by 金庸 (1957-1959, R 4/5, D 5/5, #hanzi: 780k) 13 - 呐喊 by 鲁迅 (1922, R 5/5, D 5/5, #hanzi: 60k) 14 - 解忧杂货店 by Keigo Higashino (2012, R 3/5, D 3/5, #hanzi: 130k) 15*- 神鵰俠侶 by 金庸 (1959-1961, R /5, D 5/5, #hanzi: 810k) 16 - 猫城记 by 老舍 (1933, R 4/5, D 4/5, #hanzi: 75k) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MANGA (In reading order. I buy them from the bilibili manhua app.) R review D difficulty * still reading 1* - Doraemon (1969–1997, R 5/5, D 2/5, #volumes: 45) 2 - Dragon Ball (1984–1995, R 5/5, D 1/5, #volumes: 42) 3* - One Piece (1997–, R 5/5, D 2/5, #volumes: 100+) 4 - Yugami (2012–2019, R 4/5, D 3/5, #volumes: 16) 5 - Mob Psycho (2012–2017, R 5/5, D 4/5, #volumes: 16) 6 - Gunnm (1990–1995, R 3/5, D 3/5, #volumes: 9) 7 - A Silent Voice (2013–2014, R 4/5, D 2/5, #volumes: 7) 8 - DDDD (2014–2022, R 4/5, D 4/5, #volumes: 12) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TV SHOWS (In watching order. I usually find them on youtube or bilibili video.) R review D difficulty * still watching 1* - 虹猫蓝兔七侠传 (2006, R /5, D 2/5, #episodes: 36) 2 - 开端 (2022, R 3/5, D 3/5, #episodes: 15) 3 - 摩天大楼 (2020, R 4/5, D 3/5, #episodes: 16) 4 - 软弱 (2003, R 4/5, D 4/5, #episodes: 20) 5 - 七种武器之孔雀翎 (2011, R 3/5, D 3/5, #episodes: 21) 6 - 过把瘾 (1994, R 4/5, D 4/5, #episodes: 8 ) 7 - 岁月 (2010, R 4/5, D 3/5, #episodes: 23) 8 - 四世同堂 (1985, R 5/5, D 4/5, #episodes: 28) 9 - 俞净意公遇灶神记 (2008, R 3/5, D 5/5, #episodes: 8 ) 10 - 漫长的季节 (2023, R 5/5, D 5/5, #episodes: 12) 11 - 成吉思汗 (2004, R 4/5, D 5/5, #episodes: 30) 12 - 河西走廊 (2015, R 4/5, D 4/5, #episodes: 10) 13 - 山海情 (2021, R 4/5, D 4/5, #episodes: 23) 14 - 隐秘的角落 (2020, R 3/5, D 4/5, #episodes: 12) 15 - 外乡人 (2009, R 4/5, D 5/5, #episodes: 43): 16*- 琅琊榜 (2015, R /5, D 5/5, #episodes: 54): --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FILMS (I watch with English subtitles.) R review mandarin - Ju Dou by Zhang Yimou (1990, R 3/5, minutes: 95) - The Assassin by Hou Hsiao-hsien (2015, R 4/5, minutes: 105) - So long my son by Wang Xiaoshuai (2019, R 5/5, minutes: 185) - Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains by Gu Xiaogang (2019, R 3/5, minutes: 150) - Ash Is Purest White by Jia Zhangke (2018, R 4/5, minutes: 136) - Mountains May Depart by Jia Zhangke (2015, R 3/5, minutes: 131) - A Touch of Sin by Jia Zhangke (2013, R 3/5, minutes: 130) - Long Day's Journey into Night by Bi Gan (2018, R 4/5, minutes: 138) - Swordsmen in Double Flag Town by He Ping (1991, R 4/5, minutes: 91) - Farewell My Concubine by Chen Kaige (1993, R 4/5, minutes: 171) - The Blue Kite by Tian Zhuangzhuang (1993, R 3/5, minutes: 140) cantonese - Wing Chun by Yuen Woo-ping (1994, R 3/5, minutes: 93) - Come Drink with Me by King Hu (1966, R 3/5, minutes: 91) - Project A by Jackie Chan (1983, R 4/5, minutes: 105) - Drunken Master by Yuen Woo-ping (1978, R 4/5, minutes: 110) - In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai (2000, R 5/5, minutes: 98) - The Killer by John Woo (1989, R 3/5, minutes: 110) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PODCASTS intermediate - Dashu Mandarin Podcast - 锵锵三人行 - 打個電話給你 One Call Away advanced - 看理想圆桌 - 发发大王 - 观篮高手NBA - 不明白播客 - 软件那些事儿 - 故事FM

The daily process is: sit down and review flashcards in the morning (average 26 mins/day according to my anki), then add the new page for the day (~30 mins) I make the anki flashcards entirely from scratch - I record the 'keyphrase' for every card myself using an external mic (F5 records directly into an anki field on a computer), and I use this website to generate speech samples for each chengyu, which I record using Audacity and add to the card manually. I do this so that I don't need to look at a screen while reviewing (though I still often take a look when the English>Chinese recall is ambiguous/nuanced) and it has helped massively for listening comprehension when chengyu turn up in real life conversations. In the evening I watch Chinese TV for an hour, taking screenshots when I bump into chengyu I have already studied. I do not take screenshots of ones I have not studied in the deck, as when I did this at the beginning things got out of hand very quickly. Once every few weeks I go through the screenshots and copy them into the 'tv' field for their respective card. Each page of the dictionary has around 4-5 chengyu, the name of the dictionary is 汉英成语手册 and is from the 1980s, its a great dictionary, but I still need to refer to the 'Duogongneng Chengyu Cidian' in Pleco for the all important usage, 近义, pronunciation disambiguation and analysis notes. I go through each chengyu carefully, making a note of anything I think will be important to remember in the 'details' field of my anki card. The details field often gets more notes added later when I use a chengyu in real life and it doesn't quite land like I thought it would (if I can, I ask what went wrong - working with Chinese colleagues means I'm very fortunate to be able to ask a lot). Hope that gives you a good idea of what the process looks like. I would recommend anyone reading this who is thinking about jumping into learning chengyu to use the '500 Common Chinese Idioms: An Annotated Frequency Dictionary' initially, don't take my approach straight off the bat, you'll definitely burn out if you haven't done some groundwork first.

No, sorry to say. At least, not to the best of my knowledge. In Kunming, I had dinner one evening with a guy (European) who was on his way home after being forcibly retired from a small technical college in the western hinterlands of the Province, near the Burma border. He had all the right credentials and qualifications and had been teaching in China a long time, previously at major Chinese universities before turning 60. He desperately wanted to remain in China, so he looked for and found a much more humble position in a much more remote location. But even that institution had finally been forced to let him go, despite being pleased with his teaching. He said it was a matter of official government pressure. According to him, what you are trying to do is no longer possible. Perhaps if you were quietly hired by a rich family in a smaller city to be a private tutor to their own children, then you might be able to arrange some sort of long-stay visa, relying on your employers goodwill and guanxi. Edited to Add: I didn't work (much) in China, but after living there a long time, I came back to the US (during COVID) and can relate to your sentiment. I miss China too. Wish you the best, @Pengyou.

One thing I've always said I would do, but never got down to doing before, was studying an entire dictionary. At the end of January I pulled a chengyu dictionary off my shelf and decided I was going to learn a page a day until I finished it. I haven't missed a day yet since, I'm on page 329/557 and have now studied 1932 chengyu. In total the dictionary has ~3000 to learn, so I've still got a while to go. My one takeaway from the experience so far: understanding TV has become increasingly easy, I am able to pick out nuance in meaning, puns, deeper cultural themes.

As a Chinese learner, I often struggled to find quality TV shows, movies, and books to immerse myself in the language. To solve this problem, I created Chinese Record! Chinese Record allows users to browse through a curated catalog of Chinese media and find detailed information about each item, including a synopsis, links to streaming platforms, trailers, and more. I hope it helps you on your learning journey, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

I bought this book: It describes the 379 HSK3.0 chengyu one by one, including grammar and context, and color images. (I made a list here of the HSK3.0 chengyu, and listed 405, trying to be inclusive; some of these would not really be considered chengyu, but I wanted to make sure I didn't omit anything important.) Here's a couple of photos from inside:

Well, the problem seems to be "why we could insert a 了 here" rather than "whether this 了 could be removed or not". ---------- I searched for relevant researches and find that this phenomenon is actually very complicated and controversial, involving a procedure called grammaticalisation. Many linguists are still disputing on it. Talking too much about those academic disputations doesn't help anyone with Chinese learning so I try to explain it with my own words here. In this structure, 在 was originally a preposition showing the position, but during the evolution of the Chinese language, sometimes this preposition gradually became a word part and formed a new combined verb with the original verb before it, in this example 死. Actually many verbs can join in this combining procedure and form a new verb. Here are some examples: 他坐在了椅子上 他藏在了草丛里 他把想法写在了纸上。It sounds like a phrasal verb(like in English), but here the preposition still have some original function (asking for a noun as an adverbial). And by the way, take 死在 as an example, in some sentences it should be regarded as a single compound verb, yet sometimes it still should be regarded as a verb and a preposition too(since 在 is still halfway toward finally becoming a pure verb suffix).

After a bit of looking around I found the phone number of the editor in the front of the book so I called it. She was super nice and pointed out that there is a little QR code by the translation part in each test, with audio and translations in languages besides Korean (including English). It takes you to a WeChat mini app (小程序) which is a bit slow and has no option to download the audio which is a little annoying for me. I managed to download it as MP3 anyway and downloaded all the PDF's for the translation parts. I think the audio files might be too big to upload as attachments on a Chinese-Forums post (~23mb) so I'll put them up on YouTube and post a link in the morning when I have time.

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.

Amazing isn't it, when you look back and realise that wow, that goal I set that seemed impossible to achieve, I actually achieved it 🙂 Congrats on all the progress and on finding a city you like! I'm trying to remain somewhat anonymous on these forums 🙂 But here goes: I'm a literary translator, translating novels and other books and short stories. Many countries/languages have some sort of award for the best literary translation of the year, or longer-term awards for people who have done a lot of great work in literary translation. There is of course an amount of skill (and perhaps talent) involved in being nominated for such an award and winning one, but also some amount of luck: you have to get an assignment for a book that is good and also challenging in some way, and there should not be too many other translators that year who get such a book. Not long after the ceremony (I didn't win, the winner had made an excellent translation of a novel that was challenging in at least three different ways), I read a book that a colleague of mine had translated. The book itself was throroughly mediocre, barely airport fare, but the translation was amazing. But I think a book that mediocre would never get nominated, regardless of the quality of the translation.

When I first arrived in Taiwan in 2015, I was quite embarrassed that I was claiming to live somewhere but couldn’t speak the language of that place well. At that time I would rather not say anything than to try and convey my message in English to someone who I wasn’t sure could speak English, because I didn’t want to stress them out if they weren’t comfortable speaking in English. Because of this, before I wanted to go do anything, I would first look up related vocabulary and practice what I wanted to say. Turns out that is a fantastic way to learn, and a few years later when I started to date my wife, I would do the same thing for things I wanted to talk to her about before we went out together. Within a year of dating her I went from survival to conversational. I can’t even imagine living here and not making an effort to learn.

Hi, all. It's the end of the year, so to put a coda on this, I'm reporting back on my 2024 goals for learning Chinese. I met all of my goals (they were all process goals, like 30 minutes a day of studying and learning 500 new words). I wanted to take the HSK again to get an objective assessment of my Chinese (and to see if I improved at all), but wasn't able to find an online assessment or a test center near me. (Granted, I could take a full practice test again, but I haven't done that.) So, it's hard to say if I've improved or not. I'll say that I don't think I got dramatically better or worse, which is probably to be expected given the amount of time I put in this year (about 45 minutes a day, all told). I may have some more time to devote to studying Chinese next year, so if I do, I'll be excited to do more listening and reading. Happy new year, everyone!

I'm in no way suggesting it's for everyone! There are still various sub-$15 teachers on iTalki, and like Jan said no idea how big the difference in quality actually is. There are various ways to study, having conversations is just one of them! It's not like I'm sitting still in those weeks in between I do my SRS cards every day, and my brain usually just ends up generating a bunch of Chinese sentences during the day as well as a nice little bonus. This maybe is just my ADHD, but it does mean that I'm actively training language centers with the knowledge I at that moment have. 1:1's with a teacher are mostly just for me to solidify knowledge, being able to ask questions and practice actual pronunciation. (Big difference between what you hear in your brain, versus actually using your vocal cords and receiving feedback on it) I guess everyone's study methods differ, and that's ok

I'm struggling with understanding the placement of 了 in 他们死在了冬天. It is from a story in the Du Chinese app. Why is 了 not placed right after the verb 死? Or is 在 part of the verb? I've asked several native speakers, but they haven't been able to give me a clear explanation. Thanks!

I teach on italki, and the price increase for italki teachers is NOT only due to inflation but also because of the fees charged by the payment platform, currency exchange rates, and italki's own rules. Over the past few years, italki has increased the standard price for professional teachers and tutors, meaning they cannot set prices lower than the standard rate. Many professional teachers on italki also do not use italki's tools to teach, as they prefer more stable platforms like Zoom, which they also have to pay for, and these platforms are not cheap. Furthermore, starting this year (2025), italki increased the fee from 15% to 21% for single lessons, meaning lesson prices will increase as well. There are many cheaper teachers on Preply, but I doubt there will be many qualified teachers there, as I have used this platform before to teach and found that their fee system doesn't compensate teachers for trial classes (the first lesson). The advantage is that the fee reduces as teachers accumulate many teaching hours, which causes many teachers there to focus more on the quantity of lessons they can teach ( than the quality ) to lower the fee (so they can earn more). A platform with a more teacher-friendly fee is Polytripper, which only takes 5%, allowing teachers to offer more affordable prices for students.

I think that's because it's technically not a resultative, it's just treated that way in casual speech (or as I suggested, it's treated as a fossilized compound). This is then transferred back into writing for a more 'natural' sound to the writing. I have books at work to check this kind of thing, but currently out of office...the mystery continues!

My abstract goals for 2025: - Listening: prefer TV shows over podcasts for listening practice to get exposed to more accents, quick and blurry speech - Reading: keep reading novels + establish a routine to improve reading speed systematically - Speaking: continue Italki classes, but focus on particular topics to have debates one instead of all casual talk - Writing (stretch goal): write a blog post in Chinese or translate one into Chinese also: do HSK6 and TOCFL speaking

I remember asking this years ago. I think it's to be consistent with other cases where complements are used: 听到了声音 (rather than 听了到声音) 看见了他 (rather than 看了见他) 读完了书 (rather than 读了完书) 安排好了一切 (rather than 安排了好一切) 说错了什么 (rather than 说了错什么) 忘在了出租车上 (rather than 忘了在出租车上)

I also just finished 猫城记, and I really enjoyed it. I knew it was a satire of Chinese society, but I didn't expect it to be as direct and agressive. I definitely wouldn't describe it as science fiction, the setting is irrelevant. I will not dare say it was easy, but I read it just after Jin Yong so I actually experienced it as a pretty relaxed read. So I'm happy I tackled Jin Yong as early as I did, it was brutal but it softened the path down the road.

@jannesan Well done, congratulations! Very impressive results. I don't think TV shows are a good measure for Listening, at least I hope they aren't, I have to keep subtitles on in any language I know, even English.

I have finally received the results and to my surprise I have passed both listening and reading, with listening even at C2 level. It feels a bit wrong to be attested a C2 level which I associate with native level fluency, all the while I am not able to watch most TV shows without subtitles 😄 One good take-away from the results is my relatively poor performance on the questions with a lot of idioms. That matches my feeling during the exam. This is good motivation for me to focus on drilling idioms in 2025

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! 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 thread 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/

After procrastinating for a long time, I decided to take some action and give myself more exposure. I used LTL’s flexi classes. I pick mainly HSK 3 and 3+ classes to pick up more vocabulary and try to be more all rounded with my foundations. Due to past practice with drills and levering off Cantonese, the teachers have said I am too advanced for HSK 3. The flexi classes package needs to be four lessons a week - something that I deliberately picked to help frequency and rhythm. My tones are rubbish because of the Cantonese that I use almost daily. Yet most mandarin speakers will still understand what I am trying to say. If there’s a lesson with only me, the teachers strike up a conversation for part of the time. I note the teachers are diverse and have different accents. This doesn’t bother me as they still correct my major tone errors. I am enjoying adding small amounts to my knowledge and this helps self confidence. I did try a HSK 4 class but there enough new material to make it a bit too far of a struggle. Moving forward, I will finish off my package. Afterwards, I am considering doing one on one lessons with them using their slides as a revision process - to try and bring up the vocabulary and grammar structures to a more spontaneous level. For example, finish the package, do a package of one on one for reviewing then do another group lesson package. I probably have a visit to Chengdu in summer again. No plans for other places as of yet. Not even to Shenzhen just close to Hong Kong.

I think it's separating in both directions. In the past, the learning tools weren't that great but nearly everyone had to learn some of the language of the places they traveled to. Now, English speakers are more able than ever to travel the world without learning any other language. However, the people who want to learn, have a wealth of resources that didn't exist in the past. As a result, the number of monolingual tourists and expats is increasing, but at the same time, motivated language learners are making more progress more quickly than was possible a generation ago.

My 2024 has actually been surprisingly fruitful, I couldn't be happier with how much I achieved this year! Last year, frustrated with life, I randomly decided to move to China after accidentally discovering that university chinese language programs are a thing. My initial "super plan" was staying 1 year, passing HSK5 and finish my undergraduate in China, but that was kind of a fever dream I never saw happening, didn't even think I would get to China in the first place. Welp, one day I randomly receive a package from China and lo and behold... an acceptance letter for Tsinghua's language program! (Which sucked btw :p). The initial plan kiinda didn't worked, turned out that against what I expected, I hated Beijing! Hahahaha I moved to Chengdu in August and set the goal to pass the HSK5 until the end of next semester (July), which seemed pretty realistic. But to my surprise, when I looked at an HSK5 sample out of curiosity... it wasn't actually that hard! I'm taking it in around 2 weeks on the 12th, so fingers crossed! The fact that my initial fever dream plan might've worked is still pretty insane to me, go me! The only part that I still REALLY struggle is writing, I can't order those sentences even if my life depended on it 🫠. I don't know, before I got here I've always read people saying that getting to HSK5 still means almost nothing in terms of comprehension, so I kinda doubted myself for quite some time. But that hasn't been my experience at all, I hardly struggle with colloquial content such as social media, modern novels, news (thanks to the uni cafeteria that runs CCTV13 24/7) etc. Always see people complaining that the HSK is too literary and useless but idk, I don't find the texts in HSK5 too different from a lot of native material. I feel like people set too high of a bar for themselves For 2025, I want to focus on improving my output considerably, it's by far my worst skills. But as for a concrete goal.... I don't know actually hahaha, I'm genuinely quite happy (and surprised) at what I achieved, so it'll take a little while for me to calculate my next steps. Since I do wanna finish my degree here, I've been watching a few math classes on bilibili everyday to practice more specific and academic vocabulary, and it's been surprisingly smooth so far. Also bought a dodgy 2nd hand chinese calculus textbook and currently working my way though it (god, the original owner was awful at math!) Omg, congrats!!! I have to admit I could never know how that feels, I've never set my goals that high yet hahaha 😆. But that made me a little curious, what does a translation award entails? I had no idea such thing existed! Do you work in the translation industry? And what (and how) are translations qualified for an award? Sorry if it's too personal of a question, but I'm curious now haha

One thing I've learnt in life (not specifically related to Chinese) is to be less judgemental (difficult at times, I know). The argument that learning Chinese has too great an opportunity cost is one that I can appreciate. I guess most of us here have an interest in languages beyond just their practical use. For those who do not have an interest in language, I can certainly see that the opportunity cost of the time required to learn Chinese is not worth it if the only reason for learning is practical when, in the large cities at least, you can survive fairly well without it (especially if you are working for a company who will be able to sort out all the practical aspects of life for you). I don't know for a fact whether this is the case or not, but I suspect another factor is that artificial intelligence has made online translation so powerful that the value in speaking a foreign language is decreasing. Nowadays, as long as you have an internet connection, you can communicate effectively about essentially anything in any of the major languages of the world. Yes, you don't get quite the same satisfaction from doing so, but going back to opportunity cost - is it really worth spending years learning a difficult language when at the end of it, it may have little potential for monetisation (say, with decreasing need for manual translation, decreasing need for foreign language teaching, and as mentioned above, decreasing need to be able to actually speak the language in practical situations)? Don't misunderstand - I am definitely not arguing against learning languages. But apart from pure laziness, I'm sure many of the long term expats who don't speak Chinese also have rational reasons for not doing so.

A year has passed since I wrote my plans for 2024. I spent a total of 9 weeks in China related to work and I got to travel independently in Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu. I loved travelling in China even though I felt it was way more cumbersome than travelling in Japan even though I know zero Japanese. In terms of learning activities I mainly focussed on shadowing native content and my pronunciation, tones and fluency have greatly improved. I spent about 1 hour per day doing this. Sadly it did not really improve my active oral outputting skills (forming sentences, having dialogues). I tried 2 sessions with italki teachers but sadly I did not really feel motivated to stick with them. So, my plans for 2025: More shadowing More listening Using Chatgpt to help me outputting (sentence forming exercises) Hopefully get myself to finally start outputting (speaking) with an Italki teacher. How about you? Really looking forward to reading your plans

Letting this through because it does sound like it can be of interest to people here, but @BookGhost, you should really be transparent about this in fact being your own book you're recommending.

Expanding on what @abcdefg said, I see language learning like trying to fill a bathtub with a leaky plug. The only way you will be able to fill it up is if you pour water into the bathtub faster than water is draining out. In other words, you will always have a tendency to forget what you have learned. If your rate of learning is slower than your rate of forgetting, then you will never make any progress. Of course everyone's bathtub is leaking at a different rate, but it sounds like it would be difficult to make meaningful progress at only 1 hour per week.

@Purple_ - I would respectfully suggest that you closely examine this conclusion as to timing. If you are at "HSK 1+" as you say, this pace might be too leisurely to allow you to reach a level of useable speech any time this decade. I'm not sure what your language goals are, so perhaps this reasoning doesn't really apply. During the early years of my own Chinese learning journey, I was always in a hurry to learn more and more, eager to use the language more and more, hungry for opportunity, hungry for proficiency. Eventually, I was able to move to China and completely immerse myself in the language and culture, having "lessons" and "sessions" virtually non-stop, 24-7. But if you just dip one toe in the shallow end of the pool, your experience will differ and your results will differ. Perhaps that's all you want; that's fine; I don't mean to sound judgmental; everyone has different reasons for learning such a powerful thing as a new language.

I've put the audio up on a Youtube playlist here, I'll make a separate post with the PDF's for the translation part. It doesn't seem like it. I did a search for new HSK and all the books that pop up were first published in 2011/2012. I don't think there's a big rush to roll out the lower levels, but I don't have much basis for saying that except the lack of new materials. It's probably also hard to make materials for a test that isn't actually out yet.

Every year we have a thread on this and 2025 should be no different. This is to invite you to reflect on your progress and activities in 2024 and your aims for 2025.

Thanks for this. Just some tips: you and others could probably have greatly benfitted reading on Lingq.com. Not only can you look up words, phrases and parts of sentences in a click, but it will also generate the audio tts if desired. Plus it stores and remembers which words you know. You can create anki flashcards or review vocabulary on Lingq. Second would be using Language Reactor app on Vhrome or Firefox, which makes listening to native content so much easier. Not only does it show bilingual subs, you can replay individual sentences at any speed you like. You can also upload audiobook files to it if you have a way to create "subtitle text for them" (eg transcribeAI)

Posting my very sad study stats for December for consistency. No substantive study outside of reviewing flashcards.

No major update for this month - due to personal issues and the holidays didn't make much progress for December. But I am now back on the books and will update in a month's time.

I don't have a masters degree or Ph.D I lived in China for more than 20 years, not all on the proper visa. I returned to the US in July of 2022 and have been lost ever since. I have heard a coupe of murmurs...rumors...that some cities are allow teachers who are 65. True or not? If true, would it be a continual thing, i.e, can continue living and teaching there?

Thanks！🫠. And yeah, realizing you met a goal is such a great feeling. Today I got my Xiaomi air humidifier which I bought months ago, and there was some warning label on the top that I never bothered removing because I couldn't understand it and kept saying to myself I would just take a photo to translate it sometime (which I never did). I just now glanced over it and read "DO NOT MOVE WHILE FUNCTIONING" (whoops, done that already), it's silly but the me from 7 months ago would be proud 😆 Oooh, that sounds nice, congrats on the nomination! My experience with that industry is that I have a close friend who's a writer, and she's always complaining that her translators are functionally illiterate. And honestly, seeing it in action.... it's hard to disagree. Not trying to imply anything about your job btw, I'm just now pondering that I've probably just met the "fast-food" version of the industry instead of the artistic side (which in retrospect sounds quite obvious 😅). Translation is hard work, I'm rereading a korean series that I read first in english but now in chinese, and it's pretty amazing how "simply" presenting the story in another language changes the dynamics between the characters so much, tons of hidden details that surfaced in the chinese version that were cut from the english translation 加油, I'm on the same boat! In fact, the book is literally right in front of me, waiting to be read hahaha. I'm not really afraid of the vocabulary or the difficulty (I think), but I'm lazy 😭reading a book in chinese of all things isn't easy for my poor ADHD'd brain. I'll get though it though.... eventually! offtopic: am i the only one that gets annoyed at the different spacing in punctuation between the chinese keyboard and the english keyboard? i keep pressing shift all the damn time and always mess up my writing by accident 😭

I'm at about middle of intermediate as far as reading is concerned and 2024 was a good year for consolidation. I've made sure I've read something every day and have done a TCB reading exercise daily - in fact, i haven't missed a day since May 2023. It's been really good for confidence and I'm starting to breeze through a level 4 exercise. I've also dabbled with maayot this year and have just purchased DuChinese so it will be interesting to see how they all stack up against each other. A big goal for this year is to read a novel for the first time. I have a couple lined up and think To Live will be the first. In fact, after browsing through, I can definitely now pick up far more than I previously could. I learnt simplified character writing when I first embarked on my Chinese journey so have a good working knowledge, especially of radicals and the basic rules of stroke order. I've purposely not done much writing in recent times as many have suggested that learning characters early isn't necessarily the preferred way of learning, but I'd like to get back to writing again in 2025. Listening is a different story and the word woeful springs to mind. I've shied away from listening and need to make the jump and just go for it. I made it back to China this year for the first time in a decade, even if it was only briefly, and I really enjoyed. Don't have the work commitments I used to have but I really enjoy my job (non-Chinese or language related) and have struggled to let go. If I do manage to slow down at work it would definitely free up time for Chinese, so let's see. Best wishes to all for 2025. I love coming on this site.

Personally I'd like to say the following words: - 谢谢您这段时间对我的教导(literally "thanks for your instruction to me during these days") - 您的课让我很受用(literally "I benefited a lot from your lectures") - 希望下次还有机会上您的课(literally "I wish I'll still have a chance to attend to your lectures next time")

I've finished 第三顆子彈 by 張國立. Can't say that it was as good as 炒飯狙擊手, but it was a worthy sequel. It was exciting in some places and even managed to be touching in others. But in the final section it jumped the shark a little too irritatingly for me. And the theme of simple, honest people triumphing over cynical, political villains was just too cliché. I think 國立's best writing is in dialogues and the ponderings and mutterings of his characters. And he keeps me entertained in his action sequences. All in all, this was worth reading if you already liked 炒飯狙擊手. I always like to make sure I have a slightly challenging Chinese book on my computer, an easy read on my phone, and something on paper pages. So now I need a good paper reading recommendation. Anyone?

This is why I've basically not said anything about doing it with anyone before now, these kind of long term goals are something I would have found daunting as a beginner/intermediate student. Of course, everyone has their own goals, milestones and paranoid weaknesses - working in an academic environment has forced me to face up to my own weakness in high register, literary spoken Chinese, and this has been my response. Congrats on the talk and the nomination (no mean feat for sure).

I am learning Chinese mainly for reading novels, and of course one of my long-term goals was to read the 4 classic novels. I am definitely not ready yet, but I am considering reading one in the near future, because I only have 2-3 years left before life gets very busy, and it might be good to tackle one while my pain tolerance is still high. It won't happen in 2025 because I want to finish jin yong's condor trilogy first, but maybe 2026... Otherwise I don't have any particular goals for 2025, actually I am finally going to take the foot off the gas. After ~2.5 years of pretty intense studying I think I can mantain my current level without much effort now, so I will just engage with Chinese more 'naturally' and hopefully keep improving at a much slower rate.

Hi @hungrybrain, I would say my speaking is getting close to native for casual communication, mainly due to close to a decade of chatting in Chinese exclusively at home, and at work for the last 5 years. My TOCFL speaking, which I got the results for today was B2. I think in reality I am probably around C1 for speaking, but for TOCFL you also need to have great reading to do the Band C speaking exam because the questions are not read out to you, and they are very long and complex. Since my reading is only around B2 on a good day, for now I am stuck at B2 for the speaking test. I am also somewhat held back by my reading on the listening exam too (currently have B2) since you have to read the multiple choice answers, but its not as big of an issue as it is with Band C speaking. Here is an example Band C speaking question from the TOCFL site, which you would be expected to read yourself. As you can see, having great speaking skills alone is not enough to pass Band C speaking cos you might not know what to actually talk about in your answer. From what I saw on the real exam, this question is on the easier side too. Right now improving my reading is my number 1 goal so I can move on to Band C. If you are based in Taiwan, which it looks like you are, would be happy to have you over for dinner and we can discuss it more in person. DM me.

Its definitely not more effective, your strategy of immersion and native content is still the right way to go. I have just found that over the years that although I have been able to absorb many chengyu, actively using them correctly has consistently seemed to elude me. Learning the specific situations and usage cases through the dictionary + sentence mining tv shows is helping me to get over this hurdle. Nothing revolutionary, but you guessed correctly, it certainly has been fun and helped me sustain daily study.

I'm curious because this is almost the diametric opposite of my approach to improving my Chinese, which has been just about 100% focused on immersion and native content ever since I learned enough hanzi for that to be possible. (Well, I guess a chengyu dictionary in Chinese is native content too, but you get what I mean, I think...) Do you feel like this is a more effective way of learning to pick out the kind of nuance you mention? Or is it just a matter of this being a sustainable/enjoyable way for you to study?

You can have a look here, it's basically packs of audio for different languages, including a decently large one for Chinese. I use a combination of these, Forvo, and making do without audio.

https://forvo.com