The 2009 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

1. New Concept Chinese for Children vols. 7-8.

I'm still in volume 7.

I've resolved the problems I mentioned by converting from "chop everything into bits for flashcarding" to "read and listen to whole lessons/volumes". I believe I'm close to a breakthrough, but it is elusive. When I'm not actually studying, I look inside for my Chinese knowlege, and its pitch black! I see nothing! But that can't be right, so I'm optimistic. (Maybe thanks to flashcarding all of my Chinese is in the wrong hemisphere, or something.) The dawning of something resembling language would be a nice Christmas present. Wish me luck.

Thank you Chinese-forums.

I'll be starting Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese (the second year textbook at UT) this week. Things are going well, study-wise.

Went to St. Louis last week and kind of derailed myself for a bit, but I'm back on track.

Still looking for a job. Part time (to work around school) with decent pay is hard to find.

Same.

I feel like I'm progressing well and that my level is steadily improving, but I have very little in terms of concrete results to show. It looks like I haven't moved for half a year.

Flashcards are basically moving at a glacial pace, and reading 秋 is getting slower and slower.

At the same time, I'm reading other stuff, my reading has improved in general, my listening has improved a lot, speaking has improved a lot, etc. Especially this:

7) Be able to watch modern TV dramas and movies without subtitles (I still need to glance at them often, but it's getting better)

I've really noticed an improvement here. I can watch most of the intermediate stuff without subtitles. I'm really starting to understand whole sentences without even consciously registering pinyin or individual words. I will hear a word and know what it means, but have no idea why I know it. It's a really exciting feeling.

Doing a language exchange, which is greatly improving my speaking (really had nowhere to go but up) and listening. Not enough free time to work on reading outside of class -- really want to work through/do a vocabulary for the first chapter The Legend of Lu Xiaofeng.

Got into the Pleco for iPhone OS Beta.

Still attending class.

Good work, all.

1. Be able to start reading a Jin Yong novel by the middle of summer.

I'm reading 星雲組曲 by way of a mention in the SciFi thread. Enjoying it very much. It's a book of short stories, not a full novel, but it is real Chinese nonetheless. So I am content. Jin Yong I'll get to at some point.

2. Watch lots of shows from the First Episode thread.

I'm through about half of these. Great fun sampling a wide variety of shows. I now have a line-up of at least five shows that I want to continue. The Project itself is very impressive. Hats off to the contributors.

3. Know about 10,000 vocabulary items, including 3000+ unique characters.

I completely fell off the SRS bandwagon. I just burned myself out after trying to do too much. My vocabulary has faltered because of it. So now it is my goal to simply get back into a good daily habit.

1. New Concept Chinese for Children vols. 7-8.

Finished volume 7. Now over 1000 chars, 2000 words. (The child isn't required to know all of these.)

True sustained rate of high-quality absorption: 2 chars per day. Hmm... To give the brain a chance to do some larger-scale pre-processing, I intend to start reading ahead (as I usually do for single lessons, by transcribing into Wenlin and mousing-over). Learning my native English, I loved flying ahead, over my head; this must be right.

So, now beginning volume 8 "all at once". The last three lessons feature 小红帽 (Little Red Riding Hood) in three parts, 1300 characters in length.

I haven't moved at all this month. Too much other stress. I've managed to read a bit, maintain my flashcarding and get some conversational practice.

My babysteps:

- Pronunciation/tones improved due to language exchange. Need to now shift to include more listening practice.

- Halfway through first Chinese Breeze book (using Pleco iPhone beta to look up Simplified characters) and am enjoying the book so far. It does seem well-designed WRT repetition to get one reading longer and longer stretches of text w/o the need to stop and look something up. It will be interesting to see how easy/difficult the other 300-character books are after this first one.

This has turned more like a quarterly report for me:mrgreen:

CLASSES:

So far so good in doing my homework for my class, but I need to put in more hours to actually record myself speaking (as opposed to just reading). I think that my summer quarter of classes helped to knock off some of the rust from my brain, so that was good thing for sure. Now, during this fall quarter I need to start studying hardcore:lol:.

I need to increase my knowledge of chengyu and historical references for sure though. Not growing up in China is a definite disadvantage for not being as familiar w/ all of these stories. I'll need to more actively tackle this problem. We went through an hour of rapid fire in class one day on 三十六计and I was dying. So my goal is increase my knowledge in these areas big time， starting w/ these 36

LANGDU & PRONUNCIATION

I've still been recording newspaper readings whenever I get a chance, so that's still going pretty strong. It's still working to keep my pronunciation somewhat in check. I've moved on from over-enunciating each character to practice tones and am now working on overall sentence flow. Also my ability to read an article (fairly) well on the 1st (or 2nd hehe) try is improving a bit. Long term I definitely still need my 二级乙one day, so I need to get my speaking & reading errors less than 20% fo'sho!

VOCAB

LEGAL:

I'm happy w/ my vocab acquisition these days irt legal terminology. It's always a great feeling to be able to know the exact way to translate more specialized terms in different fields. (I may eventually be able to work on one of my side projects that I wanted to do a year ago and translate old In The Heat of the Night or Matlock episodes). I almost know this lil' pocket edition backwards and forward by now and have it with me to read whenever I have a few minutes to drill myself.

HUMAN BODY.

I'm setting a new goal to learn more about the human body and diseases now though, system by system, as recommended by one of our teachers.I don't think I'll work on this until after the new year though, after I by some reference books in China:mrgreen: So for the time being is to not forget to buy these reference books! heh

WRITING:

I've been writing more, but I still need to practice handwriting more E-C translations. This usually ends up with a ton of circles and arrows, so I need to improve my efficiency and neatness. Using a computer makes it so much easier and helps to hide the fact about how much harder it is to organize things in your head and then write it, rather than cutting and pasting! ugh...painful! At least my note taking is back to being pretty efficient (fugly, but efficient) in Chinese now.

READING:

I've gotten through 1/2 of my short story novel 树上的悬崖, might finish it on my next long flight. So I'm at least still getting through the books I bring back from China, even if I fell off my 1bk/month average I was able to keep up mid year.

Ok, that's it for now...Averaged out it wasn't a bad 'quarter'. I just need to keep pushing myself to actually make improvements, rather than simply 'maintain' my level:lol:

I also need to time manage myself a bit more so I don't fritter away my time at home doing non-productive things:help

Things are still going pretty well study-wise, although I'm kind of getting into "panic mode" the closer it comes to the end of the year/semester. I'm just trying to cram as much into my head as I can before I have to take the placement test for Chinese in January.

So far I'm passing all my classes with A's. Still have two more research/term papers to write (haven't even started one of them) so the next few weeks should be fun.

I may have finally gotten a job. I'll know this weekend.

I may have won the lottery. I'll know next week.

Ok.

1. New Concept Chinese for Children vols. 7-8.

Still in volume 8. Should finish this year.

Ok, here's my Aims and Objectives for 2009. Just two!

1. Get a Chinese guy somewhere in Texas.

2. Get a full time job teaching first and second year Chinese in a public high school somewhere in Texas.

Failed both.

So my Aims and Objectives for 2010 are to NOT come up with any Aims and Objectives for 2010. Have to lower my standards, you know.

1. Get a Chinese guy somewhere in Texas.

Sans paroles

1. New Concept Chinese for Children vols. 7-8.

Done. Now at 1200 characters / 2800 words.

Aside from not doing Chinese Breeze Level 1 (because I've collected so much other coordinated material of higher priority) my year was a success.

Renzhe said he wants to set some new goals. I hope he's inclined to start the "2010" thread when he's ready.

Renzhe said he wants to set some new goals. I hope he's inclined to start the "2010" thread when he's ready

Actually, I really don't have my goals set yet. I'll have to spend a few weeks thinking up something reasonable and challenging.

There's not point starting a thread with a lame post. Whoever wants to start a new thread for 2010 should do so, and I'll put in my stuff when I've thought it through.

Yep, anyone who feels inspired is welcome to go ahead. I might nip in later and edit in stuff like links to the previous topics, but feel free to go ahead.

1. Be able to start reading a Jin Yong novel by the middle of summer.

2. Watch lots of shows from the First Episode thread.

3. Know about 10,000 vocabulary items, including 3000+ unique characters.

4. Tackle the traditional character set.

I figured I'd close out this year's aims and then jump into the new thread. I didn't get to Jin Yong this year, but I read two short books, so I am happy with that progress. I've watched about half of the first episodes and intend to go through the rest early next year. My gains in my vocabulary have been disappointing because I took about a four month hiatus from flashcarding. I've started a new anki deck and am adding about 500 cards a month, which is a pace I am happy with. I'm now mostly comfortable with traditional reading material, which is a great relief when trying to find/order books. On to twenty-ten...

OK, let's have a look at them!

This year had two very different halves for me. In the first half, I was making progress like crazy, and in the second time, I was improving at a glacial pace. I blame work-related stress for this, but I'll have to consider this for my goals in the future. I'm planning less flashcarding and more fixing of nagging issues and simply enjoying native materials.

1) Finish the HSK vocabulary. I'm at around 6300+ vocabulary items, out of 8800 overall

2) Add the vocabulary lists from our Grand Episode and BotM projects for more vocabulary that isn't in the HSK

3) Finish Legend of the Condor Heroes. I'm about halfway through.

4) Read some other book(s) after I'm finished with that.

5) Keep on working on characters (both the ones encountered while reading, and the most frequent ones I'm missing), the new goal is 5000 characters.

6) Get comfortable at speaking fluently about a wide range of topics.

7) Be able to watch modern TV dramas and movies without subtitles (I still need to glance at them often, but it's getting better)

10) improve writing my characters. Be able to write between 1000 and 2000 characters by hand by the end of the year.

8 ) Take over the world!

1) PARTIAL. I have about 800 words left. It's decent progress, but slower than in previous years. The lesson -- flashcarding gets hard when you have a lot of items to review (10,000 items+)

2) NOPE. This was conditioned on finishing 1), so no go here.

3) DONE. This was very quick.

4) DONE. I've almost finished 巴金's Torrents trilogy (about a 100 pages left), which is very long, and I've also finished the 乱马 comic, and some short stories by Eileen Chang.

5) PARTIAL. Not very far here. Still under 4000 characters. I think it's a decent base, and I'll learn the rest through exposure.

6) DONE. Regular conversation with a larger group of people has really helped. In the past two weeks, I've been put on the spot twice, having to talk Chinese to somebody without any preparation, and I pulled it off like a champ. Good feeling. Still lots of room for improvement, especially about the non-everyday stuff.

7) DONE. I've watched a number of shows without bothering with the subtitles. This is definitely better than before.

10) DONE. I can write about 1000 characters by hand. Getting to 2000 is a good goal for 2010

Next year....

Just realized I never posted my end-of-year summary. I figure part of the motivation of this comes from having to publicly confess ones failure....

1. Not be laid-off from work due to spending too much time on other things

2. Find time to go to the gym regularly, which is the only chance I have to listen to the ChinesePod lessons.

3. Finally get my script working to automatically generate vocab lists from ChinesePod lesson transcripts.

4. Learn another 500-1000 words from various random vocab lists

1. YEAH! Still have the same job. Wasn't the most productive year, but I still got paid none-the-less
   
2. Mostly failure on this one. My health and listening comprehension suffered this year
   
3. DONE. Only to move off CP, so I also wrote scripts for Slow Chinese as well
   
4. Not bad. I figure I got about 750, which is right in the range. I've also noticed my reading comprehension took a significant boost late in the year, that felt good.