HSK4 log and progress at 5 hours (200 cumulative hours)

Entry posted by tsitsi in HSK4 June 7, 2024 at 08:18 AM

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So I did not manage to study as much as I wanted. Only one thing stuck, working on anki decks
Total study time for the month was less than 10 hours

In between work trips, illnesses, and stresses, Chinese learning just paled and was on the backburner. But I still want to continue. So instead of trying to force learning into time slots and life situations when it is impossible I'm switching to counting how many hours I'm putting in instead, whenever it happens, and record my progress after every 20 hours or so of study. I am also shifting to more reading based learning this month using Lute. I have time off work coming up next week and I'll use that to kick start the learning. I want to get to 300 hours of learning and see how much of HSK 4 I'm ready for by then. Most places say 800 hours is needed to get to HSK 4 ... maybe I'll need all that but I don't know, I'll focus on the first 300 and reassess after that.
So far I feel the time put in in April and May, about 30 hours, has been revision and that has caught me up to where I was before, and actual HSK 4 work is yet to begin.. I haven't had the energy or time to begin learning anything new other than vocab.

Because I love data I always record my time spent learning, it may be off by a few minutes here and there but I use the same tools to help me track and record in case I forget so I'm more than 98% accurate. I use apps in my learning so it easy to record my time spent either by viewing the app stats or checking time spent per app per day. And when the app doesn't allow for that I use a timer to start and stop a cumulative timer for the other activities such as browser or book reading. For HSK 1 and 2 I focused on learning as much as possible in 40 hours as that was the recommended time, ended up using 96 hours cram time in total with HSK 3. Over the past 3 years I have spent another random unstructured 70 hours or so revising vocab. So I'm around 200 hours of study, about half of that focused. That's two thirds to 300, lets see what changes that 100 hours brings.

So now I will note the running total and note progress that way.

Tools to track time - web time tracker extension, swipetimes and simple time tracker plus app usage stats on ipad and phone

What I am not recording well is my drama and donghua watching time. Why? For one, I use English subtitles, and two I tend to to watch at 2x speed. I know it's still beneficial to my learning and listening just not sure how much. I will try approximate tracking of the dramas I do watch for estimated hours spent in passive listening, as a separate metric.

LEARNING LOG thus far

May, June 2021 stats and progress - 96 hours
Did HSK1, HSK2 and HSK 3 test, but properly an HSK 2 student

July 2021 stats and progress - 5.5 hours

Tried a reading and writing challenge and failed, spent about 3 hours 50 min reading and 1 hour 40 minutes writing

2022 and 2023 62.86 hours
I did not do any organized learning really other than vocab learning on anki, very sporadically. I got a refold Mandarin deck and began work n learning words in context. I did work on Korean a bit. My anki time spent was 62.86 hours, most of that in early 2022 and mid year 2023

November 2023 - 3 hours with a tutor
I joined a Chinese orchestra and thought I would try a tutor... nah definitely not my style of learning, just was not a good match

April 2024 stats and progress - 21.15 hours

Back to somewhat serious learning. Was hoping to get in 40+ hours of learning, but realising that is not realistic. Relearning a lot of the vocab and tones are quite bad
Anki - 12.2 hours
Lute - 1 hours
Tuttle - 6.7 hours
Du - 1 hour

Falou - 10 min

Beelingua - 5 min

May 2024 stats and progress - 9.4 hours
This month has been brutal emotionally and full of stress.
More revision finally feel like I am getting on with HSK 3 vocab and sentences now. I've been trying to focus on tones, Finally began HSK4 hanzi and vocab, only about 50 done, but do I seem to hear and recognise more words when watching drama. Got bored of Tuttle, it became too much effort so dropped for now. J

Anki - 5.8 hours

Tuttle - 2.3 hours
Lute - 30 minutes
Du - 15 minutes

Sticky study - 28 min
Beelingua - 5 min

June 2024 plans, stats and progress - 2 hours 16 min
I've spent about 5 hours now on HSK$ vocab, only 13 mature words and 24 or so young.
Plan

Continue with anki, I want to explore adding movies2 anki and ankimorph to begin to use the dramas and donghua i watch as material
Just started up Lute again and enjoying entering the stories and seeing real progress in words I know per story. I have added about 36 short stories, OST lyrics and episode sort to try it out.
Plan on using falou to help with speaking

Anki - 46 min
Lute - 1 hour 30 minutes