Introducing.. Me!
Entry posted by Epickyle
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Ok, my first blog entry so I thought I'd give a little background:
I'm working in Hong Kong doing TEFL in the New Territories and I get Wednesday mornings off work so I'm planning to use this time to get at least an hour or so of studying done.
I'm currently learning 汉字 using flashcards deluxe on my phone, which I study on the MTR to and from work, so in total about 20-30 minutes a day. I'm learning the "3000 most commonly used characters" set at the rate of 50 a week. Other than that I don't do much structured studying during the week as I go to the gym or am busy/tired. I know it'll take a lot more study than this to achieve my goal but baby steps, right? 
I have stayed in mainland China, mostly Shandong province, Yantai, for almost two years so was pretty immersed in Chinese-ness for a good while. I picked up a lot of conversational and slang terms and think I have a fairly decent vocabulary but, having only picked up these words by listening and repeating I can be a little unsure on tones and exact pronunciation.
So, my mission statement, if you will, is:
- Continue to expand my vocabulary by using my trips to and from work to study using flashcards
- Start to write exercises in this blog in 汉字 to consolidate the vocabulary I'm learning and improve my grammar
I finished using "Colloquial Chinese" by Kan Qian about 9 months ago but my knowledge is patchy so I figured a good starting point would be to go through some of the later grammar sections, do the exercises in characters and create some of my own sentences. I've been carrying this book around with me wherever I go for ages and have rarely, if ever picked it up in the last 6 months. A lot of it seems too simple now but there are some useful phrases and grammar points that I don't know so am having trouble sifting through what I need to learn. An added fringe benefit will be finally being free of this book! (although I probably won't throw it away since I'm a bit of a hoarder..)
As time goes on I will try and add audio too for some speaking practice.
Having read similar blogs and forum posts I'm aware that not everybody has time to sit down, read through someone else's work and give corrections or any kind of detailed critique so I will appreciate anybody taking the time to comment or give feedback and, for my part, will try to make reading this blog worth your while.
Happy studying!
Kyle
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