The 2010 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[imron]

Handwriting recognition. It's quite common on Chinese phones nowadays for things like text messaging etc.

[gougou]

seen five this month for the grand total of 100Y, and enjoyed them all, even if I did fall asleep at points.

"Even if", or "because"?

I thought you could do a DELF exam somewhere in Beijing? Where do all the kids preparing for study abroad go?

[roddy]

Hong Kong, according to this. I think there might be a business one run in Beijing, but not too interested in that.

Actually are there any Council of Europe type exams run in Beijing that you know of? Maybe I'll just switch languages (have kind of regretted not walking the extra three hundred meters to ask about Spanish courses, to be honest.)

Edit: Looks like the Germans have them. Unfortunately this would involve learning the Doitche.

Even if. I really enjoyed Le hussard sur le toit, but fell asleep for a chunk of the middle. It's not that the film was boring, I just fall asleep easily. I think I stayed awake for all of the others (saw Cyrano, Ridicule, Fanfan la tulipe, and a couple of others)

Edited February 1, 2010 at 08:20 AM by roddy

[gougou]

I am notoriously unaware of exams - thus my surprise to see that no certifications are offered in Beijing. Probably couldn't get their school accredited...

[renzhe]

I'm really failing on the flashcard front. I've done them like twice this month. Working through 500 cards is not much fun. I've expected this, and this is why I don't have many flashcarding goals for this year, mostly consolidation.

This year is going to be very stressful so most of my Chinese language goals are related to improving, consolidating, practicing. At least this seems to be working.

I have started reading parts of Ba Jin out loud for practice. It's going quite well. If I keep it up throughout the year, my langdu will improve tremendously.

[natra]

1. Continue using Iflash 1 hour a day for new vocabulary and sentence patterns.

2. Continue regular writing practice, approx. 3-4 days a week.

3. Continue listening to 美国之音, 4-5 days a week for half an hour.

4. Read more often. I am not really into reading for the sake of reading practice anymore. Right now I am going through 《红楼梦》and some misc. baihua fiction.

5. Learn more Classical.

[Sarevok]

I might have gone a little too far with my objectives

The only one I have been successfully working on is SRS (getting rid of the backlog and reintroducing previously discarded vocab). But this is the one I regard as the most important, so I guess it's okay. 30 new words a day seems like a reasonable pace after one month, but there is a risk of system overheat so I might lower it a bit at some point...

Apart from that I successfully opened my 实用汉语语法分析 grammar book, but only did as much as one chapter...

As for listening, I did only Chinesepod stuff, no 德国之声 yet. And some episodes of 密战 if that counts as listening (my eyes are always turning to look at those subtitles, don't know how to get rid of this habit)

No consistent reading so far, neither the technical stuff nor 十万个为什么

Well, I have to add some oil I suppose... Facebook be damned!

[querido]

1. Finish New Concept Chinese for Children

Consolidating vols. 1-8 (1200 chars, 2800 words).

Anticipating a possible trip to China, and having spent six weeks convincing myself to adjust my routine, I've compromised toward the more immediately practical daily/survival/tourist phrases approach. My knowledge is too far ahead of my ability; I hope to fix this.

2. Master all of ChinesePod Newbie

About 10% done. This feels very fruitful, and also very easy! I believe I can absorb this and move to Elementary, soon.

4. Beat Internet Addiction

Don't Break the Chain says: "You've been dropping the ball for 31 days straight".

**********

I think I can now finally say that I'm really using a language (with a microscopic active vocabulary), as opposed to something not quite language, like a mechanical rapid-fire answering of a string of flashcards. I want my 130+ poems to burst into life now, like that walled garden that couldn't contain the new spring growth.

[imron]

I've been doing plenty of reading (my reading chain is now over 60 days long), but still find it difficult to get much of a speed increase for new material - mostly due to unknown words/characters. I've found the faster you get at reading, the greater the impact an unknown word has on your reading speed, so even one unknown word per 100 characters really slows things down. Once I get familiar with the content, I can push my reading speed up to 350-400 cpm for a 1000 character article. My focus now going to shift more to accumulating vocab than working on speed drills (though I'll continue doing that also).

I've started some HSK prep too, and have started working through all the books I bought so long ago but never got around to going through. I think having a high reading speed is also important for the HSK and at least when timing myself I can make it well under the allotted time limit, with any errors not being related to reading speed.

[roddy]

so even one unknown word per 100 characters really slows things down.

Yep, even if I'm doing my best to read quickly I find this. I have a theory that if you don't know the pronunciation for a character it breaks your subvocalization process. I have no evidence for this bar that I think it.

[edelweis]

@imron: thanks for the wubi links. I have not yet looked into that.

0) don't let Chinese eat up all my energy and free time - leave a little time for my other projects and some energy for the work I get paid to do

erm... I'm working on it.

1) take the HSK (apparently it will be the new version here)

The date is announced (mid may), the levels offered are not.

I might take the TOP (simplified characters version, beginner level) in the meantime.

2) spend 15' per day learning/reviewing character writing

Pretty consistent with this 5/6 days per week.

3) finish the 1033 word HSK vocab list

I wasn't methodical enough to get any progress on this. Now I will first look up sample phrases, then add the word and samples phrases to SRS.

4) finish the study of "chinese grammar without tears"

studied about 1/4, now I am taking one or two weeks to review.

5) submit at least one written exercise per week on Livemocha to practice 3) and 4)

(preferably more!)

I am getting better at using newly learned vocab and grammar, but not submitting often enough.

6) keep watching chinese TV and listening to Chinese Breeze. Have a notepad and pen ready to take notes!

Lots of TV and little Chinese Breeze. I have to do the opposite - at my level I can't understand full sentences on TV.

[trisha2766]

I didn't get as much done in January as I had planned to, but I have good excuses.

The NPCR4 book, and some VCD's I ordered for listening skills, didn't come in the mail until nearly the last week in January. I should have anticipated that. So, if I can still continue doing one chapter a week of NPCR4 I won't be done until around mid april or so now.

I also got some virus that was going around and just couldn't concentrate enough to learn very much for a while. But it did give me time to make up lots of new flash cards. I still use old fashioned ones made from index cards, so it is a pretty mindless thing to do.

It was fun getting the big box of stuff I ordered from studychineseculture.com in though!

It was interesting what querido said: "My knowledge is too far ahead of my ability; I hope to fix this." - I'm kind of that way too. I know more characters and words than I can even begin to use in a conversation or even understand when I hear them spoken. I think to a point that is difficult to avoid though. I'm hoping I can fix that problem this summer.

[OneEye]

By Fall Semester:

All vocab from PCR I-II and IRMC learned - reading and writing cards in Anki

All sentences from PCR I-II and IRMC entered into Anki - reading and listening cards

PCR is going OK. I should be going through it faster but I was sick a week so I'll blame that. Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese comes after I'm done with PCR.

By end of 2010:

Read 鹿鼎記 comic book series with dictionary, adding new vocab to Anki

Rouzer book Lessons 1-20, more if time allows

鹿鼎記 is on hold for now. I'm on Lesson 2 in Rouzer. Should move on to Lesson 3 next week, so that's going well.

Other reading:

Norman - Chinese

Ramsey - The Languages of China

Sun Chaofen - Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction

DeFrancis - The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

DeFrancis - Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems

Schirokauer - A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations

Ebrey - The Cambridge Illustrated History of China

de Bary - Sources of Chinese Tradition

I have a book review due later this semester in an anthropology course I'm taking. I'm writing it on Ramsey, so that will be my main focus for now. I have Schirokauer in the bathroom, so I read a little here and there. Same with Ebrey.

[clevermae]

My aims for this year is targeted at health. My goal is to be make more health-conscious decisions.

[taylor04]

While I still have a small pronunciation problem, my tones are getting much better. I'm losing fluency now that I'm back in the states but overall I think my abilities are improving. I'm pushing through the first hsk list as a tone review.

Listening: I'm getting better at listening, just because I'm getting more advanced vocab. I have started watching some easier Chinese tv shows but can't be bothered with the news yet, I don't even watch it in English!

Writing is slowly improving, still planning on 2000 characters by year end.

Reading is improving but I now realize the goal of getting it up to my speaking level is ridiculous. I'm a person who learns by listening and speaking, if I hear a new word and know its exact meaning it will stay in my head. I just want to keep improving my reading ability.

I've learned some basic cursive Chinese and am happy that I can decipher some basic sentences now.

And finally, I have kept up with my vocabulary goal of five new words a day, I just haven't put them all into anki. I'm quite pleased with my progress so far this year.

[Caidanbi]

My only real aim is to increase my vocabulary. I will do this by reading and watching more tv shows and movies in Chinese. So it will be a lot of fun

[Hero Doug]

I'm really failing on the flashcard front. I've done them like twice this month. Working through 500 cards is not much fun

Flashcards have fallen out of favour with me actually. I find that I spent all my time inputting cards and reviewing them, but never actually studying Chinese. I've just been hitting the books the traditional way now and am very pleased with the results.

Writing is slowly improving, still planning on 2000 characters by year end.

If one of your writing goals is to improve your legibility I'd suggest checking out eStroke. I've been making worksheets with it recently and have found that my writing is a lot neater even only after limited use.

I've attached lesson 42 from CME so you can see the output. Just input the text and print, it's simple.

Lesson 42.pdf

[edelweis]

0) don't let Chinese eat up all my energy and free time - leave a little time for my other projects and some energy for the work I get paid to do

Does watching the winter olympics qualify as an "other project"?

1) take the HSK (apparently it will be the new version here)

Sent application for the TOP test only a few days before the deadline but no answer yet.

I might not be able to take HSK this year due to a scheduling problem.

2) spend 15' per day learning/reviewing character writing

Pretty consistent with this 5/6 days per week.

3) finish the 1033 word HSK vocab list

More methodical than previously. I switched to TOP vocab. Somewhat delayed by winter olympics.

4) finish the study of "chinese grammar without tears"

Stalled... blame the olympics (plain old laziness)

5) submit at least one written exercise per week on Livemocha to practice 3) and 4)

(preferably more!)

Definitely not submitting often enough. However I have a new project which is more interesting than random LM exercises and might provide enough incentive to write more...

6) keep watching chinese TV and listening to Chinese Breeze. Have a notepad and pen ready to take notes!

Again, Winter Olympics

But, now I don't have that excuse anymore so hopefully I will get back on track...

[querido]

This year, my progress will not be so easily measured and reported here.

I have six hours of mostly conversational audio playing on random/repeat. The penetration of my mind into this gradually improves. (I already "know" all of the words.) These were mostly already snipped from Modern Chinese Reader, New Concept Chinese for Children (eight volumes), Yong Ho (both volumes), CC301 (both volumes). CPod? So far can't make myself do it. Don't know why. Not their fault.

I have a nice collection of little books whose words I also already know, and I've scheduled their periodic reading as discussed elsewhere. As I've already said, I intend to do the next one without flashcarding it.

This year, I'm not doing "chapter and verse" as I did last year.

Good luck everybody.

[trisha2766]

I've been getting though npcr4 pretty quickly. I seems like I am able to learn new characters more quickly now than before.

I'm finding myself running into problems with two character words where I already know both the characters - since I know how to pronounce them already I tend to just skim past them and not end up actually learning the meaning which isn't always obvious.

I've not done too well with my other goals.

Flashcards - I used to use them all the time, then stopped and now I'm back to using them a lot again.