The 2014 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[OneEye]

OK, back from Hong Kong yesterday so it's update time. Here's last month's post.

 

My wife did indeed get the job in Tokyo, so we'll be moving there in August. We'll probably be kicked out of our current place (provided by her current school) at the end of June, so we'll probably store our stuff at a friend's place and spend July traveling, seeing parts of Taiwan we haven't yet had a chance to see, and maybe a week or so in Singapore and Malaysia.

 

I got both of my papers written, and I'm fairly happy with them. 12 pages on the evolution and corruption of the character 穆, and 26 pages on the excavated 緇衣. I'll probably develop the latter paper further while I'm in Japan and rewrite it in English to include with my PhD applications whenever I go back to the US. I got A's in all classes except the one on excavated texts, which is still incomplete until the professor finishes grading our papers, but should still be an A. I got a 97 in my undergrad 文字學 class, which I'm really happy about because it's one of the highest grades in a class of 50 and I'm one of only two foreigners (I'm pretty sure the other failed the class). 

 

So moving forward, it's about next semester's classes and getting ready for Japan.

 

1) I've picked classes that don't require a whole lot of work but that will be useful. One is 書法專題研究, which is mainly about 行書 and 草書, but also touches on 篆書. The other is on the history of Sinology in Japan through the 20th century. I'll also be taking part 2 of the yearlong undergrad 文字學 class. For my own personal study, I'll be going through some books on palaeography and phonology, as well as getting my feet wet with the 清華簡. If I have time, I'll also work on my 文言文 a bit more.

 

2) I've done very little with Japanese in the past month due to my final papers taking all of my time, so I'll be reviewing for a week or so and then moving forward. I plan on devoting a lot of time to this so I can hit the ground running when I get to Tokyo in August. I'm not sure exactly what my study routine will look like just yet.

 

3) Programming has also been on the back burner for a while. I'll be reviewing what I learned before and then starting back in on learning Python.

 

 

I have two weeks before classes start, and in that time I plan to also work on my Chinese as much as possible to jumpstart the work I want to do this semester. The first few weeks of class should be fairly light as far as coursework, so I'll continue with dedicated Chinese language study until I get overloaded. I have some advanced textbooks that I may use, and some materials from the interpretation class I took last semester. I'll also be working on my formal writing skills. The biggest problem I had with the two papers I wrote according to my proofreaders was 文白夾雜, so maybe some time with Expressions of Written Chinese is in order.

 

Until next month.

[icebear]

OK, back from Hong Kong yesterday so it's update time. Here's last month's post.

 

Just wanted to comment that it's always really impressive to read about your progress/tenacity/performance - please keep the posts coming!

[OneEye]

That's very kind, thanks! My plans always sound great when I post them here, but unfortunately I don't follow through very well when it comes down to it. But I've found that I make more progress working toward big, perhaps unachievable goals than reasonable ones, so that's what I'll continue to do. That may just be me though.

[Meng Lelan]

Anytime OneEye posts in here I have to go lie down and rest. 

[Elizabeth_rb]

Here's an update from me.  I don't expect a certain amount of reading or listening from myself per week as I've realised that that can lead to overwhelming myself, getting fed up and discouraged as I get behind from more or less the first day.  This list seems to work best for me at the mo:

 

* Colloquial Chinese 2
* Chinese Demystified  7/22
* Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar  Done!

* Elementary Chinese Readers 3  10.6/16 - stalled, I need to get back into this one
* Elementary Chinese Readers 4
* Elementary Chinese Readers Supplement
* Revise Far East Everyday Chinese book 3 (a brilliantly useful Taiwan textbook)
* Finish 'Schaum Outline of Chinese Grammar'  11.6/15

* Basic Chinese - A Grammar and Workbook
* Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Chinese
* Get my Chinese learning support blog reworked and into full flow with 2-4 posts per week. Blog created, but hard to get posts done.
* Use much of the material from the blog as well as other stuff to make a start on working up some of the 5 textbooks (!!) I have in mind to write.  As above
* Continue revising Chinese history and culture by finally reading through the books I bought whilst at uni.
* Take full advantage of my weekly language exchange arrangement.  Hope to get this re-started once my mum is out of hospital and I'm free at the old time.
* Use Lang-8 more fully.  Started posting again
* Fish out and listen to some of the aural work tapes I still have from uni.
* Use this forum more (and rejoice Roddy's heart!!  )  Well, I've turned up again....

[新墨西哥人]

I'm still a total beginner even though I've been taking 1-2x week lessons for about 1.5 years. I've never been a big New Years resolution person but I have set goals for my Chinese studies this year, although I won't beat myself up if I don't meet them. I've found this winter I have more time to devote to my Chinese learning hobby because I tore my meniscus and can't go skiing this winter. Lots more free time as a result.

Characters: original plan was to get to 1500 characters in Skritter. (I have about 750). I think though that I will focus more on characters in context than in getting my character count way up.

My goals:

Get out of my comfort zone and start to speak to local Chinese people even if I feel like a fool.

Find a person to do a language exchange with, preferably in person. ( I'm in Los Alamos, NM, and there are a fair number of mainland Chinese here. Lots of grandma and grandpas around here who might not know English well) . I have felt good when I've been able to recognize if someone is speaking Mandarin, but have been to shy to say anything.

Add traditional characters into the mix

Probably switch to a local tutor instead of Skype (or maybe once a week for both) and I have found two or three tutors in my town. I fid. the best way to find local chinese is to take character worksheets with me into Starbucks!

Do the following most days for at least 5-10 minutes, if I don't have time for longer stretches:

Listen to Chinese

Speak chinese (includes Pimsleur)

Skritter/read texts

I've been able to practice speaking and studying characters most days. I've slacked on listening more ( I don't count Pimsleur for listening, too easy in terms of listening, at least at the early level II)

I also have a fantasy of taking a 3-4 week train adventure/trip to China with my 3 year old and my husband. (I've already convinced my daughter about how fun HK would be for a few days: tram, ferry, aviary, etc.) She also loves trains. partly I am getting the travel bug again and it would be interesting to get into more rural China where I have to use my Chinese even if it sucks) however not sure this will actually happen this year. I've been to HK, Taiwan, Singapore, and Shanghai previously when all I knew was 你好 and 谢谢。and the only characters I knew were 一，二，三，上海，and 人。

[roddy]

Elizabeth posting again and a newcomer joining in - indeed, I do rejoice. 

[simpleasy]

I guess it might be time for me to update too.

 

Time to throw all my everyday goals out of the window, since I don't follow through with them anyway. I'm much too chaotic. Since strict planning might be efficient, I do think to put it in my goals again next year. But for now I'm just going to work towards the other clear goals I have set, and don't mind how I get there.

Nonetheless, my goal to study 30 minutes every day seems to be going relatively well. According to anki I already used 26 hours this year. 26 devided by 44 days equals roughly 35 minutes per day.

However, after using anki, I often mistakenly feel like I have done enough for the day. Reviewing words, and learning new ones is very important, but I shouldn't forget to practice full sentences, texts, listening etc as well.

 

Regarding my HSK 3 goal, the exam is only a month away from now, I did a mock test just two days ago, scoring roughly 73% (although I'm not entirely sure how the score should be calculated)

Although it's not perfect, I assume it should be good enough to pass already. I would be happy to score 85-90% by the time I actually take the exam though, so I'll try to practice as much as possible this month.

[Lu]

Haven't updated here since I'm not making much progress on any of my goals. Well, the year has only just started. I'll just muddle on.

 

OneEye, congrats on your wife's job! Looks like you can put your Plan A in motion, great!

[Elizabeth_rb]

What are 'anki' and 'skritter', please?  On-line learning resources, I'm assuming??

 

NOT criticising anyone's study choices, but I always feel like I'm not really studying unless I'm using textbook, notebook and pen.  I just can't take on-screen learning seriously!!

 

Anyway, I'm feeling good to be working on two of my textbooks for study again and happy to make Roddy rejoice!

 

I was just about to ask a question, but then realised that it would be off-topic for this thread, so I'll thrill Roddy to the limit by starting a new thread!!LOL

[Demonic_Duck]

Anki is a free flashcard program which can be used for any variety of subjects. Skritter is somewhat similar, but much more focused on handwriting the character as such, and costs a monthly fee. Personally I don't use either, I just use my pleco flashcards (pleco is a smartphone/tablet app with a huge amount of functionality, flashcards included).

 

I do kinda agree that studying feels more... uh... "studious" if it utilises hard copies of materials and a pen/pencil. I tend to go halfway, with hard copy resources which I write notes on, but then adding cards to pleco as I go (which recently I've become incredibly lazy about reviewing, though I think once I'm back to work with the daily 40 minute subway commute to fill up I'll be better at sticking to it).

[Elizabeth_rb]

I'm ploughing ahead with three of my study texts and am feeling good about it!

[yakherder]

New to the forum.  Figured I'd go ahead and put my goals down

 

My speaking and reading ability is near fluent, though I've definitely been developing some holes since I haven't been to China in 7 years and don't have anyone I regularly speak to in Mandarin.  My handwriting ability has almost completely deteriorated, though I can still type without any problem via pinyin input since it relies only on recognizing the characters as they pop up, not on remembering how to write them from scratch.

 

My current jobs have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with speaking Chinese, but who knows what I'll be doing a decade from now?  After spending so much time learning it, including a 4 year "vacation" teaching English and taking a few classes at Zhejiang University, I hate to see myself losing it.  That said, my goal is simply to repair my damaged fluency, not let it start to slip again, and possibly even begin relearning to write.  I'm sure it'll go faster the second time around.

 

Even though my job does not involve language, I'd still like to take the Defense Language Proficiency Test in the near future just so I can get it on record.

[Meng Lelan]

Not doing much in the way of goals so far except I'm coming along nicely with the Short Stories in here and I may be assigned to Louisiana for the blind rehab internship this summer. A surprise considering I thought they would put me with a site somewhere in Texas. 

[OneEye]

1) Well, after copying the 說文解字 by hand for TWO DIFFERENT CLASSES last semester, I happened to pick the one class this semester that will require me to do it AGAIN. But this time in a slightly different format, so I can't reuse the work I did last semester. Not that I really mind all that much, because it's actually relaxing when I'm not trying to cram it in to meet a deadline, but I just couldn't believe my luck.

 

I ended up taking a class on Chinese dialectology instead of Sinology in Japan. The latter was a little underwhelming, as were the Han Dynasty thought and intro to linguistics classes I sat in on. The dialectology class is right up my alley, and will give me an excuse to indulge my language wanderlust and spend some time working on a 方言 or two this semester. I'll make a new category 4 for that. I'll also need to review my 聲韻學 and some linguistics-related vocabulary that I'm a little rusty on.

 

 

2) Japanese study is going well. I've hit a good rhythm, with Japanese for Everyone as my main text, with ゼロからスタートにほんご会話 (Japanese Conversation Starting from Zero) and Shadowing as supplemental texts. Lots of shadowing, heavy repetition, etc. I've also found a few interesting books on the language, as well as some primers on Japanese history and society. Fun stuff.

 

 

3) I haven't started back up with programming yet. I need to though, because I have a few projects in mind that really need it.

 

 

4) I'll be working on my nearly non-existent Taiwanese this semester, because the last half of the semester in my dialectology class will focus on that and Hakka (the two major non-Mandarin Sinitic languages of Taiwan). But I've always wanted to learn Cantonese. I love HK movies, which I can't really say about many Taiwanese films, and it would be fun to learn a 方言 with a well-developed written vernacular instead of the absolute mess that "written Taiwanese" is. Those two things alone would make it much easier to maintain than Taiwanese while not living in the environment. I only have a few hours per week to devote to this project right now, so I'm not expecting lots of progress, but I'm excited about it because it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. Well, I wasn't necessarily wanting to learn two 方言 at once, but why not. I'll dial some of my other academic projects back for a few months.

 

 

 

That's all. It seems like a lot I guess, but I think it's less than I was originally planning.

[Meng Lelan]

OneEye are you going to be receiving a master's from your school after all before going off to Japan?

[OneEye]

No, I have 8 graduate classes (including the 2 this semester) and 6 undergrad classes left before I could start my thesis. It would easily be another year and a half of coursework after this semester, plus one or two semesters of thesis writing. I'm going to take a leave of absence so that I have the option of returning later, but the chances of me actually finishing are pretty slim. I may try to do some graduate courses in Japan while I'm there, and just try to transfer what I can to whatever school I do my PhD at.

[AdamD]

Here's mine:

 

1. Pass HSK4.

 

2. Be able to write 2,000 characters from memory. I'm beyond 1,500 now, so I don't think it's an outlandish jump.

 

3. Be able to understand clear 普通话 speech without having to ask the other person to repeat all the time. This is by far the most difficult goal for me.

 

4. Finish a book, even if it's only 100 pages. This goal is not about ability so much as finishing what I start.

 

5. Obtain work that involves the Chinese language in a significant way. This would be a stepping stone to my ultimate career goal of specialising in the specification/development of Chinese language learning software.

[imron]

Be able to understand clear 普通话 speech without having to ask the other person to repeat all the time.

Consider listening to unclear 普通话 speech to help you do this.  When you go back to clear speech you will rejoice in its clarity.

 

For finishing a book, consider a graded reader.  The ones by Mandarin Companion have been getting positive reviews.

[tysond]

Update on February.

 

I spent only 9 days in China this month, the rest was travelling in USA or India.  This disrupted a lot of routines and meant no lessons and I am about a bazillion reps behind on Anki.

 

I managed to do quite a lot of listening exercises, and just plain old listening to podcasts, music or watching some movies/TV.  The HSK4 listening is much easier now, and I made some good progress closing the gap on vocab at this level that I've missed.  ChinesePod intermediate episodes have become pretty routine, upper-intermediate lessons are quite accessible now.  When I finally did have a lesson, fully 50% of the new lesson vocab is already quite familiar to me.

 

I did some reading, finishing another volume of One Piece, reading odd bits and pieces from the internet, in-flight materials, email, some movie subtitles, and finished another Chinese Breeze 500 word level reader.   A great experience was getting an engraved panel as a gift and being able to read pretty much the whole inscription.  

 

My team has been moved to the same floor as me (instead of 5 floors below me) and they typically talk to me in Chinese, so I have started to get some good daily conversation practice.