The 2014 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[imron]

1) I want to read my 2nd Jin Yong book. (read my first, 连城决, last year)

I would recommend either 《碧血剑》or《雪山飞狐》。Both are relatively short (compared to his other works) and are also good stories.

 

If I get around to it, I might want to read the 2nd half of 杜拉拉升值.

I would skip this.  The first book was ok, but the second and third ones were pretty meh and had loads of retconning (e.g. the entire ending of book 1 was 'just a dream' ).  Much more interesting is 《圈子圈套》.

[老马萍]

Last summer I lost my tutor of 4 years which really disrupted my progress.  I was accustomed to 2 meetings every week which required 2 hours of preparation a day.  I thought I would be able to maintain my daily schedule by myself but as might be predicted with no deadlines, I soon lost the habit.  I have some Chinese friends and I teach ESL to several Chinese students so I was still able to practice a bit of speaking.  But I realized I need a teacher to keep me in a routine.  Goal #1 was to solve that problem which I have recently done.  Here are my other 2014 goals:

 

• More listening, less writing - listening comprehension is my biggest weakness.  The past 4 years have emphasized learning to read and write over speaking and listening so I need to change the way I spend my time.  It's difficult because my default is always to read/translate something which provides writing practice but doesn't help my listening ability.  Several experience posters advise "dumb listening", that is just listen to something, don't worry if I don't understand all or maybe anything.  I'm struggling with this because it's hard to pay attention when I don't understand but I'll keep at it.
   
• Just do my best to speak -  I worry a lot about tones.  I read a very entertaining book called Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows.  She is a trained linguist who moved to Beijing with her journalist husband.  She was determined to learn to speak Mandarin and worked very hard.  They lived on the economy so she had lots of opportunity to use her developing skills.  But she chronicles many funny but frustrating and embarrassing incidents resulting from  her incorrect pronunciation.  Those anecdotes had a kind of chilling effect -- if that's her experience living in China, what chance do I have living in the U.S.?  But as one friend told me,  "You must open your mouth and say the words!"  So I'm trying.
   
• keep on keepin' on - I have no particular reason to learn Chinese other than a lifelong fascination with the people, the language and the culture.  But in my most frustrated or aimless moments, I've never wanted to quit.  As I've told people who ask why I'm doing this, some people do sudoku, I'm
  studying Chinese.
   
• log on to the Forum more often - This is a great resource and reading the comments of fellow 学生　is energizing.  Many of you have lots more experience than I have but maybe my thoughts would occasionally spark a reader's imagination.  So I'll try to be a contributor more often and not just a lurker!
  
  新年快乐！
  Pat

[abcdefg]

Post #42 -- 

Several experience posters advise "dumb listening", that is just listen to something, don't worry if I don't understand all or maybe anything.  I'm struggling with this because it's hard to pay attention when I don't understand but I'll keep at it.

 

Who recommended that? I am surprised and cannot see it being helpful except at a very, very early stage just to get an ear for how the language sounds. If you are doing it as a background to some other activity, it might by a tiny bit helpful, but otherwise I think there are much better ways to use your study time.

[吳山。]

My only important goal is to learn to read damned menus properly, without resorting to educated guesswork.

 

I'd also like to complete my book, Reading and Writing Chinese (first 2000 traditional characters); and to pass HSK3.

[Demonic_Duck]

Several experience posters advise "dumb listening", that is just listen to something, don't worry if I don't understand all or maybe anything. I'm struggling with this because it's hard to pay attention when I don't understand but I'll keep at it.

Who recommended that? I am surprised and cannot see it being helpful except at a very, very early stage just to get an ear for how the language sounds. If you are doing it as a background to some other activity, it might by a tiny bit helpful, but otherwise I think there are much better ways to use your study time.

 

I think listening to material a bit above your level for gist is well worth doing, regardless of whether you then go back over that material in more detail later (though it's generally a good idea to do this too, as you'll often understand more from a second listening, not to mention that it's a great way to increase your vocabulary). I also strongly disagree that learning to pick out words from strings of syllables is something you only need to worry about at very early stages. But I'd caution against listening to something so far above your level that you won't even be able to pick up the gist, I can only imagine that would be a will-sapping exercise in futility.

[OneEye]

This isn't really my normal update time, but here goes anyway.

 

1) I just took my 文字學 final today. Ouch. The entire exam was written in 小篆, which we had to transcribe into 楷書 and then answer. That part was actually no problem, thanks to having to copy the entire 說文解字 (楷書 and 小篆 for each headword) by hand this semester for another class, it was just time consuming. Answering the questions was another story. "Copy out paragraph X from the preface to the 說文 from memory." "Translate these 3 passages into 白話 (no dictionary, of course)." Pretty brutal, especially for an undergrad class. I think I did okay, but probably not great. Oh well. The final for my 漢字形體學 class (graduate-level) went much better, and I got the highest score in the class on the 簡體字 test that we took the same day. Now I'll be spending the next 3 weeks writing my papers, which should be fun.

 

2) In other news, it looks like my wife will be taking a job at a really outstanding international school in Tokyo this fall. It's in every way our first choice (city, school, teaching subject), so it's really exciting. It isn't official just yet (her signature is not yet on paper), but they're flying the two of us to Tokyo next week to visit the school and, assuming everything goes well (no reason it shouldn't), she'll be taking the job and we'll move there in July. I wasn't expecting to know this for several more months, so it's nice to know early so I can plan and prioritize accordingly. More about that in a moment.

 

3) I've gotten fairly comfortable using the command line to do stuff, and did a few things with Python, but I've put it on the back burner until I get done writing my papers. 

 

 

I'll be picking classes for next semester soon. I'll be taking part 2 of the 文字學 class, as well as a class on Sinology in Japan. For my third class, I'm trying to decide between 書法研究 and a class on the 清華簡. In the former, I'll learn to read and write cursive, which is a long-term goal of mine, and in the latter I'd get to do lots of stuff with 楚簡, which I enjoy. The 清華簡 are exceptionally difficult to read though, and I'm not sure if I can handle it just yet. There may be a palaeography seminar offered, and if so I'll have to decide if I want to take it instead of one of the others. I won't be taking more than 3 classes total, because I want to leave some time to study Japanese and do some of the other research I want to do. I'll also be doing a lot more reading, which I didn't actually have much time for this semester.

 

Over the next few weeks while I'm writing my papers, I plan on doing an hour of Japanese in the mornings before I go to the library. I'll probably be in Hong Kong for Chinese New Year, and when I get back I'll ramp it up to two hours or so per day, which I plan to continue throughout the spring semester. I also want to find a Japanese tutor in the near future so I can get ready for the move. Maybe a language exchange instead of a tutor, we'll see.

 

I'd better start writing.

[mouse]

My first semester here in Beijing is over, so now I finally have some breathing room to learn Chinese properly, rather than cram for every (weekly) new lesson for my various classes. We're given at least 200 new words a week, along with a number of grammar patterns. After adding the 文言文 stuff, it's simply too much to learn and remember properly. So during 春节 I'm going to try and consolidate the masses of stuff I'm supposed to have learnt already, and maybe preview next semester's material. My main goal however is to learn through pleasure, that is, try and tackle something I'd like to read or listen to, rather than textbook stuff. This is probably the only way not to burn out. Also, I feel like classroom learning does little for my listening ability, so hopefully I can get to grips with some native listening material in a more systematic way.

 

Beyond that, I need to get over myself and stop being so shy when it comes to talking to Chinese people. I speak Chinese every day, but mostly to foreigners of some sort. I've noticed that when speaking Chinese with – for example – Koreans who don't speak English, it may benefit my speaking and listening skills, but because we're all second-language learners, we can understand what the other is trying to say in a way that natives really can't. The only way to start properly thinking in Chinese rather than thinking like a student of Chinese is to talk more and more with native Chinese speakers. The only way to do that is simply to get on with it. It's still intimidating of course, but if I go back home without conquering this fear I know I'll loathe myself for wasting such a rare opportunity. So I will do it! Soon...

 

To that end I want to:

• try and make more Chinese friends (with whom I speak Chinese more than English)
• have a go at the 2014 short stories project here on the forums
• properly engage in tedious but necessary brute-force repetition advocated by many on here

I'll restrict the major goals to those three, and everything else I'll count as a bonus.

[Meng Lelan]

OneEye, what subject area does your wife plan to teach in Japan? That final exam report was really something. 

[abcdefg]

#45 -- Duck, don't you think that what you are advocating in your comment qualifies as "smart" listening or "focused listening?" I agree with what you have said, but would not apply the term "dumb listening" to those methods.

 

I often listen to material well above my level on TV, but I do as you recommended, and try to get the gist of what is being said by picking out the words and phrases which I know, plus the accompanying video often provides clues as to general meaning.

[abcdefg]

#47 -- Mouse, I like the approach you referred to here:

 

My main goal however is to learn through pleasure, that is, try and tackle something I'd like to read or listen to, rather than textbook stuff. This is probably the only way not to burn out.

I do a lot of that, and extend it to talking with Chinese friends about topics of mutual interest. At some point learning the language must become fun in order for me to keep at it.

[JustinJJ]

 

 

Environment - Create a 100% Chinese environment in my apartment i.e. find Chinese flat mates who are relatively sociable, only speak English to non-mandarin speakers, live in a predominantly Chinese area of Sydney etc.  

 

Managed to set this up today. I've been in Sydney for 5 days now and am amazed at the opportunities to use Chinese here. It seems you can really use Chinese in many situations in Sydney, be it asking for directions, shopping, renting an apartment, casually talking to people while waiting, etc to the extent that you could get by in most situations without using English at all (employment 之外）。

 

If anyone wanted to try to find flat mates, I'd recommend the forum www.tigtag.com. All the landlords and 房客 will all be Chinese.

[OneEye]

OneEye, what subject area does your wife plan to teach in Japan?

 

Music and art, just like she does here and did in Texas. She's first and foremost a music teacher, but got certified to teach art in her second year of teaching and loves it. The job really seemed tailor-made for her when we first found and applied for it, so we're thrilled that she's getting it.

[jefflau]

My only important goal is to learn to read damned menus properly, without resorting to educated guesswork.

I'd also like to complete my book, Reading and Writing Chinese (first 2000 traditional characters); and to pass HSK3.

I was about to say "omg you're writing a book on writing the first 2k characters in traditional, but you're only taking hsk3?!?" Then I had all these visions of you being fluent in Japanese and that's how you started reading it.

Then I realised you're probably just reading a book on the first 2k characters...

[Demonic_Duck]

#45 -- Duck, don't you think that what you are advocating in your comment qualifies as "smart" listening or "focused listening?" I agree with what you have said, but would not apply the term "dumb listening" to those methods.

I often listen to material well above my level on TV, but I do as you recommended, and try to get the gist of what is being said by picking out the words and phrases which I know, plus the accompanying video often provides clues as to general meaning.

Fair point. I guess "dumb listening" is a misnomer, if people have been advocating listening for gist under that name. Actually I'd also be curious to see the original posts which said this.

My only important goal is to learn to read damned menus properly, without resorting to educated guesswork.

The problem with this is that it depends on the type of eating establishment. I can generally read 90% of menus in your typical "hole-in-the-wall" type of place, where dishes are generally either very common, or named descriptively. I find it a lot more difficult in more up-market places, where you get more unusual dishes, many of which use some artistic license in how they're named.

[Kherith]

Hello !

I ordere my books and will start chinese by myself next week.
My objectives are to:

- cover 2 lessons of NPCR each week

- learn 10-15 characters every day with Tuttle - Learning Chinese Characters.

- help myself with a grammar bookk (no estimated amount, depending on my needs)

 

If my calculations are right, I will cover the NPCR vol.1&2 in less than two months and the 800 characters of Tuttle in less than three months. Said like this, it seems too much at once, but divided up into days/weeks I dont feel it is.

Do you think my expectations are too hard or legetimate ? I cannot realize that by myself

[tysond]

It seems you can really use Chinese in many situations in Sydney

 

 

I go back to Australia every year for Xmas.  Although the trend has been growing year by year, this year I noticed a LOT of Chinese speakers in Australia, all using putonghua.  Shopkeepers in Melbourne, shoppers in Sydney, and duty-free store cashiers in Brisbane.  I believe you could quite easily build a network of Chinese friends and use it in a lot of every day situations.

[Meng Lelan]

That's very interesting what #56 said.  My 13 year old is so totally in love with Australia (never been there) so knowing this will motivate him to do his Chinese homework everyday. 

[edelweis]

I had only one goal for January and managed to avoid reaching it

Anyway.

 

According to my logs I spent about 9h studying languages other than Chinese, and 13h studying Chinese. This is not much. Getting used to new routines which should ensure 30' of Chinese and 15' of another language everyday, except one day per week when I intend to go to a Mahjong club

I have been thinking about registering for the June session of the CPE. It costs 226€ though. And I'm pretty sure my English is not at C2 level except maybe for the reading part. I borrowed some books and created a separate Lang 8 account to make a better evaluation of my level. (I did get CAE grade A a few years ago which is described as C2, but my speaking mark was below average.)

My Spanish level is too low to think about taking a test right now (around B1 or B2 for reading and basically no speaking or writing skills any more - I just realised it's been 20 years since my last class   )

Also I had a look at the TOCFL but the online registration website is just as insecure as the HSK one, with the additional drawback of assigning user ids based on passport numbers

 

I'm not setting any goal for February.

 

(I know it's CNY but, come on, no updates anyone?)

[FadedStardust]

1. get a good portion of Outlaws of the Marsh read (currently on chapter 3)

pass HSK 6 and HSKK Advanced (taking both on March 16!)

listen to 1 news podcast per day, every day (usually from UN Radio)

get my writing level high enough that I can, with a lot of time, effort and help, write very rudimentary academic papers in Chinese

start grad school in China

[tysond]

January update:

 

January seemed to whiz past very quickly – I had a lot of travel for vacations and some work, and spent much of my time in Beijing catching up on work.   As a result I had very few lessons with my teacher, Chinese study way mostly self-study.

 

Travelling in Harbin was very useful for my Chinese, as very few people spoke any English, so a lot of travel stuff had to be done in Chinese.  The Chinese is wonderfully standard in Harbin.  In Beijing, westerners speaking Chinese is pretty common and Beijinger’s have seen it all before (or pretend to) but in Harbin they don’t see many foreigners, so you get complimented all day long.  At Harbin airport a simple 你好 from me was enough to get a 你的发音真标准。 Going to Yabuli for skiing was not helpful for my Chinese as all the English speaking staff flocked to talk to the guests who can speak English.  But my skiing did improve.

 

Going to India for a wedding has been mixed, although the bride’s (she’s from Guangzhou) parents speak practically no English, and I played translator for an hour to help the other guests to talk to them.  Translation at a party is actually quite fun, and makes you realize 1. How much controlling the topic of conversation allows you avoid vocab you don’t have and therefore 2. When other people ask you to translate, you see what gaps you might have on topics you tend to avoid. 

 

One thing I also noticed is that I am now much better at noticing when people stop understanding what I (or others) are saying (in English or in Chinese). In the past – e.g. 10 years ago when visiting India -- I thought English was quite well understood by most, but now I believe it’s well understood only by some, and is really only at a basic level for most people.

 

Progress against goals for 2014

·        Get from somewhat HSK-4-ish, to HSK-5-ish in terms of vocab and grammar, reading speed, listening skill. Consider taking the actual tests.

 

I’ve been focusing on listening skills because that’s where I think I am weakest.  Using an iOS app to do mock HSK4 listening tests I can hit around 80-90%.  Most of the misunderstanding is based on weak knowledge of some vocab (stuff that I don’t use or hear much), and inability to follow speech fast enough as a result.  If I read the same text I do much much better.

 

In Feb I want to get the unfamiliar HSK4 vocab into my SRS system as active cards with audio, this will solidify the missing vocab.  To help make this happen, I added all the Anki decks of Mastering Chinese Characters to my passive card bank (it’s a bunch of shared Anki decks and has 3500+ sentences in it) – and I’ve been grabbing example sentences from there to fill gaps.  The sentences are a bit boring but they will help fill gaps.

 

·        Be able to read comics comfortably for long periods with practically full understanding

·        Be at the same level with (easy/medium) books as I now am with comics (read a page only need to look up a few words to be able to follow).

 

In 2013 I managed to push my way through 1 volume of One Piece with great difficulty.  In January I finished 3 more volumes of One Piece without too much stress.  Reading this comic is getting much easier, as the terminology is more and more familiar.  Usually there will be 100+ pages with the same characters, setting, weapons, etc.  I frequently skip past things I don’t get and keep reading for the fun – but my understanding is very high as I can guess at the words I don’t know (I check against the English version after each volume).  Occasionally I grab some pages or sentences of the comic put them into Anki, or I just search my passive sentence banks for a sentence with the same words.

 

I have been making some progress through the Short Stories on Chinese Forums.  The first few paragraphs are a bit tricky, then it’s smoother as the key topics and themes are introduced.

 

I found the Chinese version (online and on paper) of The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.  This is one of my favorite books.  By the end of this year I hope to be able to read it reasonably well (skipping over bits that I don’t understand).  It’s slow going right now so I only do a few paragraphs at a time.

 

·        Be able to watch more difficult TV and movies  

 

Been listening to some QQSRX and news broadcasts for this and it’s helping, but I still need transcripts or subtitles to follow well.  Vocabulary is still the biggest issue here.

 

·        Improve writing of sentences and passages – write work emails in Chinese, continued to be able to write hanzi

·        Work on pronunciation issues including inconsistent tones and a few tricky sounds

 

I haven’t really spent much time on composition and pronunciation in January. 

 

Focus for February:  Keep reading, keep watching, keep listening.  But most of all clean up knowledge of unfamiliar HSK4 vocab.