The 2015 Aims and Objectives Progress Thread

[imron]

It's easier to understand longer speeches than shorter ones because you have more context and you gain a familiarity with the speaker's speech pattern.

I think this depends a lot on your level.

 

If you're still at the point where someone says something and by the time you've understood it you've missed their next 2 sentences, then long continuous speech will be more difficult than short isolated speech.

 

If you're at the point where you can mostly follow along without missing things, then longer speeches with context will be easier than shorter ones without much context.

 

In short, you're both right.

[laurenth]

Thanks to you all for the encouragement and the sound advice.

Character:

now is the time to make some notes on how much you comprehend some specific material so you can check your progress at the end of the year.

Good idea. One thing is for sure: most of the time, I don't even now what people are talking about on the radio But maybe that benchmark is too lofty and not specific enough. I'll think about that.  

 

Can you isolate the differences between sentences you can understand and those you can't?  Are the ones you have trouble with longer, spoken faster, spoken with a stronger accent, using certain grammatical constructs, etc?

Good question. When transcribing audio in pinyin, I've started using different color codes to mark my mistakes: black is for stuff I should have understood (I know the vocab and the pronunciation is not particularly strange), green is for stuff I couldn't have understood (new vocab), red is for stuff I understood but the tones I transcribed where wrong, etc. It should help me pinpoint where the problems are.

AdamD:

but if you have an iOS device, get hold of AudioStretch (try the crippled Lite version, pay the US$10—it's worth it—or wait for it to go on sale), slow down an audio file to your liking, and use the scrubber to repeat short passages until you understand them.

 

I don't own  an iOS device - Android here. I normally use WorkAudiBook, which has proven quite useful. A few months ago, I wrote the developer to suggest a slowing down functionality. I also use BeyondPod and PodcastAddict, both have a speed regulation function. When I'm using Audacity (ie when I have some time to sit down and study in front of my home computer), I also use the speed control function for very hard sentences.   
 

Most importantly, don't beat yourself up over this. You are not alone.

 

I had a  moment of downtime, but I'll keep going.

Gato:

 

I was thinking more in terms of movies about contemporary life with people speaking in more natural speech

 

Probably you're right. I had planned to work on the 奋斗 series. However, working on 白蛇传说 is taking much longer than expected. As soon as I'm finished with my   白蛇传说 Anki deck, I'll try to switch to something more contemporary.
 

It's easier to understand longer speeches than shorter ones

 

One thing I've noticed is that cutting the audio in short sentences and feeding them into Anki poses an unexpected problem: you're confronted with random sentences (I mean, out of their context), so you have no idea what they will be about. It can take maybe 0.5-1 second for your brain to figure that out. By that time, the sentence is finished. On the other hand, as listening is hard for me, when the audio is longer than a few minutes, I tend to  get distracted.
 

how about trying to stick with Slow Chinese and trying to get to a level where you can understand a new piece in a first listen?

That's probably sound advice.  Note that, 2 years ago, my wife had offered a subscription to ChinesePod, which I used to study about 50 (lower) intermediate podcasts over the year. After one year, I still couldn't get most new pieces on first listening. Now, one more year has passed and I should try again. Maybe, after all, the exercices I've been doing over the past year will translate into more comprehension of ChinesePod lower intermediate shows now. That would be a baseline, as suggested by Character.

I still use ChineseLearnOnline  podcasts, level 5, on a regular basis. They are excellent because of the carefully devised progression. However, the show has only two hosts, so after a dozen lessons, I tend to grow tired of hearing the same voices over and over again and to switch to something else for a few weeks.

[edelweis]

May update: this will be quick.
I did not study.
I did not attend the Newspaper reading classes.
I only took step d to sort out my problems and avoided step b entirely.
On the other hand I have been growing increasingly bored of doing nothing and I ended up going to the museum - twice

Musée Cernuschi was small, there was a poorly lit exposition of 19th century Chinese painting (on scrolls), I missed the start of the visit, the guide talked mostly about the political symbolism. I didn't stay long as the lack of lighting was giving me a headache. I visited the permanent collection, which was small, but they had those big vases that you can hide in if you are agile and thin like Tintin and not clumsy and chubby like me. The entrance has interesting lions which sit with their back to the street, and turn their head to look behind them, quite unlike the standard lions at the Forbidden City.

 

Musée Guimet was a little bigger, there was an exposition about Asian theater and opera, I missed the start of the Beijing opera visit that I had planned to attend, and then the guide was talking about how artists were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. I didn't stay long either, but I visited the permanent collection which was multicultural and nice except that there were fingerprints on all the glass cases and not enough Chinese characters. Also the bookstore didn't have enough China books and things, mostly Japanese/Korean/Indian stuff. Very disappointing. I was so frustrated that I ended up going to the Phénix bookstore (which I avoid usually because I have too many books already) and finally went home with 3 new books

Anyway, June:
I'm taking part in the Chinese Internet Challenge so I probably won't be posting as many inanities as lately (or if I do, they will be in poorly written Chinese).
And I might start studying again just out of boredom (or maybe because the internet thing will prove that I can't actually read anything interesting in Chinese yet).
I'll try to go to the Newpaper reading classes if they are still in session but no guarantee. The politic and social themes are a bit heavy for me.
Lastly, I need to buy a laptop with Windows and the possibility to add Linux and lots of disk space to store all kinds of Chinese stuff (so no tablet!!), and take steps b1 (divide and conquer) and p to sort out my real life issues.

[Meng Lelan]

I did not study either. 

That is because everything is all packed up for my move to Austin. 

I will not study either. 

That is because I have to unpack everything after my move to Austin. 

[Bigdumogre]

Must say been doing much better than I thought I would be

5-6 days a week I do pimsluers audio

5 days a week I work on npcr - trying a chapter a week (later chapters prob take me 2weeks) with 1 past lesson review

Chinese pod in car and try a lesson a week or two

Got npcr workbook and gonna start doing them and seems like good practice

Pleco deck of npcr of all the lessons I have done

Feel like I need to add more but don't know what

[tysond]

Progress update - June:

 

Been a few months since I updated. 

 

Listening:  Although my actual listening practice has been a bit hap-hazard, I still manage to do about 3-4 hours of listening a week, and I still improve.  Recently I only find advanced dialogs challenging, the rest I can usually catch the entire meaning except for a few nouns, advectives, verbs, and if as long as I catch the topic of discussion I can usually guess the rest.  Advanced tends to have a few too many new words (especially expressions).   Listening to TV and movies is much better now, although I still have to work on catching casual discussions in the absence of subtitles.  

 

Speaking:  My "x" sound has regressed a little, and I still need to practice as does tone production under pressure/as part of a flowing sentence (e.g. while reading out loud).  My spoken sentence structures are sometimes a bit messed up.  It's a bit difficult to make precise, business like sentences, that come out without hesitations or mistakes - which means I tend to need to still use English too often at work.  I've been doing Glossika - I purchased the fluency modules as they have a mainland accent now, and this has been quite helpful in solidifying and "automaticizing" all sorts of expressions, so I'll keep doing this.  I do look like a madmen walking around the park reciting sentences, however.   Speaking was very useful while in Yangshuo recently - by not needing to rely on an English speaking guide for every activity, we could actually be more flexible (e.g. our guide said - hey my brother can take you bike riding, since your Chinese is good enough) and allowed us to book and stay at a hotel that otherwise we would not be able to survive at.  

 

Reading: I can read!  Well, almost!  Somehow over the last few months I assembled most of the characters and words needed to make sense of most writing.  I've been reading short stories, chapters of novels, news articles, etc -- making it further and further each time.  A few weeks ago I had the wonderful feeling of reading well enough to imagine the situation being described, rather than just trying to piece together the words themselves.   Chinese Text Analyzer has been very helpful in pinpointing which bits of texts I've never seen before, and quickly being able to focus on them.  I've also been loading all sorts of things into the Pleco Reader (especially the Web reader) - e.g. website reviews for a hotel I visited, short science fiction stories, articles in newspapers -- i try to read 30-90 minutes a day.   It helps that there's always something in Chinese in my inbox, phone, on my bedside table, desk, etc.  Of course my vocab is still a little limited so flowery text can rapidly become difficult and boring.  

 

Writing: I did practice a bit of writing business emails, getting some corrections on Lang-8.   However, it's a bit of a slow process.  As usually I am neglecting it.  

 

All in all my goal was to get from HSK4.5-ish to HSK5.5-ish this year, and I think I'm on track for that.

However there's a ton of vocabulary that I still need to learn.  There are around 3000 words on the HSK1-6 list that I'm not that familiar with.

So I might go on a bit of a vocabulary blitz soon and see if I can whittle that down.  About 10 a day would make a big difference.

[DanielW]

Progress report: (after 6+ months)

 

 

 

My goal is to finish flashcards for HSK 1-6 and NPCR 2 Textbook and Workbook (Yes, I know this seems weird. My pronunciation, and vocabulary (and reading ability) is wide/relatively good but my grammar sucks. That's why I'm starting the learning of Chinese grammar from scratch)

 

I've finished HSK 1-6 flashcards and have finished NPCR 2 Textbook and Workbook. I'm halfway through NPCR 3 Textbook and Workbook. Yay!

 

My updated goals are: finish NPCR 4 by the end of this summer and finish NPCR 5 by the end of the year. My grammar is improving slowly as I move along in NPCR.

 

All the best to everyone else!

[imron]

I can read!

Congratulations!  I still remember when I first realised I could read Chinese and it was an amazing feeling.

 

It helps that there's always something in Chinese in my inbox, phone, on my bedside table, desk, etc.

I think this is a really important thing - always have a ready stack of material available so if you finish something you can pick up the next thing without needing to waste time thinking about what to read next and giving you an excuse to have a break for a few days (which can easily extend to a few weeks and then months).

 

Chinese Text Analyzer has been very helpful in pinpointing which bits of texts I've never seen before

Glad to hear you're still finding it useful!  Out of curiosity, what does CTA say is your total vocab and what sort of percentage of unknown are you getting for typical texts?

[edelweis]

June report:

Since I apparently can't stand my usual study methods the moment, I ended up sorting old stuff while shadowing sentences and words from a book I bought last month (商务汉语800句) which is a little formal but interesting. Trying to add sentences from Sinolingua's "IT Talk" too, but the annoying thing is that the vocabulary is not recorded separately.

Chinese Internet Challenge: didn't take it seriously enough, ended up singing along 邓丽君 songs most nights (but I did learn a few words that way).

Newspaper reading classes: did not attend any but I did read a few articles by myself.

Chinese TV: daily but mostly passive.

English pronunciation: practiced the basic vowels a little. bat but bet bin bean boot born barn etc.

Buying a laptop with Windows: I browsed a few shops but still undecided.

"real life": b1 - no, but a much easier b2 step ongoing. p - I only found some addresses but did not contact anyone.

 

July:

find example sentences to shadow for basic grammar points.

"real life": take tiny steps re: b and p. And continue sorting all my old stuff.

[tysond]

Glad to hear you're still finding it useful!  Out of curiosity, what does CTA say is your total vocab and what sort of percentage of unknown are you getting for typical texts?

 

 

 

CTA says 3341 is my current known words. 

 

This is a bit conservative.  I tend not to add words unless I already know them including how to write, or I can easily remember the meaning from previously known characters.  There are some words I recognize fine, but haven't yet studied how to write, or if I am not sure about the tones - I often leave them marked as unknown until I can at least put them into SRS so they are part of my study routine.  E.g. just now 兔子 came up, which is easy to recognize, and I know the tone, but I'm not sure I would write it correctly until I put a little practice in, so it's unknown for now.   So I can usually half-remember, guess and infer my way through significantly more than what I "know" with certainty.  

 

Every time I open a text there's still words that I know, or are simple combinations, but aren't marked...  E.g.  假的，飞过，小船 just came up and I marked them.  Actually I'm now at 3354 since writing this reply.  

 

For translated texts, the % are usually 80-90% but realistically names are the biggest portion of unknown words.  

Dialogs from the game "To the Moon" (have been studying) 89% - a few % are names, but I've studied most of the common ones in this game.  

The Hunger Games - 79% - haven't really studied it, quite a lot of names and then specialized terminology they repeat all the time (like tribute and so on)

 

For Chinese texts it can be more like 75%

早安，北京 - 75% - i've only lightly studied, plenty of names and titles I don't know

Newspaper articles from China Youth Daily - 50%-80% depends a lot on topic.  

Recent QQSRX - 81% (and still some names missing).

 

I generally find if something is 80%+, and there's a few names in there, it's quite readable for me, to the point where the lookups are not destroying the reading experience.  

 

Anyway, last night I read the introduction to a Chinese book about European history and the first chapter of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and enjoyed both.

[edelweis]

Quick July report:
Practiced English vowels every other day on average, although more regularly at the beginning of the month than at the end.
Shadowed sentences from Sinolingua's "IT Talk" almost everyday. Lots of mysterious 了s. Need to clarify those.
I also took up familiarizing myself with the 百家姓 - slowly (4 characters per day only). I just want to be able to read last names more easily.
Read a few BBC中文 and IT之家 articles too, and watched some Chinese TV everyday.
Some minor successes with "real life" steps b and p.
I also found an old "Arabic newspaper reading" handout while sorting my old stuff someday maybe...

August: more of the same. Practice 听力 with news reports. Restart anki reviews. Buy a laptop!?

 

===

 

Quick August report:
I more or less kept up with the English pronunciation, IT口语 and 百家姓, only not everyday due to traveling etc.
I didn't read as many articles either (the Tianjin thing was pretty depressing) and didn't watch TV (it's broken).
I didn't really practice 听力 with news reports and didn't restart anki reviews.
But I did buy a laptop with Win8.1, switched the UI to Chinese and re-sized the partitions. They even have a native Wubi IME.

September:
Study everyday!
Set up Win10 and Linux if possible, test Skype.
Either fix the TV set or recycle it and watch TV on my laptop.
Find a weekly class to attend this year (Newspaper reading again?).
RL: politely decline unwanted assignment, work on b and p.

 

===

 

September report: a little bit of IT kouyu, newspaper reading and English pronunciation,
Linux set up, watched TV on my laptop.

October goals:
Test skype and/or another voice chat tool - with a Chinese person.
Copy my Chinese stuff to the laptop.
Attend every newspaper reading class.
To do everyday: IT kouyu, English or other language, a little bit of reading.
And ideally: work on a few of my yearly goals.

RL: restart NoSDiet. Try running. Arrange appointments for each topic in my list.

 

===

 

October report
skype: no
Chinese stuff on laptop: partly.
newspaper reading class: 2/2.
IT kouyu, reading, English pronunciation: not everyday but not too shabby either.
started some 新闻联播 tingli, let's see how that goes.
RL: tried running, need more rehab. Failed NOS. All m appointments ok

November goals
skype test.
All Chinese stuff on laptop.
newspaper reading class (3)
daily: IT kouyu, reading or listening, English or other.
maybe: writing (challenge or course).
maybe: separate list for the workplace.
RL: work on b, finish p and m. Rehab. NOS. 4/5.

 

===

 

November report
skype test: no.
All Chinese stuff on laptop: almost.
newspaper reading class: 3/3 despite everything.
daily: mostly IT kouyu, listening, English. (finished splitting up the IT kouyu soundtracks).
writing: no
separate list for the workplace: no
RL: b1: almost, p: return to monthly, m: last step missing. Rehab: no. NOS: failed. 4/5: no.

December goals:
improve laptop config.
newspaper reading class (3).
daily: kouyu, listening, reading, English.
RL: finish b1 and m. NOS!

 

===

 

December report:

newspaper reading class 3/3.

 

===
 

Trying to review my original goals...

 

Don't get stressed out. Have fun if possible, else relax/rest.
Failed. However: I didn't get stressed out over learning Chinese, and I didn't give up studying altogether either.

Keep learning Chinese.
- Chinese TV daily. Well, not everyday, but not too shabby either.
- complete a mock HSK5 test. 2/3 done only.
- keep 90% compliance on daily SRS. Stopped during stressful period.
- listen at least once to every imandarinpod podcast. I've been listening to 新闻联播 instead. Might branch out into other TV shows that are conveniently pre-split into short segments, with or without transcript and/or subtitles.
- write in Chinese daily, even if just 2': Stopped during stressful period.
- regular weekly group activity my attendance record was terrible in the spring, but getting better this fall.
- finally read a Sci-Fi novel in Chinese. Well, I tried. I find 星际浪子 is still too difficult for me and perhaps I don't really like what I know of the plot and characters.
- systematic review of Chinese grammar.
- finish a technical Chinese textbook.
- drill the 3000 most common characters. this also failed during the high stress period.

Keep other languages active.
English: I've settled into a routine of learning the pronunciation of isolated words.
Spanish: a few FSI tapes...
"German": stalled.
Other languages: almost nothing.

[Lu]

- Don't miss my deadline for the current book.

Book is set to come out in a week or so, so in the end that went pretty well.

- Translate another book and/or find an interesting job.

Working on a novella, unfortunately progress is very slow. Not too happy with my work on this. But well, plodding on.

- Add 10 chengyu per week to Anki.

This is not going well at all.

- Visit Taiwan and/or China this year.

Just got back from China and it was amazing. Going again in a few weeks if all goes well.

- Continue to learn new words.

This is going well.

- Continue to read Chinese books.

This is also going well, although I wish I read faster. I should probably/perhaps read more translations so that I keep up more.

- Continue to speak Chinese with friends and language partner.

This too is going well, although language partner might be leaving and in that case it won't be easy to find another one that good.

- Make more money.

I'm trying but I don't think I'll succeed. Still not starving though.

- Once the book is finished, start running twice a week again.

This is failing rather seriously. I haven't run in months.

- Take more pictures.

This is going well.

 

Not on the list:

- Get up on time every day.

This is going well and I'm happy with it. First step in getting more work done.

 

I'm a bit stressed at the moment (too much work and too little time; also large piles of books to read, which is great but they shouldn't feel like homework), so the points that are failing at the moment probably won't improve any time soon. For the time being I'll just concentrate on getting work done and after that I'll read more and learn chengyu and go running and such.

[tysond]

Progress update - July:

 

Since last month I’ve been on a short holiday (which gave me a few days of solid study time!), and had a bit of an on-off relationship with formal study.

 

My use of Anki is sort of becoming less important, because I spend more time picking up books, comics, emails, advertisements, scripts, or textbooks and just having a bit of a read.  Or I listen to podcasts – advanced or upper intermediate a lot of the time.  Or just watch random videos online in Chinese.  I’d say my biggest missing activates would be 1. Practicing discussion, I probably only get 6-8 hours of practice on this per week.   2. Practicing writing (I rarely write email/stories etc). 

 

Listening:  In recent lessons with my teacher, I notice she relaxes and tells me a relatively detailed story about current news, things that happen in her life, stories about culture/movies/TV shows etc, and I can follow almost everything she says.  It’s like the words of each sentence hangs suspended in the air for a bit as she speaks, then fall to the ground as I understand their meanings, leaving one or two bits left over that I might ask a question about – like “I understand what you are saying and I agree that Chinese Zombies are quite different from Western ones, but what does this word mean? Does it mean hopping?”.  Advanced podcasts on ChinesePod are the only ones that challenge me now – the upper intermediate may have a few words I don’t know but I usually can guess their meaning and often know which character it is based on context.

 

For listening sometimes the really tough thing is when my teacher gives an example without context.  It’s like the entire sentence is hanging in the air, waiting for me to grasp the topic and then it will all fall into place.  Even this kind of listening has improved a lot, since I can remember quite a few words without knowing what they mean (kind of keep them up in the air and wait), and then suddenly I get the context “oh you are talking about the guys who dressed up as Spartans in Beijing” and realize “oh so those words must be Greece and Army and military uniform and etc.”.  It's not perfect and I struggle sometimes but it's certainly a skill I didn't have before.

 

I’ve also got to the point where eavesdropping on conversations is fairly easy.  A funny (although kind of trivial) example was going to 黄花城长城 (The Yellow Flower Fort Great Wall) where there is a fairly quiet part of the wall which you enter by climbing up and down a narrow metal ladder.  I was with a friend, and a family was climbing down while we waited to go up.  As the ladder is so narrow and steep everyone climbed down facing the ladder.  A small boy at the bottom saw his mother/auntie climbing down and taunted her “好大的屁股!”  I laughed, translated to my friend “What a big ass!” and was instantly met with astonishment and horror from the group “Oh dear, you can speak Chinese”.  To which the correct response would have been “好像不那么大”.

 

Speaking:  X and V still need most consistent pronunciation – if under stress (e.g. reading from a text) I use sounds that are kind of a half-way bet instead of committing to the right sound.  Tones of 一 and 不 are sometimes wrong in unfamiliar passages (basically I know them with familiar following words, but I screw them up with new words).  Patterns of repeated tones are not great.  Also working on good pronunciation of words like 空儿 or 瓶儿 (some of which are fairly standard and some are more Beijing). 

 

I’ve used Glossika a bit and it’s very helpful, but making slow progress - just because I have so many things on the boil at once.  However over the course of a year I think I will finish a lot of sentences and ingrain them well. 

 

My reading and interests (e.g. science, science fiction, IT, business) have helped teach me a lot of unusual words (but they are quite logical and easy to remember).  So my teacher was absolutely astonished when we discussed 变态 and I suggested that perhaps such anomalies were present even while the 胚胎 was in the 子宫.  She nearly died saying she’d never imagine a foreign student knowing the word for 子宫.  But once you start learning about such ideas a lot of the vocabulary is logical like 编码，编程 ， 演变, etc, loan words like 基因or evocative like 子宫.   There’s very little extra difficulty in learning specialized vocabulary in Chinese.  I think English is harder in this respect - womb, uterus, abnormal person, gene, DNA, evolution etc.

 

Reading: The joy of reading continues!   Go to bookstores and read back covers.  Open random pages and be delighted that you understand what’s going on.  Read comics with hardly any need to lookup characters except to check “hey is that 3^rd tone or 2^nd?”  Read propaganda banners on the street and wonder why on earth you would make a banner “以人为本  科学防汛” (scientific flood prevention for the people) in urban Beijing in 2015.   Read menus and pronounce most of what you want and ask for help with one character. 

 

Be fascinated by advertisements (this one will wear off!).  Be able to read subtitles or scrolling signs before they disappear.  Drive through new areas of Beijing and tell your increasingly bored wife what every sign / building / park / whatever is actually about.  Have a new appreciation for every business near your house as you now understand their entire range of services, food, goods. 

 

I am still working on my “reading out aloud” skills – reading a textbook passage is still a bit difficult and I definitely make mistakes.  A year ago I would complain about the textbook continually throwing in characters that we hadn’t learned yet but this rarely happens now – I’ve filled in a ton of the blanks.

 

So sometimes, if the text is easy and there aren’t too many new words, I can read fairly quickly, put some emotion into the reading, and understand what I am reading all at the same time.

 

Writing: Poor writing skill, neglected, unloved, hardly used.  However I still keep practicing writing characters as part of my SRS routine.

 

Overall:  Vocabulary is still critical.  I can hear the sounds fine, and reproduce them reasonably well. I’ve got the character level knowledge to a point where when reading a lot of words become apparent because of the characters (if reading, less so when listening where I think context helps so much more).  However, even when reading there’s still a lot of abstract words, grammar items that I need to get more familiar with.

 

I’ve continued to whittle down the HSK5/6 vocab lists.  I take example texts/podcasts/scripts/subtitles, and use my super-dooper excel file to prioritize the most frequent terms. After I pick off 5-10 very popular words in HSK5, 6 and regardless of level, I usually discard the text and find another one.

 

Over time this is formally studying the frequent words.  And then I am casually acquiring a bunch more less frequent words via reading/discussion/exposure.  So I feel I’m making progress over time.

[Bigdumogre]

I am way behind schedule and want to get up to speed. I was in a bad car accident 2 months ago and really shaking up and still in pain but done with excuses. Doing a month long cram session to get me motivated again. I have been stuck on npcr chapter 4 book 1 for a month due to not paying attention.

[edelweis]

@Bigdumogre: I hope the pain goes away and you get better soon!

[Bigdumogre]

@Bigdumogre: I hope the pain goes away and you get better soon!

Thanks but gonna need back and shoulder surgery. Pain is brutal at times and kills my concentration while sitting for long periods. But it's not a excuse to be idle and must say this site is great at keeping you motivated and positive. Most forums are just people bashing one and another but here it's filled with people willing to help others.

[chocolatemilk]

Never posted in this thread so end of year goals -- I picked up a National Chinese Geography magazine, 2009, full of geology and geographical based college level essays.  I find this stuff very fun to read.  I am trying to learn every character used as a word, pronunciation for characters used in names are a bonus.  Places are prioritized over names but both are important.  

 

Picked up a magazine about the development of the Seversky p-47 aircraft.  Lots of new vocab in that, it reads as if is translated from english but I'm not sure.

 

I'm heading back to the US in 3 days so I plan to pick up a few more magazines before I go and hopefully learn all the vocab in them by the end of the year.  Will be looking for magazines regarding, ships, oceanography, physiology, computers and circuitry.  Hopefully these subjects will continue my goal of having a well rounded set of vocabulary.  Next the plan will be to move into fiction novels and more listening based activities.  

[AdamD]

1. Be able to understand clear 普通话 speech.

 

Nope. Despite incredible effort this year, my listening has gone backwards. I have tried everything there is to try and taken every single piece of advice, and I've still gone backwards. I cannot communicate because I don't know what anyone is saying. It devastates me to say this, but I'm considering giving it away entirely and just keeping up the reading/writing. Apparently I've wasted nearly five years, and I'm not prepared to spend another five getting nowhere.

 

2. Learn the HSK 5 word list.

 

Not even started.

 

3. Pass an HSK level.

 

Sat HSK 3. The results are very late so I don't even know whether I passed.

 

4. Extend my reading and listening chains to 400 days.

 

I'll hit these targets, if it even matters.

[Lu]

Chinese-related:
- Don't miss my deadline for the current book.

Made (or almost made) two deadlines last week. Missed another one rather spectacularly. There is still room for improvement. I find I do better when I don't know what the consequences of missing a deadline will be, I tend to not want to find out just how horrific they might be.
- Translate another book and/or find an interesting job.

I translated a novella, that kind of counts. Now looking for the next big project (book).
- Add 10 chengyu per week to Anki.

This failed entirely so far. I don't think I learned 10 chengyu all year, let alone per week.
- Visit Taiwan and/or China this year.

I went to China and it was awesome.
- Continue to learn new words.

Still going well.
- Continue to read Chinese books.

Still going well.
- Continue to speak Chinese with friends and language partner.

My language partner left a bit suddenly, I'll have to find a new one.

Non-Chinese-related:
- Make more money.

I'm afraid this is failing, although not too badly.
- Once the book is finished, start running twice a week again.

I'm finally running again.
- Take more pictures.

Still going well.

[roddy]

Split a lot of very useful listening posts off to their own topic

Getting out of a listening rut