Intermediate Plateau

[imron]

1 hour ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

I haven't added a single word in there yet my daily reviews however around the 500 mark so they are leaking out of my head as fast as I'm reviewing then, thus I'm just constantly refilling the glass so to speak 

Take all the time you were spending on flashcard reviews and spend it on doing regular reading of appropriate material instead.  It will make a significant difference.

[Flickserve]

On 10/5/2018 at 11:52 PM, murrayjames said:

 

It took me years to get past the intermediate plateau.

 

On 10/6/2018 at 11:14 AM, abcdefg said:

Takes a long time. I've been at it a decade with varying degrees of intensity and sometimes I still babble unintelligibly like a child, receiving blank looks and shrugs from the people with whom I'm talking. 

 

On 10/6/2018 at 12:43 PM, DavyJonesLocker said:

One of hardest aspects of Chinese is the lack of decent teaching materials.

 

@cliveface96

 

Probably what is overlooked is the lack of high school education in Chinese that we don't have. There are all those years of education with explanations and questioning that constitutes exposure of the language. If we don't have that vocabulary at hand or unfamiliar using it, it's natural to feel tongue tied and stutter for words, especially if the conversation gets a bit deep.

 

In summary, it is only natural to have a plateau which can be a very prolonged phase.

[cliveface96]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the in-depth replies. I think the key is to just keep plugging along. I do mess around on Hellotalk at the moment to chat with people, but I find it quite limited in scope - the conversations I have don't get to a level where I'm pushing my Chinese a lot of the time. 

 

@imron how long do you spend on flashcards each day? I think it was from one of your posts I got my current technique (with Pleco - the 10 cards a day approach). 

[imron]

At the moment, zero minutes per day. When I'm on a vocabulary learning kick, I try not to do more than 30 minutes, and if a deck gets that large I just delete everything and start again, which resets time spent to very little. 

 

I have discussed my reasons for regularly deleting decks elsewhere.  Am on mobile at the moment otherwise I'd provide a link, but search for a thread called: 'to nuke or not to nuke' or something like that.