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Reflections on online learning


mungouk

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Well, I have to say, this is one of the best posts I've read on here. There is a such a wealth of information and you've even taken the time to add the links. I've already had a look at some of the links and come across some stuff I never knew about. For anyone looking for tips in the future, this has to be one of the 'go-to' posts they should start with.

 

Thanks heaps @mungouk for taking the time and effort, though I might end up with more questions as I process the post. Well done buddy, a real gem of a post.

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Thank you @Singe, but there really is a wealth of information already here, from folks who've gone way deeper than I probably ever will, since 2003.

 

All that any of us can do is give a small snapshot of our own experience.

 

Explore and enjoy!

 

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Fantastic write up! Out of curiosity, am I right in thinking you've essentially taken the no-srs route? I was surprised to not see anki in there at all, as it seems like an essential for most language learners these days (although you do see more and more 'natural srs' advice popping up nowadays). Any reason you didn't venture this route?

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3 hours ago, Tomsima said:

essentially taken the no-srs route?

Aren’t sticky study flashcards SRS? Also mentions using Pleco flashcards (that are SRS if you buy them). 

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Well yes... StickyStudy, TofuLearn, Pleco Flashcards, Memrise and Skritter all use SRS.

 

If the question were "Why not Anki?", then my answer would be that I didn't like it. 

 

This is based on my possibly-outdated experience back in 2012-2014 when I was using it for learning Hindi vocab. I think I also made some Japanese decks at some point... probably 2015.

 

I've used both AnkiDroid and Anki for iOS (AnkiMobile?  The paid-for app anyway) and the desktop app, and thought that the decks looked awful. Plus the amount of fiddling around "under the hood" with CSS to get things to look how you want just wasn't worth the trouble.

 

Maybe things are different these days... I notice now that I did download the Mac desktop app onto this new macbook which I've only had since November, so I'm open to trying out some "good" decks if anyone has exemplars that might change my mind!

 

But for standard HSK vocab lists with text + audio I think StickyStudy and Tofulearn do a very good job.

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On 5/9/2020 at 9:49 AM, mungouk said:

学如逆水行舟,不进则退。

    Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.

I love this phrase.  Because I don't live in China (i.e., a Chinese speaking environment, I feel like this all-the-time, i.e., I'm constantly learning new things and forgetting old things. 

 

As others have pointed out, it's an excellent post.  In addition to thanking you, by commenting on it, I'll be able to find it more easily in the future as well (for later reference).

 

I wonder if learning Hindi or other languages helped with your Chinese learning.  After I was well into learning Chinese, I learned some Dutch & small amounts of a few other languages.  I felt that learning Chinese had trained my ears to listen more carefully for word emphasis & intonation in other languages and this helped me speak them more naturally.  It also taught my mouth to make new sounds.  As a result, I became better at learning other languages as well.  Both Dutch & Filipino colleagues noted I didn't have an "American accent" when I spoke their languages (my ability in both is/was quite limited).  Although no one ever said it, when previously I learned German in school (i.e., before learning Chinese), I likely spoke it with an American accent.  

 

 

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I think that every time you start to learn a new language, any others you have studied before will help you to some degree.

 

Apart from developing language-learning strategies along the way, I think some big changes feel as though they require some significant "re-wiring" of the brain. For example, moving from (say) English or French to German, you have to get used to putting the verb at the end of the sentence, which feels quite peculiar at the time. But eventually you get used to it. So later on when you come to other SOV languages like Japanese and Hindi, you've already dealt with that obstacle.

 

I've always wanted to learn Dutch; I love the sounds and the way it sounds like English at times, but just out of reach of comprehension. After spending a summer in Berlin on intensive German studies I was pleasantly surprised to find I could read some Dutch (very similar grammar to German and a lot of similar words), but pronunciation is another story!

 

 

 

 

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On 5/10/2020 at 12:07 PM, mungouk said:

I'm open to trying out some "good" [Anki] decks if anyone has exemplars that might change my mind!

 

OK, this is looking quite useful: Chinese Grammar (汉语 语法) HSK4. I like the way the questions involve re-arranging the words, which is similar to part of the HSK exam.

 

One thing I've realised recently is that I've been putting all my revision effort into vocabulary, and not doing the same for grammar points.  Some more decks like this would be good. 

 

 

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7 hours ago, mungouk said:

OK, this is looking quite useful: Chinese Grammar (汉语 语法) HSK4. I like the way the questions involve re-arranging the words, which is similar to part of the HSK exam.

 

Good find.

 

I tried it on my Android smart phone with ankidroid. The characters didn't show up. Must be something about the formatting.

 

Will have a look on my PC

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I've been using the HSK3 and HSK4 decks... it appears they all use example sentences scraped from Chinese Grammar Wiki, but without taking the pinyin too, which instead has been generated by software.  I've spotted quite a few errors in the pinyin so far, but I'm not really looking at it anyway.

 

Quote

The content is taken from Chinese Grammar Wiki. The pinyin is generated using pinyin python module. The translation of this sentences translated using googletrans python module. The audio for all sentences generated using gTTS python module.

 

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