The 2021 Aims and Objectives Progress Topic

[道艺]

2 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

Amazing you passed the Chinese driving license exam before an HSK exam, that's an achievement in itself

I would say 

 

1 - most of the 驾照 language is focused on either 交规, 路标 , or 车辆操作, where as I find hsk 5 & 6 content scattered all over the place

2- there's too much impractical language/'书面' stuff in hsk, which makes it hard for me to focus on

 

To be fair, I have passed hsk 2 & 4

[imron]

14 hours ago, 道艺黄帝 said:

加油 to everyone else

Now that you're driving, 加油  (literally) to you too

[艾墨本]

After a pretty rough year, I don't even want to look at my language goals from 2020. On the one hand, after about four months of really solid studying starting of the year it all tapered off and I didn't really pick it back up until a month or two ago in large part due to switching jobs, dealing with COVID, and other personal things that happened.

 

On the other hand, with all those experience now turned to memories I'm ready for a fresh start. At this point, my language ability has mostly stabilized in the advanced range. What I mean is that recall and fluency is very rarely a challenge at this point. However, I want to move from sounding fluent to sounding educated, which means starting to develop a more robust literary vocabulary as well as branching out into more specialized vocabulary. I feel like I'm back in the "collecting new words" phase after spending a lot of time digesting many years of learning, an advantage of some time off of studying while still living in China.

 

So, my modest language goals for this year are:

1) Learn 3 new words per day and spend 20 mins studying/reviewing vocabulary. I assume I'll have some days that go beyond three and hope to hit 1000 by the year's end. In the interest of developing literary Chinese I'm getting these words from the collection of essays used for the 普通话水平测试 which has the added benefit of moving me toward a long term goal of passing that test with a high score. I want to reach the same score required of native speakers to be 语文 teachers.

2) Write one essay (>1000字) each month and go through two rounds of feedback and revision. This is a new one for me and will consider it on trial while I figure out how well it works into my life. I welcome feedback if anyone has set writing goals before.

3) Read the books I have on my shelf: 《红高粱家族》、《蒋勋说宋词》、《一只独立行的猪》、《白夜行》、《雅舍小品》. The last one is a challenge but I'm hoping that after building up my literary vocabulary in the 1st goal I'll be closer to comprehensible input when I return to it. I also have 《吾国与吾民》but have been told the original English version is much better than the translated version. However, it's also a classic so I might try to read both. I won't be using vocabulary from these from my 3 words per day and will instead just take what I get from passive learning.

 

[Luxi]

2 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

Write one essay (>1000字) each month

 

Nice goal! I don't know whether this would be any use to you, or too basic, but it may be useful to others also interested in writing. A preliminary before jumping into the deep end of literary and academic essays. There are school help sites with many examples of primary and secondary school 作文. I think they could  be helpful for people studying on their own or with only limited contact with tutors. There many of these sites, this is just an example:

中小学生作文网_中考高考满分作文_初中作文_高中优秀作文大全 (zuowen.com)

[BearXiong]

This year will be my 7th year of Chinese! How time flies ?. Still have my eyes set on getting to a pretty decent (but far from perfect) level of Chinese by the 10 year mark. My biggest goal for 2021 is to improve my speaking skills. I've developed some fairly good daily study habits based on some posts by imron which I was fortunate enough to read pretty early on. One goal is essentially to just keep with it. 

 

1) Have 150 hours worth of voice calls on HelloTalk. I've decided to keep a log of the hours. So far I've done 4 hours and a half and it's only been 5 days ?. I probably did 100+ hours of this last year and it's worked wonders for my speaking ability. One nice consequence of this is that I've gotten much better at understanding accented mandarin. Having a voice call with a girl who grew up in the villages of Sichuan or a guy in Guangdong with a super non-standard accent does wonders for understanding accented mandarin in a way which watching TV shows really can't compete with.

 

2) Learn 4 new words per day in Anki. I'll bump it up to 5 if I end up my bumping down the number of characters I learn per day.

 

3) Go through 500 new characters in my Anki deck. That'll bring me up to 4000 characters in my deck. Right now I'm doing 3 characters a day but will tone it back to 1 or 2 characters per day if need be.

 

4) Watch at least one episode of some TV show a day. I tend to watch an hour or two of Chinese videos/shows each day. Maybe a better goal would be to do at least 30 minutes per day. I'm rather fond of 相声 so listening to half an hour of 相声 instead of a TV show would work just as well.

 

I'd like to read more novels but honestly even if I were completely fluent in mandarin I still wouldn't read all that many novels so I consider it a secondary goal. I think it's better to practice what I intend to use the language for. Having said that, I'll still make some effort to read.

[feihong]

7 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

2) Write one essay (>1000字) each month and go through two rounds of feedback and revision. This is a new one for me and will consider it on trial while I figure out how well it works into my life. I welcome feedback if anyone has set writing goals before.

Although my current blog on this site is not a traditional blog, it does involve a lot of writing and review. The scheduled publishing feature of the blog is a motivator for me to keep up the pace of one post per week, which I have managed to maintain for more than a year now. I see no issues with maintaining that pace over the coming year since I’ve gotten used to pre-publishing posts months in advance.

 

I’m not sure if one post per month would work for me, though, as the interval just seems too long. Maybe you could consider publishing your essays in parts, which I see a lot of other blogs do.

 

Another thing I do is load my drafts into Notion. This allows me to work on posts on my phone during spare moments and also shows my edits in real-time during live review sessions. Google Docs might be good enough for your purposes, but I need the extra structure provided by Notion. There are probably specialized writing apps that do a similar thing but with less need for custom workflows, but I haven’t looked into them.

[Tomsima]

I'm dropping by after the first week or so of building my 2021 targets into habits to do a bit of revision while I can. I've been working on shorthand translation of articles written in Chinese and discovered there is much more benefit to collecting and studying new and useful common vocab from the process rather than trying to finish a whole article then move onto the next translation. Perhaps I'll come back to my second goal later in the year, but right now I'm going to change my second goal for 2021 to:

 

Fill a notebook with key words and phrases, Chinese > English shorthand.

 

Heres a photo taken of the first page, from today (not meant to be arty, just taken with the rear camera from my laptop)

 

 

[Woodford]

I've been studying Chinese for about 4.5 years overall, with 3.5 years being "serious" (2-4 hours a day of SRS flashcards and reading practice, with additional time spent listening to Chinese podcasts). I have worked through 8 books since Fall of 2019, albeit with a system of review (reading each book 3-4 times over--which has been my practice all along, even since the days of graded readers). I tend to think it helped my speed and confidence, but I'm just getting tired of it. So this year, I want to take a more casual approach where I read everything just once, and commit new vocabulary to my flashcards. I need to dial back the intensity of my routine anyway, as I have a lot of other responsibilities piling up. So my goals this year are:

1. Read more casually and for fun

2. Approach (not necessarily reach) a vocabulary flashcard deck of 20,000 (I'm at 15,000 now, and new words are slowing down to more of a trickle)

3. Upgrade my listening comprehension from "meh" to "acceptable" (I know that's subjective)

[calculatrix]

Hello everybody,
I have been reading in this forum for some months, and I think this thread is a good occasion for a first posting.
I have studied Japanese about 30 years ago (and forgotten most of it), and when Corona came I was searching for some online MOOC to brush it up.
But since I could not find good Japanese MOOCS but lots of Chinese ones I decided to start something new.
So far I have finished "Chinese for Beginners" at coursera.org which was Pinyin-only; then "Chinese for HSK1", and now I am in week 4 of "Chinese for HSK2".
My plans for 2021:

1. Practise with Anki 30 minutes every day.
2. Finish the last three weeks of "Chinese for HSK2" until March (yes, I need more than one real-life-week to complete a week of the course).
3. After that I plan to reward myself with a good Chinese grammar book and recap all the grammar points I have met so far.
4. And then I am not sure if I should go on with Coursera's "Chinese for HSK3" or buy some chinese readers. 
5. My long-term-goal is to pass the HSK3 certification by the end of 2021 or in 2022 (skipping HSK1 and HSK2 certs).

But first things first. Half an hour of Anki every day.
This forum is really great and I got lots of information and motivation already.

[haveheart]

Mandarin
Get back into a routine of:
-watching tv everyday
-reading 30 minutes a day 
-making 10 new flashcards a day (currently using Migaku tools and it makes it an absolute breeze)
-going to start taking some italki classes to add more structure too, if anyone has recommended teachers I'd love to hear about them. 

Last year I made 1350 new cards mined from tv shows, which is only 3.7 a day. Better than nothing I suppose!

 

Cantonese
In the last week of 2020 I started learning Cantonese. I'm taking it slow as to not burnout but I'm finding it really fun so far. Knowing a bunch of mandarin has definitely helped.
So far I'm just reviewing words I learned during weekly Italki lessons and turning them into anki cards. 
 

On 1/1/2021 at 12:57 PM, lechuan said:

• Weekly italki Cantonese lessons with Gary

I've had 4 lessons with Gary so far and he's great! What a coincidence to see him pop up here. 
 

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

Hi all, I'm new to Chinese and even newer to the forums. I realize I'm shooting from the hip here, but I want to participate in this thread so that next year I can reflect on my progress.

 

Quick background:

I started studying Mandarin in Oct 2020, and thus far completed the HelloChinese app main course and am about half-way through their immersion lessons (550 mini-podcasts w/ situational conversations, much like ChinesePod, although unfortunately less comprehensible input and more grammar descriptions). I also read The Chairman's Bao, currently pinyin HSK2 is smooth and HSK3 a bit rougher at about 90% comprehension. I have a Pleco deck of 1700 words with decent command of maybe 800 words. Finally, I get about 30 minutes of native content listening per day. Sometimes it is comprehensible (subtitled with English), but often it is just passive listening to expose myself to sounds and rhythms.

 

My singular goal for Mandarin in 2021 is...

...to memorize 1500 characters. Ideally, I want more than just flashcard recognition. I'd like to read proficiently so that I'm at an extensive reading level, that is reading selected graded materials (e.g. TCB's HSK4 articles) at 98% comprehension.

 

My work flow will look something like this:

• Using Heisig's RTH Vol I, create mnemonic device for each character. Planning to start sometime in March at a 7-10 character per day pace.
• Memorize pronunciation concurrently? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this? In a YCLC podcast, one guest mentioned a resource called "The Maryland Method" by a guy named Sergei (sp?) written in his blog called Country of the Blind. Google has unfortunately yielded no results.
• Create and review pleco flashcard deck. I know there are a lot of Heisig decks out there but I'm unsure what the best format is?
• Start reading graded readers after first few hundred characters are memorized, some time around May.
• Somehow integrate Imron's memorization approach (https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/20067-visualizing-pinyin-tones/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-166892). I like this method, but seems like it would be best for an intermediate-advanced learner. Any thoughts as to whether a beginner could effectively use this approach?

Questions for my future self

How did you do?

Did your plans change?

How'd the execution go?

Are you satisfied with the level you are currently reading?

[imron]

1 hour ago, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

Any thoughts as to whether a beginner could effectively use this approach?

The earlier you start, the more benefit you’ll gain. 

 

I started doing this relatively early in my studies as an alternative to writing characters by hand, because I found writing by hand to be ineffective. 
 

It’s worth keeping in mind that regardless of what level you are when you start this, it will always feel difficult at first.

 

Don’t think it will be easier once you have a better Chinese level, because the main skills you are developing are active recall and visualization.

 

Chinese characters are the means by which you are doing that, and also the thing you will use those skills for, but knowing more or less characters when you start doesn’t have much effect on how well you’ll be able to visualize and recall them. 

[imron]

6 hours ago, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

Memorize pronunciation concurrently? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this?

Don’t memorize the pinyin, instead, memorise the whole sound, such that you can ‘hear’ it in your mind. 

 

Once you have the sound memorized you can recreate the pinyin from it as needed.

 

See here for a longer write up. 

 

 

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

Quote

 

The earlier you start, the more benefit you’ll gain. 

 

 

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like your "concentration" method requires more effort upfront but will benefit in the long run. I would also guess that this method is more compatible with comprehensible input/extensive reading techniques. For example, after encountering a new character apply 20-30s of direct concentration on the character itself using the material's context. As opposed to the Heisig method where you need to create a new story that could be completely antithetical to the context it is found. Re-reading your original 2009 post I see you've already made this point! ^^

 

I may try both the mnemonic method and "concentration" method separately, maybe alternating days or weeks with each method?

(Note to future self, look into quantifying results with Pleco's flashcard statistics)

 

Quote

Don’t memorize the pinyin, instead, memorise the whole sound

 

Funny how great ideas are both simple and intuitive, yet never obvious. This may be the single most important meta-concept I have encountered. Thank you!

 

[艾墨本]

On 1/5/2021 at 8:34 PM, 艾墨本 said:

So, my modest language goals for this year are:

1) Learn 3 new words per day and spend 20 mins studying/reviewing vocabulary. I assume I'll have some days that go beyond three and hope to hit 1000 by the year's end. In the interest of developing literary Chinese I'm getting these words from the collection of essays used for the 普通话水平测试 which has the added benefit of moving me toward a long term goal of passing that test with a high score. I want to reach the same score required of native speakers to be 语文 teachers.

2) Write one essay (>1000字) each month and go through two rounds of feedback and revision. This is a new one for me and will consider it on trial while I figure out how well it works into my life. I welcome feedback if anyone has set writing goals before.

3) Read the books I have on my shelf: 《红高粱家族》、《蒋勋说宋词》、《一只独立行的猪》、《白夜行》、《雅舍小品》. The last one is a challenge but I'm hoping that after building up my literary vocabulary in the 1st goal I'll be closer to comprehensible input when I return to it. I also have 《吾国与吾民》but have been told the original English version is much better than the translated version. However, it's also a classic so I might try to read both. I won't be using vocabulary from these from my 3 words per day and will instead just take what I get from passive learning.

 

Update 1: 20 Days

 

So far I have met my daily goals 17/20 days. Only one of which was because I did a bad job and not because of other external factors.

 

I've learned 76 new words so far, all of which come from the 普通话水平测试. To collect this many words, I've worked through 10 of the essays so far. Altogether I have 60 essays to work through and love the idea that I'll finish the vocabulary in these before the end of the year.

 

I'm currently on page 55 of 《蒋勋说宋词》. I had read about 10-15 pages over 2 days from 《一只独立行的猪》before I lost interest. I just don't think I'm in the place for his essays. However, I am loving learning about 宋词. It is very historical in content, focusing on the context from which each poem arose which is a pleasant surprise. I had been wanting to work on reading history in Chinese and this is working out to be a good baby step into the genre. One line from 李后主 has stuck in my mind in particular: "别时容易见时难." That idea of it being easy to live in memories or imagined worlds and much more difficult to take the world as it is. Written as an emperor taken prisoner after his kingdom was sacked.

 

My pace is very slow. It takes about 5-10 minutes per pages just because the content is heavy and I often look up words. I read it out loud as well because that helps me check myself on whether or not I really know a word. Because I'm pushing to look up all unknown words for deeper comprehension I am moving even slower. However, at this point I'm finding the content compelling enough to do this. I guess I can always switch to quiet reading and skimming over pronunciation of the endless stream of names but so long as I have the motivation to do so I will.

 

As for essay writing. I've finished the first draft and have gotten feedback on it. Not sure this goal will be feasible for the whole year as it takes big blocks of time rather than being part of a daily routine. I really need like 60 mins of writing to get into the train of thought and then working through the essay.

 

Side note, I'm also 3 weeks out of 3 for making it to the gym three times per week.

[Tomsima]

蒋勋 writes some really accessible stuff on calligraphy too, would recommend if you're interested in putting abstract ideas of Chinese art into historical context. A little bit like his books on poetry, you can easily get drawn into the literary world of Chinese and appreciate what otherwise seems incredibly terse subject matter.

[imron]

On 1/19/2021 at 5:19 PM, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

I may try both the mnemonic method and "concentration" method separately, maybe alternating days or weeks with each method?

I wouldn't do it weeks apart.

 

My visualisation method is a skill that you build up slowly over time.  You'd be better off doing a little bit every day rather than going weeks without doing it.

 

On 1/19/2021 at 5:19 PM, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

Sounds like your "concentration" method requires more effort upfront but will benefit in the long run

I think so, but with a sample size of 1, it's difficult to draw conclusions.

[StChris]

I'm a little late to the party, but here's mine.

 

In some ways, 2021 looks like being a very depressing year for me. I'm back in the UK, living with my parents, no job, and not much chance of any of that changing due to the constant covid lockdowns. But on the bright side, it's not often in life that you get to be "free" like this, with 24 hours a day to arrange exactly as you please. I have a decent amount of savings and am getting enough unemployment benefit from the government not to have to use any of it, so I don't have any financial stresses. I even get on well with my family, so it's actually quite nice being back home again after so many years. Last year wasn't too bad for me, despite everything, and 2021 could end up being a great year, so long as I use all this free time wisely. I could even see my future self in 2025, burdened with all kinds of familial and professional obligations, looking back on this period with a huge amount of nostalgia. The big question is, what would I need to do this year in order for it to be worth looking back on with fondness, rather than as a wasted year?

 

Main (and very general) goals for 2021:

 

1. Improve my Chinese (no surprise there!)

2. Become a competent computer programmer

3. Get in good physical shape

4. Become a very mediocre classical guitar player (an improvement from being an awful guitar player)

 

Rather than set specific goals or set up detailed routines for the whole year, going by my experience of previous years I think it's better to do that on a weekly or monthly basis instead. Fist I want ot take stock of where I am at the moment:

 

Chinese:

 

While I could be wrong, I really feel that I am well past the dreaded "intermediate plateau". Looking back at my posts on here, I can now see that I was in that position back in 2017. That year, I meticulously worked my way through both a TV show and a novel, noting every unknown piece of vocab and posting it on here. Being a long distance travelling cyclist, I would describe that period as akin to pedalling up a steep mountain road - lots of effort expended for seemingly very little progress. Continuing with that analogy, Now I feel that I'm on a gently descending slope, hopefully all the way to my final destination. Although I'm not living in China anymore, I'd say that I'm still engaged with Chinese in one way or another around 3-6 hours per day, whether that be watching various Chinese language youtube channels, reading books, watching movies etc. None of that really feels like "studying" anymore, even though I always come across new words and phrases whatever I watch or read. I used to feel exhausted after engaging with native materials, but I haven't felt like that in a long time. That said, while I could now just take my feet off the pedals and slowly glide along, I'll still reach my destination much more quickly if I keep peddling instead. I think regularly improving my writing would be the best way to do that.

 

Computer Programming:

 

I learnt some python, HTML and CSS around 3 years back, but stopped so that I could focus on Chinese. With my Chinese finally reaching a level I was pretty satisfied with, plus with me having more time on my hands due to the covid lockdowns, I got back into at in the later half of 2020. I wrote a few games in python, and ended the year by learning some C, C++ and Z80 assembly language. I also watched all the Harvard online introduction to computer science lectures (among others). Although I ended the year strong, for some reason I haven't been able to get back into the swing of things since I took a break over Christmas. I need to fix that ASAP.

 

Health and Exercise:

 

I got pretty fat during lockdown, lost a lot in the last three months of the year, then put a lot of it back on over Christmas! I'm back into my pre-Christmas routine (fasting every other day, plus a mixture of pilates, yoga, running and body-weight workouts on a daily basis), and things feel back on track. I hope to reach my ideal bodyweight/waist size by Easter, and then will relax on the fasting a little and focus on building muscle rather than losing fat.

 

Guitar:

 

I set myself a target of 15 minutes of practice per day last year, and I managed that. It was the first time since buying the guitar many years ago that I actually got in consistent daily practice. I'm still at a very basic level though, so want to increase the time I spend practicing to at least 1 hour a day. I'll continue with the classical pieces, and hopefully add some flamenco in later in the year.

[StChris]

As I said in my previous post, I want to set a general direction at the beginning of the year, and then tweak things on a weekly/monthly basis. I feel that introducing a single little positive change each week is the best way to go. Although it seems small, it's almost like compound interest in the way that it all adds up over time.

 

This is what I did in January:

 

Re-establishing positive habits that fell by the wayside during a lazy Christmas break:

- back to fasting every other day and daily exercise. I still haven't gotten below my pre-Xmas weight (crazy how far you can slip back with just 2 weeks of stuffing your face), but I'm close.

- back to reading 15-30 minutes of Chinese books a day before bed

  

New habits established during January (gradually, not all at once):

1. Restricted reading or watching the news to a single day per week. I think many people are reconsidering their relationship with social media and the 24 hour news cycle these days, and I'm no different. I now spend just one single morning a week (Sat or Sun) catching up on the news, and that's it. There were so many times, especially in the first week, where my fingers would just instinctively begin typing in some social media or news site, so it was tough, but it's already gotten much easier and I feel much better for it.

2. Restricted logging on to Youtube to every other day. Although my Youtube watching now consists of around 50% Chinese language channels, it can still be an unfocused distraction.

3. Started creating flashcard decks in Pleco again. I've got a little lazy last year, not really looking up new words. I guess that's a good sign in a way, that I've been able to just enjoy reading/listening to Chinese without having to be constantly looking up vocab. However, although the volume of Chinese I'm being exposed to is probably enough to lead to plenty of passive learning of vocab, I think drilling some new words is still useful. Looking at my January deck, I only have 140 cards, so I haven't gone crazy with it yet (started halfway through the month). I do a test every day.

 

Now on to goals for February:

 

New habits I want to start in February:

1. Do at least 15 minutes of computer programming per day. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get back into coding last month. I was enjoying myself in December (you don't willingly start learning assembly language if you don't like coding!), but I seem to have some weird mental block. I used the "only 15 minutes a day" trick last year when I was struggling with getting into guitar practice and regular exercise (15 minutes is such a short amount of time that you have no excuse for not doing it, but once you actually start doing it for 15 minutes, you normally end up doing it for longer anyway), and hopefully it'll help me get over my coding-related procrastination this month.

2. Increase daily Chinese book reading to an hour per day.

3. Write Chinese for at least 15 minutes a day (another weird mental block I need to overcome)

4. Learn to cook at least one new dish per week.

5. Cut sugar out of my diet (I really do have an addiction!). I'm going to give up sugar for Lent, so this'll start on the 17th.

[Tomsima]

16 minutes ago, StChris said:

a gently descending slope

 

I would argue 'a gentle incline' would be a better description - im definitely in the 逆水行舟，不进则退 boat, as it were.