Previous log:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9414&PN=2
After becoming an ESL teacher for a while I somehow lost all my motivation for learning languages. It's been in the neighborhood of 10 years since I did almost anything. maybe 6 months ago I started using duolinguo for mandarin, which I have recently decided to stop since it isn't that useful.
Going to China this summer, so trying to get myself up to a real conversational level rather than a survival level.
I have mostly been focusing on listening and comprehension. I have a number of resources I am currently using
- - A number of comprehensible input youtube mandarin channels. I can basically understand most of the beginner videos at this point without thinking much. Vocabulary is an issue. Some of the lower intermediate ones are ok as well.
-I've been doing Anki cards focusing on understanding audio. This includes the spoonfed Chinese deck, and an HSK sentence deck someone made on youtube (bianca.phd.in.progress) the TTS on the second is a little fast at times, but it's good
- I also have an Anki deck as I've been going through DeFrancis Beginning Chinese Reader. The book is awesome, but I'm trying to go audio first. The audio for this is a little hard to use because it's broken up into four tapes, not chapters. I broke up the first tape but haven't worked through the rest
- I have been listening to the audiobooks of the Mandarin Companion graded reader. So far this has been In Search of Hua Ma, Just Friends, Xiao Ming, Boy Sherlock, and The Misadventures of Zhou Haisheng. I listened to Emma from Level 1 yesterday and I think I could understand about 60% without reading or looking up vocabulary
- I listen to the Hippo Family Club - Hippo Goes Oversees audio in the background sometimes
- I got the Outlier Chinese Character course I am going to start working through. I have tried various Heisig ish methods previously. Recently worked through free part of HanziHero which is decent, but I think it's not quite as grounded in reality as I wish. I do like the DeFrancis books for learning characters, though I'm going to wait a little longer to work on reading.