Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

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Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Wed Oct 28, 2020 8:34 am

The goal
The ultimate goal as far as this thread is concerned is to be able to pass the HSK 6 test in 2021 (aiming for December).
There will be a new HSK test coming out in 2021, with apparently more words required but fewer characters at the HSK 6 level. Either way HSK 6 is the goal.

It might sound petty, but all this started because someone at my school back in 2018 gave me a very condescending look and told me that "Chinese is very hard" when I told her I'd like to take 3 years to learn Chinese to a passable level. That's my motivation. It'll end up taking me a little more than 3 years if I reach my goal in December, but it'll still count to me. :)

Where I am now
Studying Chinese on and off for about 4 years now, I am at the cusp of HSK5 (the old one). While in Korea this summer I took an HSK 5 class in a 학원 that would supposedly teach you to pass the test. I did well in the class overall, and might have been able to pass with an extra week or so of intense study. I'm not a great test taker, and I don't have all the HSK 5 content down pat, so there is still a ways to go even to get to 5.
If I had to guess (based on an averaging of 3 online tests and my own conservative re-adjusting down) I would say I know about 1,400 characters. I have a good 2400 unique words in my Chinese Anki deck, but I doubt that's capturing all the vocab I know.

Where I am going
This deadline leaves me with not a lot of time to cover some considerable ground. So I've decided to not focus on the actual test until around July/August of next year. From July/August, I'll start actually looking at practice tests, chasing down and memorizing characters I don't know yet, ensuring I'm covering all the grammar I need, practice the writing and listening, etc. Until then I'll continue with 'normal' language study.

Formal study
I'm using the book 신공략 중국어 (고급편) (http://www.kyobobook.co.kr/product/detailViewKor.laf?barcode=9788959956524) which I got in Korea. It feels like just the right difficulty level. I've done 3 out of a total 14 lessons, and figure 1 lesson will take ~2 weeks of study, which should take me up to ~April of next year.
I'll be taking 3 hours/week of classes (Sat and Sun) online with a tutor, and we will be using this book.

I'm hoping to find Chinese classes at my level where I live (Bangkok), and if so, will try taking them to increase class hours.

Informal study
Because classes will be hard to schedule/come by for me, a lot will ride on my informal study. Basically, when engaging in the below activities, at some points, I'll be trying to extract words, grammatical points, sentences, etc. which I can then revise with Anki and use in talking to other people.
    -Chatting with native speakers on HelloTalk, both voice and
    -Watching shows (I just got into watching 爱情保卫战 on YouTube, it's great) and dramas (still looking for something fun to watch in the crime/detective genre here... suggestions welcome!)
    -Finding Chinese-speaking friends in Bangkok. This will be a big one if I can do it.

So I hope to update this blog over the next 14 months with some notes on my progress.
As a first step, by year's end I think I should be somewhere near 1,600 characters known by my approximate estimation, and have about 2,700 to 2,800 words in my Anki deck, as a rough measure. And I think future posts should also include much more 中文 as a form of writing practice as well :)
17 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Tue Dec 01, 2020 4:14 pm

第一个月算进行得还可以。
一共我只能输入75个生词。好消息是我找到了一个比较方便的中文课我可以直接去上。不好的是为了办个新的签证我离开了泰国。我在韩国首尔隔离两周。隔离以后才能办签证,会泰国去。当然在家隔离的这段时间我打算继续我的学习计划。反而我觉得应该会学的多因为我只在这儿等着。
我最怕的是我重新开始工作之后我没有时间练习中文。我一定要调整一下我在曼谷的生活节奏。
我也希望十二月的果实会比前一个月好!
剩下了13个月
0 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Thu Dec 31, 2020 6:18 am

又经过了一个月,过去了又一年。

2020年12月我学习中文得还不错哦!
从数字来看,我的Anki里面输入了差不多2,650个词。然后按照综合3个网上汉字水平考试,我认识不到1500 个汉字. 其实这比我的期望还低。 我觉得接下来的学习还要包括更多词汇学习。还有,我觉得通过扩大学习的范围我应该会遇到更多词儿,汉字等等。 还行吧,还有时间。

其他方面进行的还可以。我一共一个星期上四个小时的课。目前没办法增加上课时间。我快要开始新的工作了,暂时没那么多时间专注于语言。 可最终目标没变。我开始看我的第一本中文书,就是个自主书。这种类的书呢,他们经常用比较简单的方式来介绍抽象的事情。还有这种书一般来说会把同一样的内容重新写下来,只是改变一些表述方式。由于这些特点看自主书有助于学习语言。

So all in all a pretty good first 2 months, marked by some stability in my class taking (almost all online unfortunately but we do what we can). My progress in terms of vocabulary and characters is a little slower than I had hoped, though I'm never sure how much what I record or what I write down or what comes up in the test is a good reflection of what I know. I think that I will try to push up my plan to focus on the test to about June 2021 to give me a good 6 months of HSK-6 test-related material to study. I bought this great book in Korea for HSK 6 and just the thought of it is really motivating me to study!

In keeping with my personal planning pattern, the new year isn't really much of a milestone for me. My 'planning year' always starts in September, just after my birthday. So here is to a good first 2 months, and to more progress in the next 12.
3 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:39 pm

在泰国的温暖里过的又一个月,感觉过的真快。
可是我觉得没有什么可写的新内容。有一个我意识到的,算是个积累: 我学的生词量比较少。不管我制定什么目标,比如一个月以内学会多少多少词儿,我都会比计划学得少很多。我不确定是不是因为我的学习方式,态度等等。目前我觉得这不算很严重的问题。到现在我一共把2760个词儿输入在我的“暗记”软件里面。 还有一个我意识到的另外件事: 当我学习的时候,我太习惯了只写词,写字。我很少练习语法,很少写文章这类的学习。接下来我要更加强调这方面去学习。
So yes, an okay 3rd month here, marked by a slowdown in study due to my new job, but a couple of realizations about some less than useful study methods I have. The question will be how to break out of simply writing words and characters and considering this study. I've toyed with the idea of sentences (I even had a sentence deck in Anki for Chinese for a while) but that had fizzled out... I wonder if I should start writing a diary with a list of words or grammar points that I need to place in the text, or something similar.... To be seen!
My progress according to the word benchmark is rather meh, so is the character progress (I didnt even measure this month, but I doubt I'm far beyond 1,400 characters, and I doubt the means of measuring characters would be able to reflect such a small change with their error bars). But these are only peripheral measures of progress, I'm fine if I keep at my current rate of less than 150 words per month (as long as I do kick it up a notch in June when the HSK-6 focused study starts.

So objectives for me for February are to:
(1) Find a way to engage material differently (diary with specific vocab/grammar, sentence-based study, or working through textbook exercises)
(2) Reconnect with native speakers for casual conversation: Italki perhaps
(3) Keep hitting the points that I really enjoy: Prince of Tennis adaptation drama (奋斗吧,少年) etc.
3 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Mon Mar 15, 2021 2:31 pm

The update is late, and doesn't even have the benefit of some real substance to make it interesting.
In February I did rather little studying. My job work pace picked up, I started learning Thai (I just moved to Thailand. I have no particular interest in Thai, or will to learn it beyond the ~6 week survival class I'm currently taking--it'll be over by the end of April), and learning Thai in the evenings really messed with my will to then plunge into anything Chinese afterwards--too tired.
So yeah, I did a bit, some listening too (I found a real nice interesting show called 老师请回答 about counseling children and their parents through difficulties. Rather repetitive in content and vocab, which is very good for me, and interesting enough to keep watching. So that's the real victory of February I'd say.
The first half of March is much like February. However I'm set to start the next leg of my only-1-hour-a-week-but-crazy-over-compensated-for-with-homework 北语 course, which will last another 12 weeks.
I hope that this class, along with some more serious self-study at times (or maybe just doing all the homework from the class hahah), and with more watching of shows, goes well and ends all I need for HSK 5.

That will leave me around start/mid-June, so 6 months to go, and starting HSK 6 study, which is pretty much "on schedule".
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Leurre
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Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Wed Apr 14, 2021 3:48 pm

Few updates in the past month, but things are picking up a little bit. I've definitely not chosen my metrics for tracking progress well, because even as I feel as though I've progressed a little, my words recorded stand at a pathetic 2,900, or what I would have put down for myself by January of this year. Characters are but a little better: after testing on three different sites, averaging and conservatively estimating downwards, I end up with something like 1700-1800 characters. at Well, I guess that's what happens!
The good news is I've resumed my once-a-week class and that my Thai language commitment is down to a very soft 1.5 hours a week. I've been watching more TV shows in Chinese as well, which is good. Trying to keep positive and thinking about the things that I am doing, as opposed to all those things I am not doing.

For what its worth, I see that the new HSK-6 test will have many fewer 汉字 required (1800 it seems), but many more words required. I'm not thinking of really changing my study plans--I'll still use my big Korean book (it's majestic: pagodabook.com/pc/book/view?book_seq=3681) that teaches the old format HSK. Ok off to watch this new old timey police series I discovered a week ago!
1 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Sat May 29, 2021 4:06 am

So I managed to skip a month or so between updates. In the meantime I've finished with my Thai commitments (though very very little of Thai has stuck for me, I can feel it.... oh well!). Chinese has been progressing. I've really picked up the pace over the last couple of weeks now which has been great--and I've had one of my first mini-breakthroughs! It happened while I was looking for shows to watch one day. I went into a random one that I had never seen before (I forget exactly what it was now) and I found myself understanding (without Chinese subtitles, which appear on a lot of TV and are such a double edged sword)I'd say maybe 80%? I was getting almost everything, including hitting some words I had studied not that long prior, it was a great feeling.
My 1-day-a-week Chinese class comes to an end in 3 weeks. After that, I've assembled 2 main resources for structured study: (1) my awesome HSK-6 Pagoda Korean book and (2) Chinese Zero to Hero, which is a pretty good online resource that can give me some structure.

The plan from the second half of June onwards will be to first go through the Pagoda book, and really it'll be rote study and memorization for the test from here on out. Based on what I've seen thus far doing this kind of prep should be very good for my Chinese--most prep materials by HSK-6 are in Chinese, and while some of the grammar is apparently a little stilted it's still all bringing together everything a true 'intermediate' learner should know.

Given that starting from next update (end June) I'll be a lot more focused on my actual output and on my practice test results, speed, and keep a rough tally of the *new* words and characters that I learn, with the understanding on this latter point that I'm roughly at 1750 characters known and need to get to 2600 and change (or about 150 new characters a month).
2 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
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Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Sun Jul 04, 2021 12:06 pm

我两周前开始认真学习的六个月。这段时间我要暂时放弃一些以前学习中文的办法。以后的学习呢应该就是以及格汉语水平考试为主。我有时间的话打算持续看电视剧啊,电视节目什么的。可这不算学习了。
其实不到两周的期间我终于翻开了那本在韩国买的教科书。我估计最慢需要5个月才能完成课程。还得看我的情绪, 我到底拥有没有那样的恒心 :?

We shall see.

A first 1.5-2 weeks of self-study after having finished my 北语 course (highly recommended by the way, the quality of teaching is great).
I started studying the listening and reading sections. My first impression is that the listening section is crazy fast on first pass, nothing like HSK 5. And in both listening and reading, I'm running into the biggest barrier I am going to have: vocabulary. In one listening question, I did not know 10 out of the 37 words used (some repeated, but still). I'm really getting to see that it's all about the vocabulary here.
So I'll be trying out different things, but the first thing will be collecting sentences from these practice problems, and putting them in a Chinese-side-only Anki deck, so that I ensure I'm reading over them regularly and getting the content down. I figure I'll aim for 500 such sentences.

Overall this gives me the following plan:
Category--------Current-----Additional-----Additional (Monthly)
Characters------1,795-------------600--------------100
Words(Anki)----3,260------------1,000------------170
Sentences----------30--------------500---------------80

'Current' accounts for my progress to date, including the last 1.5-2 weeks of: 42 new characters, 114 new words, and 30 sentences. Characters will not get me to 2,600, but I know myself, there's no way I'm going to get there anyway. I might dedicate the last month to cramming 2-300 characters separately, depending on my mock test performance.

Hopefully I don't get tired of trying to capture all these study metrics. The main point remains making progress in the book on a regular basis (aiming for 4 times per week including longer study periods on the weekend).

The curious can see linked below an example of one part of the book, which goes through practice problems with a breakdown of meaning etc. (sorry for image orientation, too lazy to fix)
https://ibb.co/x6YtySB.
2 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
x 121

Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:34 pm

So first month of this HSK-6 study has all in all gone smoothly.
In terms of numbers for July, by my count I am somewhere around:
New words: 200
New characters: 65
Sentences: 80

I'm not surprised by the low performance in terms of characters; I know that this is something that under normal study circumstances I'm rather slow on. I managed to pick it up somewhat this month, that is a good sign. Perhaps I'll aim for a few characters more next month, ramping up. In terms fo actual studying I've been more or less keeping the pace I gave myself, although having the last week off from work certainly helped. I need to slip into more of a routine, hopefully 4 days of study per week. Let's see if I can improve on this consistency issue in August.

In the meantime, I took a first practice test today (just the listening and reading sections, not the writing section) to see where I was and what I need in order to progress.
I got 45/50 questions right on the listening section and 25/50 right on the reading section. This was great because it shows me right where I need to focus for the test! Especially reading the long passages and answering 3-5 questions about them is annoying to me. I straight up guessed some of the questions, not so much for lack of time but just for annoyance. But I do lack time on these--I was not able to get to the last 4 questions of the reading section for lack of time. One interesting thing I did find though is that while I certainly did not know all the words in these passages, it felt as though the vocabulary was not really holding me back as much as my speed of reading. It will of course make me go faster when I know more words.

So going forward, I'm keeping with the same book, except for now putting a full pause on the listening section and focusing on the reading sections. 'Regular' vocabulary is good, but I'll also try to focus in August on some common 成语 and expressions which seem to pop up a lot in the test. Hopefully August treats me even better than July.
3 x

Leurre
White Belt
Posts: 42
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:00 pm
Languages: Native: English, French
I speak: Korean, Spanish, Haitian Creole
I'm learning: Chinese, Japanese, Italian
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16219
x 121

Re: Leurre's No pressure but still. 中文

Postby Leurre » Sun Sep 05, 2021 12:12 pm

I wrote a long post for this and it got deleted, and now I really don't feel like writing anything. So short version:
New words: 150
New characters: 50 (that's great given the month I had)
Sentences: were annoying me so I stopped

I took a practice test again and scored: listening 33/50, reading 30/50. This is basically on the border of passing. One reading section though I scored 0/10 questions, taking up 12 minutes of my time. I'll try skipping that section in the next test and I figure I could gain as many as 5 questions by doing so. Listening is hard because I have to listen to a long text while looking at up to 5 different questions.
I'll try taking 2 tests in September.
Characters: I estimate I know between 1850 and 1900 now, but have realized I def. don't need to fully know all 2600 to pass this test, so I should be alright if I focus on the most used ones for the remaining ~200 characters that I will realistically be able to learn from now until December.
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