Kaha's log

[Kaha]

I'm going to study Chinese in 2021. I had started last year but after only 3 months I took a break for 10 months. Now I'm starting again. I've joined the 365 Day Challenge and will log my progress here.

Thanks to the local library I now have access to Pimsleur Mandarin 1, which I have not use on my first attempt. I finished lesson 3 today and will try to do one lesson every day. For learning hanzi I use Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi and Pleco. My current course book is Langenscheidt's Chinesisch mit System. I have not started using it yet. When I'm done with Langescheidt or Pimsleur I'll start using Assimil again. I had finished the first book last year and don't intend to repeat those lessons. But I'll listen to every lesson to make sure that I understand them.

There is one app I found really useful: DuChinese. It's a collection of short stories that all have audio, translation and optional pinyin. The stories are browsable by level and unknown words can be converted into flashcards or linked to Pleco. I intend to use this as my main reading resource for the year.

I'm also dabbling around with FluentU but I'm not sure if this is helpful at this stage. I started the trial yesterday and have 14 days to decide if I really want to use this.

[Kaha]

My long weekend was not as productive as I had hoped for, but I managed to study at least one hour every day in addition to at least one daily session of Pimsleur. FluentU did not make it. The beginner stuff was not bad but I think there are better ways to spend my time.

The course from Langenscheidt is very different from Assimil. There are only 15 lessons each with a rather long dialog without translation but with a vocabulary list. Then there are several long grammar explanations followed by exercises. I only skimmed the first lesson because there was nothing new for me (except for some uninteresting words). But working through lesson 2 will take a bit longer.

[Kaha]

Last week was not as productive as I had planned. I spent at least 45 minutes every day with Chinese, used each of my resources at least twice and finished some lessons and chapters. But somehow I'm not too impressed with my progress. I got sidetracked by interesting looking characters that were composed of nice unknowns which led to interesting words and weird grammatical structures that were explained with sentences that included interesting characters. And so on and so on. I started with good intentions, had fun and there was Chinese involved.

I'll try to be a bit more focused in this week.