malach's log - Mandarin

[malach]

Progress

Well, it's been a long while since I was here. Language learning has been a side activity for many months, but fortunately doing YoyoChinese has been perfect, as I've kept up with the daily schedule and here I am, just finished unit 3 and the half-way point of Intermediate Conversational Chinese. I can't say I've made substantial progress, although I do use and understand a certain amount of 'daily' Mandarin. The course does need a lot of reviews to master the material, which I don't do enough of.

It's summer, so more spare time. And I've decided to make a serious attempt at mastering the basics, which means complete my TY Complete Mandarin Chinese book. I have about 9 chapters outstanding of that, apart from reviewing the earlier parts. The motivation is that I'll regularly be interacting with mostly (or solely) Mandarin-speaking people for the foreseeable future, and I do want to be able to meaningfully interact. So, my natural laziness has to be overcome.

(Oh, I did earlier mention a visit by mother-in-law. Unfortunately, this has been postponed - some kid crashed into her while racing to school on his electric bike, and broke most of her ribs. Somehow, she survived, but summer plans are still a bit uncertain.)

Plan

The plan is four-fold, two learning activities and two demonstration activities:

• Finish Intermediate Conversational Chinese - along with sufficient reviews to have a good grasp of the material
• Finish TY Complete Mandarin Chinese
• Read the four Mandarin Companion books that I own (up to level 2, 450 characters)
• Externally validate progress by passing the sample HSK 3 tests on Mandarin Bean.

I plan to complete by the end of August 2023 - summer plans permitting.

[malach]

Progress

This last week has been the first in a long time that I have done a serious amount of language study - around 2-3 hours each day.

With YoyoChinese, I have continued the daily lessons from the Intermediate course. I have also stepped up the reviews of the flashcards from the Beginner level course - most of these are relatively easy for me to recognise now, straight from the audio. I also started to go through the Grammar series of lessons - I think it's mostly a collection of the grammar-topics from the conversation courses, as I recognise the ones I have watched so far, but review is always helpful.

With TY Complete, I have reviewed every conversation and reading passage in the first 12 units. Although I had worked through this before, there were many words I had forgotten. I'm trying to improve my listening comprehension - if I follow along while looking at the pinyin, or even the Chinese characters, my understanding is nearly 100%, but audio only and I seem to get lost with the later chapters. (Conversely also, I don't understand everything when I read Chinese characters without audio.) I shall slow the pace down now, and aim for about one unit a week, pacing myself to finish in the last week of August. My aim is to understand the audio recordings, without needing the text. If I can also understand them by reading from the printed page, that will be a bonus.

Plan

Looking forward, it seems I will be free to continue this pace for a couple of months at least - not sure about August at the moment. Even after one intensive study week, I can feel the language "bubbling away" in my mind - words and phrases keep occurring to me, and more is making it out in the form of coherent speech. I don't think I need to force speaking - it will come naturally as I absorb more of the materials that I'm using.

[malach]

Progress

I'm happy to say I'm two weeks into this self-declared "intensive" period, and in the second week I again managed over 2 hours per day of study.

YoyoChinese materials have been continued daily, according to the Intermediate schedule, with more reviews. I've also completed most of the flashcards from the beginner course.

TY Complete is now at 14 units completed. The listening sections, unlike YoyoChinese, are in the minutes, which is more challenging but certainly more realistic. I need to keep reviewing the chapters, but I'm gradually absorbing those words and phrases.

Plan

I have 10 weeks remaining of YoyoChinese and 10 units remaining of TY Complete, so I will pace the book as one unit per week, finishing both together in a tidy fashion. Simply reviewing existing materials may not be enough to fill my time, so I may also look at strategies to "activate" what I've absorbed - perhaps paraphrasing the dialogs/presentations and/or saying or writing my own versions. Or just reading/listening to other stuff.

It still looks like I'll be free to continue at this pace until at least the end of July.

[malach]

Progress

A third successful week of relatively intense study. I completed the necessary schedule of YoyoChinese and Unit 15 of TY Complete. Listened over and over to units 9-14 during the week. Still some parts elude me when listening only. But my reading ability has improved.

Plan

Continuing the same path. Next week should see the end of Unit 16 and so complete the second third of the TY Complete book, which has taken longer than originally hoped.

I've also started to put the vocabulary from TY Complete into a Memrise course. I intend to drill the words, and try to be comfortably familiar with the words in the book - that's 1200 by my count, 1500 according to the front of the book!

I'm not sure how this will work out, but I want to become "familiar" with the material in the book by the end of August, i.e. more-or-less understand the dialogs/presentations when heard and read. And then spend a few months working on the speaking/writing exercises to turn all this into active knowledge before the end of the year. Active speaking will be enforced by the arrival of mother-in-law, who can only speak Mandarin: she's due to arrive now in August. Although I use some Mandarin phrases here and there during the day, it's not the same as having to use the language to communicate, without being able to fall back on English.

[malach]

Progress

I have kept to my planned material this week. So I'm now finished with level 4 of YoyoChinese Intermediate and also part 2 of TY Complete!

I also read (again) one of the breakthrough Mandarin Companion books. This is the 150-character level book. And this time, I more-or-less read it through without having to look up more than a few words. I'm still hesitant with some of the characters, but I was happy not only to have understood it, but also I can recognise the grammatical structures better now.

Plan

For the next week, I'll start the last third of the TY Complete book, which will probably represent a step-up in difficulty. Luckily, for the next few weeks, I will have more study time available.

I will also continue to work on reading, and perhaps begin to tackle the level 1 Mandarin Companion book I have, which is at the 300-character level.

[malach]

I now have almost three weeks with extra study time, and I'm planning to use most of it for language learning. I'll continue with my plan, but augment it a bit. The basic idea is more input, through both listening and reading.

Currently, the two I've started with are:

• Slow and Clear Chinese, on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@immersivechinese
• and the stories on Mandarin Bean at https://mandarinbean.com/

I'm going through each video/story a few times each, to work out what everything means. Especially with Mandarin Bean, I try to complete one read through and one listen through with full understanding - I'm going to work through a good chunk of the ~100 HSK 2 stories here. The issue in both does not seem to be the characters, sentence structures, or even recognising the clear speech, but vocabulary.

I'm also reading my Mandarin Companion books, and found some characters I did not recognise. So I've ordered a dictionary, and will soon learn how to look up words using the "radical index".

For vocabulary, I'm not going to do anything special for the additional input sources - the idea is to see what I already know in new contexts, and absorb anything new as I can. But I am trying to learn the vocabulary from my two courses more thoroughly - that's YoyoChinese and TY Complete. I want to feel that I'm comfortably recognising in the range of 1000-1500 words by the end of August.

[malach]

My Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary arrived a couple of days ago, and I've been experimenting with looking up characters in the radical index. Today I managed to look up 伟德 (from the snooker!) - and the only reason I can type those characters in here is that I successfully found them in the dictionary. A small first step!

[malach]

Progress

Another week of study work with YoyoChinese. Every now and then, the course surprises me with a particularly relevant video. This week, up came a video explaining the different words for "help" and where/how to use them, which was something that I was wondering after finding a new variant in my reading.

I've been reviewing the Beginner Conversational course, and it all seems pretty clear. Lots of useful sentences which I still need to convert into production-ready knowledge. Some vocabulary I need to revise, but not much.

I have gone through the planned Unit 17 of TY Complete, but need to spend some more time on it to be completely familiar with the text and audio.

And, as I wrote a few days ago, I have filled up some extra time with more input-based activities. I realised that I can manage HSK 3 level material on Mandarin Bean almost as well as the HSK 2 level. The words I'm mostly struggling with in each case are at higher levels - i.e. from HSK 5 or 6, according to the popup box.

Plan

All seems to be on track for now. Continuing with YoyoChinese and the TY Complete book, supplemented by as much listening/reading as I have time for.

After August, when I should have finished the reading/listening material from the TY Complete book, I shall probably focus more on reading from more sources. I'm thinking thechairmansbao will be useful, alongside some printed graded readers.

[malach]

Progress

Today marks the half-way point of my 12-week summer study programme! Six weeks of solid work and the improvement is clear.

Most importantly, I got back into reading Chinese, which I had neglected for a while whilst simply following YoyoChinese as an audio course. And last night I comfortably read through a breakthrough Mandarin Companion book, and, with some vocabulary look up, part of a level 1 book. So I feel I can bring myself to level 2 over the next 6 weeks. Also, I have read over 30 of the Mandarin Bean HSK 2 level stories which, apart from some vocabulary lookup, are quite effective for extensive reading. Although I can 'cope with' the HSK 3 level, there is a larger proportion of new words, so I'm staying down a level to strengthen my knowledge of the basics.

Over the past week, I finished watching all 26 of the Slow and Clear Chinese videos twice over - there's just under 3 hours of material there. I've had to use the translations to cover a few unfamiliar words, but otherwise all is quite understandable - meaning I can understand the sentence structures. For a decent proportion of these, I can understand the audio alone at "normal speed", and most of it at "slow speed". But I do want to go through these once or twice more, to become familiar with the new vocabulary.

Finished Unit 18 of the TY Complete book. I was already familiar with much of the grammar, as it was covered in YoyoChinese - i.e. resultative complements. The two courses have complemented each other quite well.

Plan

The next steps are:

• Unit 19 of TY Complete is next. Unit 17 had lots of academic terms in it - PhD student, Undergraduate, etc. Unit 18 added to that with descriptions of working conditions and links with health. Unit 19 is more about banks, paperwork, accounts, etc.
  
• Continue with Level 5 of YoyoChinese.
  
• Listen again to Slow and Clear Chinese.
  
• Finish the level 1 book of Mandarin Companion
  
• Read/listen to another 40-50 stories on Mandarin Bean

[malach]

Progress

I had another reasonably good week. Something new has been Chinese TV - I've spent a few hours this week watching/listening with my dictionary beside me. Some of the programs have subtitles on, and I can spot a few characters along with the speech. I found a documentary, where the speaker was particularly clear, and I managed to pick up a few new words. The title was given, in the English programme, as "hexicorridor", and I was wondering what this "hex-i" meant. When I saw the program, the written characters made it clear: not "hex-i" but "he-xi", for west river, along with the translation of "corridor"!

Progress with YoyoChinese has continued, as per schedule with the Intermediate Conversation videos. I've also completed more of the grammar videos, which coincidentally answered some questions I had about sentences that I had read recently.

Progress with TY Complete has slowed down, as the material in the last third is getting very hard. I thought I would be able to use the translation and vocabulary to get an "idea" of the meaning, and then keep listening/reading, but the density of new stuff is high. So I have to slow down with this. (I'm a lazy learner - my desire to struggle with this is quite low.)

I did finish the Level 1 Mandarin Companion book. There are some gaps, and I'll go back to the book. But I have another book at this level, and I'll go through that one too before revisiting. I did do a chapter of a Level 2 book, but this is an uncomfortable challenge at present.

I read and listened to over 40 of the Mandarin Bean HSK 2 level stories.

Reviewed some of the Slow and Clear videos. I don't do too badly with the "normal speed" audio.

My vocabulary drills on Memrise have been helpful I think. I have completed courses on HSK 1-3 which I keep reviewing. Levels 1 and 2 I have virtually memorised, and I know in most cases where the tones should be. Level 3 has a lot of words that I've only been seeing in context recently, so I'm slowly getting more familiar with them. I'm also still working on my own course for TY Complete - about 500 words there now.

Plan

Things are about to change, and life will get quite busy, so I'm not sure I'll be able to continue with my planned 12 weeks of intensive studies. I certainly won't be finishing the TY Complete book just yet. As a minimum, I shall try to stick with three things: YoyoChinese, the graded readers and Memrise reviews. The two on-line activities take about 30 minutes, and a book can be picked up whenever I have some free time.

Listening and speaking is about to come front-and-centre though, with my monolingual mother-in-law arriving next week to stay for a few months. This is one of the main reasons I want to learn this language, to communicate with non-English speaking family members, so it's time to "live the dream".