malach's log - Mandarin

[malach]

A new log, a fresh start. A focussed project!

So, a few changes here chez malach. In short, I am stopping my previous language studies and embarking on a new journey, to learn Mandarin. I'm not only stopping my previous studies, I'm removing (as far as possible) temptations to lose focus and revert to old habits. So I'm actually getting rid of many of my books (I made a post offering my language books last week, but I'm also doing this for other dead interests - my book shelves almost taunt me with reminders and 'let's have another go' whispers, and I want them to be quiet).

And I'm going to focus my efforts on Mandarin.

Hopeful Plan

What's the hope? What's the plan?

I'm hoping to get to some kind of spoken/listening ability over the next 12 months. I have various motivations for this, involving interacting with people around me (who will help with practice).

The plan revolves around completing the new Teach Yourself Complete Mandarin Chinese, which I received on the 9th December. I should certainly be able to 'read' this over the next 12 months, and probably even 'study' it - if I can 'learn', 'memorise' and actively 'use' even half of the book, I shall be very happy. In fact, that will probably be the best active set of skills I have ever achieved in a foreign language - so I'm being realistic, and tempering my expectations.

Apart from the book, I will tap through the three Memrise official courses - I like these, as they have a variety of speakers and cover various vocabulary and phrases. I have also started the Duolingo course, because it seems a good way to get familiar with typing in pinyin and reading the characters.

Once I get to some mid-point in the book, and hopefully also finished with Memrise and Duolingo, I will add in some listening practice using videos etc. But this I anticipate will be late in 2022.

Progress

I have started working through the book. I had been 'dabbling' in the language before December, had some free time, and still in the flush of early enthusiasm, so I made quick progress with the early units, and now I'm finishing off unit 6. I have all the vocabulary from units 1-5 down pat, but still working on unit 6 - this will get me to around 300 words.

I'm able to practise some spoken Chinese and hear various questions etc on a daily basis. So far, this is encouraging - communication happens - and is the base I plan to build on significantly during the next 12 months.

[malach]

Progress

• Mid-way through unit 7
• 500+ words completed on Memrise, Mandarin Chinese 1
• Daily conversations, with 4-5 sentence exchanges

I am doing some revision of the earlier units, writing out the sample sentences for each grammatical point and then saying/typing out several new examples of my own. All in pinyin for now.

Conversation is beginning to be more meaningful, as I internalise more of what I have learnt, and expand my vocabulary. I'm able to construct new sentences at times, which is fun. I now know clock times, and can discuss some food and activity choices, and conversations have slowly expanded to several sentences on each side. Each day, I'm introduced to new words as well, which mostly stay in my memory.

Duolingo practise has kind-of stalled, as the topics I've reached are still to come later in my book - I am a few units into the second section of the course. Also, although I started this to get a little familiarity with the keyboard, I have not studied characters specifically, and so the keyboard exercises are getting hard to complete from memory. This might be something to come back to, and use more as a revision aid, once I'm further along in the book.

Plan

I think I will have unit 8 of the book complete by the one-month anniversary of getting it, 9th January. That will cover one-third of the book, and the book has a review session at this point. I want to proceed slowly and make sure I have active control of as much of the material as possible, so I intend to pause there for a couple of weeks, and keep practising the vocabulary and sentences, especially in conversation. There's no sense in rushing through the book.

[malach]

Progress

• Finished Unit 8 - so one-third completed of TY book
• Finished Memrise Chinese 1 - 554 items
• Continuing daily conversations

The TY book is separated into thirds with a revision section between each one, so this is a natural place to pause and consolidate.

Plan

The plan now is to revise and use (in conversation) as much of the book material as possible. The book vocabulary at this point is about 400 terms, and I have learnt more from Memrise, plus I'm learning some more immediately useful words in conversation. With these and the sentence structures already covered, I should be able to express quite a few ideas.

So, let's see. I will try to resist the temptation to move forward in the book during January, but instead use and activate as much as I can of what I have already learnt. (This being a relatively busy time at work should help me in this...)

I will however continue with Memrise Chinese 2, but restrict my progress to 10 new items a day.

Two areas to focus on, during this consolidation phase, related to speaking:

• Tighten up my pronunciation, by learning the words more precisely with their tones
• More fluently recall and use words, phrases and sentences in daily life

[malach]

Progress

• 10 new words a day on Memrise Chinese 2, plus reviews of Chinese 1 and 2.
• Daily conversation practice.
• Review of TY book, units 1-8.
• Some more progress on Duolingo.

Today is one calendar month since the TY book arrived. Overall, I am happy with where I've reached:

• ~500 words/phrases which I recognise, and I can use many of these actively.
• Full understanding of dialogs in units 1-6 of TY book.
• I can sustain small conversations on simple daily activities, with at least one (very patient!) speaker.

I still plan to keep reviewing what I currently know, build up my vocabulary and continue practising various words/sentences up to February.

[malach]

Progress

Basically the same as last week:

• 10 new words a day on Memrise Chinese 2, plus reviews of Chinese 1 and 2.
• Daily conversation practice.
• Review of TY book, units 1-8.
• Some more progress on Duolingo.

I had a look to see what the HSK tests were like, and passed some mock HSK 1 tests without much difficulty... confirming the book's suggestion that the first third covers HSK 1 level.

More interestingly, I had some book vouchers about to expire and nothing much else to spend them on, so I bought some Mandarin Companion books. Yesterday I started with the 'breakthrough level' Xiao Ming, which is supposedly built around 150 characters. I managed to get through the first chapter, looking up less than I thought I would need to.

Memrise is giving me some useful vocabulary, although sometimes I don't believe it at first. I remember learning the word for 'barbecue' and thinking 'I'm not going to need this, why not ignore it?', and then somehow I got to use the word in a conversation! I'm currently in the 'Money' section of the second course, and that does contain several words I know I'll soon be able to use - like bank card, cheap, expensive, online shopping...

But I'm trying to put most of my effort into listening practice with the dialogs from the TY book. I've noticed in conversation that my brain often fails to recognise a word as something I'm familiar with.

[malach]

Well, finally I have got through the current work busy-ness! Now I can get back to language learning.

Progress

Not a lot in the way of progress to report, except that I have kept up with my Memrise reviews, and 10 new words a day. I am now over 65% of the way through the second Memrise Chinese course. It's a strange mix of words. Sometimes, really useful stuff comes up, and I get to try it out in day-to-day conversations - that's the stuff that really sticks. Other stuff, well, I continue listening to it because I think the listening practice must be helpful, and maybe in future it'll come into use.

I have some conversation practice each day, and I've been introduced to some new vocabulary and grammar structures directly. This has been very helpful. Now that I'm ready to restart with my book, I can see some of these things will come up in the next few chapters. I'm still at the stage where my brain does not register the sense of certain statements, even though I'm familiar with them - it's like there's a film of tissue between the sound and its meaning in my head, and something has to help break that film before I recognise what has been said. [Ah, and I realise I said exactly the same in my last update!]

Plan

So, the plan is to move into chapter 9 of my book now, and slowly make progress through the second third of the book. The material looks incredibly challenging at the moment - I would be incredibly impressed with myself if I can get half-way familiar with what is there. But I'm going to take my time. I keep reminding myself that I only want to have the book finished by the end of the year, which is 11 months away. So taking 4 months over the next 8 chapters would be fine. More important is that I can use and recognise what I have learnt.

I also want to read this Xiao Ming book, and 'master' those 150 words. I've already noticed that any kind of reading proficiency with Chinese seems to be greatly appreciated!

I have stopped using Duolingo. I started it as it helped me get familiar with the pinyin keyboard input. Now that I've got to grips with that and a few characters, I think I'll be better writing my own sentences into a text document, rather than trying to complete the Duolingo course. With Memrise, I have enough computer-based training to go through each day.

[malach]

Progress

• TY Book - in middle of chapter 9
• Memrise - nearly finished 'Mandarin Chinese 2', and 75 characters into 'First 500 characters in Mandarin Chinese'
• Ongoing daily conversation practice
• Finished first story in Mandarin Companion's Xiao Ming breakthrough-level book

I have started to make reading a larger part of my study. After several attempts, I completed the first story in Xiao Ming, and can now read it through without having to check words/characters. My next step is to try reading it aloud and see if my pronunciation is good enough for the story to be understood!

Memrise has proved quite useful. I'm still keeping to 10 new words a day in the main course, and I'm using the speed review option often on this and the first course. I'm managing to drop some of the phases into my conversation practice, and they seem to go down well.

Conversations are slowly growing in scope. Of course, I hear more interesting things than I say, but I'm understanding more, which is prompting people to say more to me. Some interactions are moving almost entirely into Mandarin, such as when we are going out, whether we drive or walk, simple activities, meals etc. It's both going slowly and also surprisingly quickly, when I think back a couple of months.

Plan

I plan to complete chapter 9 of the TY book in this coming week, and get the vocabulary and grammar learnt. I have lost a bit of momentum with the book study, and want to push forward.

I shall also finish the second Memrise Mandarin course, and start on the third one.

[malach]

Progress

• Completed TY Unit 9, now in middle of Unit 10
• Completed Memrise 'Mandarin Chinese 2', and started 'Mandarin Chinese 3'
• 135 items into Memrise 'First 500 characters in Mandarin Chinese'

Continuing to make steady progress. I'm probably averaging 3 hours a day of Chinese. Memrise statistics show a steady 30 minutes a day, and I must do at least an hour of conversation through the day. On top of this, I spend 1-2 hours with my textbook (audio or reading or exercises) - just listening through the first 10 units' conversations takes about an hour. On some (low-work ) days, I spend almost the whole day with the language.

I have been given a book aimed at teenagers, Easy Steps to Chinese (level 2). This contains mostly dialogs, and is at an ideal level for me. I understand the sentence structures, and mostly I have to learn some vocabulary. The book introduces a lot of useful day-to-day words. So I'm using this for reading practice, and to gain useful phrases.

A couple of days ago, I realised I was under-utilising my textbook's audio. I usually listen to all the audio sections when I first work through the chapter, but had only downloaded the conversations onto my Walkman, for repeated listening. While working through the vocabulary list, I remembered that the audio includes most of the vocabulary as a spoken list, so I've now also downloaded those files to listen to more often. I'm too fond of the printed word; there are many words I would claim to 'know' in the written form, but I find hard to recognise when spoken.

Plan

• I should finish TY Unit 10 this weekend.
• Continue with the Memrise courses - 10 words on 'Mandarin Chinese 3' and 5 characters on 'First 500 characters' per day
• Work on the audio from the textbook, so I can recognise all the vocabulary words

[malach]

Progress

• Now working on Chapters 11 & 12 of TY Chinese
• Listening to all conversations in Easy Steps to Chinese to learn all the vocabulary and sentence structures
• Ongoing Memrise revision and new words

I'm not sure if I'm consolidating or stalled, as my progress with TY Chinese slowed quite a bit. I'm aiming to get through chapters 11 and 12 before the 9th of April - an odd date, but that's 4 calendar months since I received the book, and I want to be 'half-way through'.

Instead, I spent some time on Easy Steps to Chinese, which has several practical conversations and familiar sentence structures. I've learnt some day-to-day vocabulary from that, which is proving useful.

In actual conversations, my ability to understand is increasing. In spoken form, I now know the names for a fair few objects and actions, but I'm still slow in putting these together into meaningful sentences. A simple subject-verb-object structure with the occasional time thrown in is working though!

Plan

I'm trying to emphasise listening and speaking skills as much as possible, although some reading does come in - not only does Memrise include a lot of characters to recognise, but also the books have the printed versions of the conversations, so it's useful to read them sometimes. I still recognise more in printed form than when heard.

• Finish Chapters 11 & 12 of TY Chinese
• Make sure I can recognise all the words from TY Chinese orally (up to chapter 12, that's 625 words)
• Repeat listening to dialogs from both books, so I can understand the sentences when spoken

[malach]

Last time I wrote that I wasn't sure if I was 'consolidating' or 'stalled'. I was definitely 'stalled'! Too many other things going on. But now I'm back on track.

Progress

I completed Chapters 11 and 12 of the TY book. This means I'm half-way through, and in 4 months. Can I manage the remaining half in 8 months? I'm not sure - now, it looks like a longer journey than it did in the beginning.

I finished all the vocabulary and dialogs in Easy Steps to Chinese 2. This had about 100 new words for me, and has lots of repetitiion of useful sentence structures. I can read the pinyin for these without much effort, and am working on understanding through pure listening.

I have done little on Memrise lately. I am behind on reviews for courses 1 and 2, and have not made as much progress in course 3 as I would have liked. I thought I would get through all the courses by June, but that seems unlikely. I will pick it up again on a daily basis - it's a nice addition to the book material.

Conversations are still proceeding almost daily. My speaking is still fragmented, but I'm using several phrases and pieces of vocabulary frequently. My listening is better, and I can understand many things that are said to me.

Plan

Looking at the dialogs and continuous prose passages in the TY book, I feel like, if I could speak that much of the language reasonably fluently, I would be more than happy. The challenge is turning the factual knowledge I currently have into active skills.

Next steps are to:

• Master the vocabulary and dialogs from Easy Steps to Chinese 2
• Use these words and phrases in conversation
• Start on chapter 13 of TY Chinese