I've decided to reorient myself a bit. So far, I thought that by going through my TY book and practising what I could, that I would make continual progress. But that has failed. Using things actively is difficult, as it takes me a while to come up with appropriate sentences, and either I don't get something I could say, or I miss the opportunity. My goal is not, paradoxically, to become an advanced user of Chinese - I have to be realistic about my own capabilities - but I do want to be able to speak and understand a limited amount of Mandarin, so I can communicate with sympathetic people directly around me. For this, I estimate an advanced beginner level of knowledge, 500-1000 words, should be enough. But I need to be able to use those words actively.
Anyhow, I had been trying to push basic knowledge of the language forward, but that's been getting harder and harder and quite dispiriting. If I look back at some of my posts here, the past few months have had little actual progress to report. A few days ago, I got hold of a HSK 1 reader - very simple stuff - and one little sentence popped out, something like "his health was not so good". Even though I knew the words and sentence form, it took a couple of passes to fully understand the sentence - more so, I also realised it was a useful kind of sentence, but not one I could spontaneously say myself.
As daily life consists of many repeatable scenarios, perhaps my strategy should better be to soak up as much of this basic level material as I can, reuse and recycle. Out of say 500 words, if I could read and hear tens of thousands of uses of those words, perhaps then I would have the basis to use them in my own speech. So, I'm retiring the TY book for now, and will begin a new consolidation plan:
- HSK 1 Reading and Listening by Yun Xian
- HSK 2 Reading and Listening by Yun Xian
- Mandarin Companion Breakthrough: Xiao Ming
- Mandarin Companion Level 1: Sherlock Holmes
- More Mandarin Companion/Graded Reader books (to be determined)