Mandarin Language Log

[kealist]

Starting up a new language log after years. Still some familiar names around.

Previous log:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9414&PN=2

After becoming an ESL teacher for a while I somehow lost all my motivation for learning languages. It's been in the neighborhood of 10 years since I did almost anything. maybe 6 months ago I started using duolinguo for mandarin, which I have recently decided to stop since it isn't that useful.

Going to China this summer, so trying to get myself up to a real conversational level rather than a survival level.

I have mostly been focusing on listening and comprehension. I have a number of resources I am currently using

- A number of comprehensible input youtube mandarin channels. I can basically understand most of the beginner videos at this point without thinking much. Vocabulary is an issue. Some of the lower intermediate ones are ok as well.

-I've been doing Anki cards focusing on understanding audio. This includes the spoonfed Chinese deck, and an HSK sentence deck someone made on youtube (bianca.phd.in.progress) the TTS on the second is a little fast at times, but it's good

- I also have an Anki deck as I've been going through DeFrancis Beginning Chinese Reader. The book is awesome, but I'm trying to go audio first. The audio for this is a little hard to use because it's broken up into four tapes, not chapters. I broke up the first tape but haven't worked through the rest

- I have been listening to the audiobooks of the Mandarin Companion graded reader. So far this has been In Search of Hua Ma, Just Friends, Xiao Ming, Boy Sherlock, and The Misadventures of Zhou Haisheng. I listened to Emma from Level 1 yesterday and I think I could understand about 60% without reading or looking up vocabulary

- I listen to the Hippo Family Club - Hippo Goes Oversees audio in the background sometimes

- I got the Outlier Chinese Character course I am going to start working through. I have tried various Heisig ish methods previously. Recently worked through free part of HanziHero which is decent, but I think it's not quite as grounded in reality as I wish. I do like the DeFrancis books for learning characters, though I'm going to wait a little longer to work on reading.

[kealist]

Yesterday's Log

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

Finished listening to the audiobook of Emma. Did not read text, but it was first listen. I understood a lot of it this first time, but a number of vocab works are unfamiliar.

Started Mandarin Audiobook of The Country of the Blind (approximately 1.25 hours)

Worked through Unit 1 Lesson 1 of Outlier Chinese Character Course. I do feel like this will be helpful. I had a discussion with my wife who brought up 刷. Which she described the components being like the poop knife story on reddit. I looked it up in the outlier dictionary, and the knife is a corrupted component, but not sure she would believe me that it was originally a cloth.

I made full 5 minute long audio files of the tone pair files 。
from Outlier class and I'll see if I can work on my pronunciation of tone pairs. I'm sure I'm pretty fossilized in my problems.

Listened to Taiwanese twitch streamers while working.

I purchased most of the rest of the Mandarin Companion Readers in Traditional and all the available audiobooks.

Today's Log:

Finished The Country of the Blind (20min) First full listen, could understand and follow most of the story, though some parts there were too many unknown vocab words. I haven't looked at the book yet, but I'll read through the vocab list and see if anything makes sense.

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

Listened to the Ch2 of Harry Potter in Mandarin on youtube sort of interlinear video (30min)

Listened to In Search of Hua Ma (30 min）

Listened to the beginning of The Prince and the Pauper (30 min) This one is much harder to follow than the other Level 1 book. Definitely need to review the vocab from the book

Prepared audio of Outlier Chinese course for practice--notice no practice yet. What is wrong with me?

Listened to Twitch Streamers in background for a while (~`1.5 hours) not much gained from this I guess

[kealist]

2024-02-02

Listened to more of The Prince and the Pauper (30 minutes) I also read through the vocabulary list and words I didn't know were few, so I guess I just need to read a long a with the text to figure out what isn't processing quite right.

Completed Unit 1 Lesson 1 of Outlier Chinese Character

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

Listened to a bunch of CI Mandarin videos on youtube while working. Some of this is hit or miss depending on how much I am paying attention. I am putting a few channels I watch just in case others are curious. I think Comprehensible Chinese is very good although all of them are at different points. Its hard to find things that don't have hardcoded english subtitles The transition to intermediate vocabulary feels like there is a jump sometimes, depending on the topic.

- https://www.youtube.com/@ComprehensibleChinese
- https://www.youtube.com/@blablachinese7526
- https://www.youtube.com/@DANLIAOFreeToLearnChinese

Will be listening to another hour of mandarin audiobooks on my drive this evening. Probably will watch some videos or hopefully do some of the pronunciation practice

[kealist]

2024-02-03


Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

Added TTS audio to defrancis deck. This hopefully will help.

Did First lesson pronunciation drills (25 minutes)

Watched a couple videos of comprehensible input today. Too much family stuff to do any thing else today, so hour count is somewhat low

[kealist]

2024-02-04

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

Weekends are busy, so less time still today. I did the Anki stuff and was able to watch ~1hr of videos on youtube in Chinese today.

[kealist]

2024-02-05

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck (didn't totally finish)
Spoonfed deck

Started listening through Emma again (45 minutes) Definitely more things I am sure I didn't understand first time through, so I can tell my understanding is growing.

Listened to a bunch of youtube CI videos, probably about >1.5 hours worth.

I really just wish I knew more vocabulary. That is definitely going up through Anki reviews. I just need to be patient with that aspect.

[kealist]

2024-02-06

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck (caught up)
Spoonfed deck

I do have to say sometimes I really struggle parsing the TTS audio of the HSK deck. It does come out right after hearing it a few times of not picking out what is being said. It's kind of interesting to be able to listen to an audio clip and hear it totally different ways.

Finished Emma. Listened to a large portion of Country for the Blind. Definitely picking up more this time around.

listened to Twitch for a while. (1 hour)
Watched a bunch of CI videos on Youtube (1.5 hrs or so)

I think in general I keep at least 3 hours of day of input going. one hour is Anki and there is probably more. I have been able to communicate a bit better with in laws as I actually have the words I am trying to say.

[kealist]

2024-02-07

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

Watched two episodes of 爸爸去哪儿, which is probably the first (non-singing related) TV show I've seen that has interested me at all. (2+ hours)

Listened to the rest of 盲人国 (The Country of the Blind) , and 猴爪 (The Monkey's Paw) - 1.5+ hours

Watched a couple other CI videos as well. Haven't made progress on the character/pronunciation courses.

[kealist]

2024-02-08

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

I really didn't do too much today other than Anki due to family/ work busyness. Started on the Ransom of Red Chief, but only got through about 5 minutes, which I kind of zoned out on. I did 10 mins of 20 of Lesson 2 pronunciation drills

[kealist]

2024-02-09

Daily work Anki
Defrancis deck
HSK deck
Spoonfed deck

I turned off the new vocabulary in the DeFrancis deck. I am at I think Lesson 27 of 33, but I really just want to switch to using all the Illustrative sentences from each lesson rather than the straight vocabulary. Vocabulary in isolation just ends up being so hard for me to remember. The question is when I'm going to have time to type all those up. （delay a couple hours) Turns out the PDF I have of the book does have decentish OCR. I was able to copy the sentences & meanings into cards and generate the TTS. Sadly all the 天 got OCRed as 夫 and all the 沒 got OCRed as 投. I had to go back and fix the audio on some cards, but it's not too hard. Starting that...I have to say the sentences are pretty dense. Hopefully will get a little easier as I get used to them (Starting with lesson 22 sentences may be a little optimistic) Already tell I didn't learn the vocabulary as well as I could have, so that is a positive change.

I listened to Ransom of Red Chief (restarted), and about half an hour of Secret Garden audiobooks. Should be a good hour and a half

A few videos today but not much.