Re: Stealing time and grappling with fickle devotion
Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 6:47 pm
Cantonese Progress Report 7/16/2018
Goal Pace
Start: Week 23 of the year = Project Week 1
End: Week 52 of the year = Project Week 30
Current: Week 29 of the year = Project Week 7
Target Pace: Finish in 25 weeks (allows for vacations, etc.)
Progress 24% of 25 weeks effort
I've pushed really hard the last few weeks and I'm feeling a little crispy around the edges, plus my Telecaster is giving me dirty looks from the corner due to neglect so I'm going to take one of my 5 "off" weeks this week and not bump my targets. I will still do my Anki reviews and the iTalki session I have scheduled, plus I'm sure I'll do some listening, but I'm generally going to take it easy.
Anki
Daily New: 20
Daily Reviews: 120-150
Daily Time: ~20m
Total Cards: ~5000 (~2500 words bidirectional)
Young: 903
Mature: 347
For the first time in a while, I _almost_ didn't do my Anki reviews yesterday... I was running around in the morning when I usually do them and honestly just wasn't into it. But right before bed time I managed to clear them, mostly out of fear of seeing the jump in due cards the next day.
Goal - 50 Journal entries
Progress: 12
EOW Target: 12
I still haven't done anything to utilize my corrections and won't do it this week either. Someday...
Goal - 25 hours of Chorusing, Shadowing or Reading Out Loud
Progress: 6:00
EOW Target: 6:00
Two items of note here,
1) I messed up the target in last week's report, that should have been 6:00.
2) It felt like the Chorusing I was doing was making me a little sloppy about correct tones and sounds in order to hit the speed I needed. So I changed this goal to include Reading Out Loud (ROL) which allows me to get some needed practice in perfecting my pronunciation of tones. After doing this a bit, I actually think the two things, Short Loop Chorusing (SLC) and Reading Out Loud (ROL), complement each other really well and also give me some variety in pronunciation practice.
With SLC I tended to loop the same phrase for 2-5 minutes in order to get it to the point I could say it smoothly, and it was great for noticing, understanding and practicing connected speech, i.e. how native speakers will truncate and morph things in full sentences. But sometimes, say 10-20% of the phrases were just too fast and complex for me to say them well and really hit all of the tones and sounds properly.
When I ROL I carefully re-read a phrase/sentence until I can say it fluidly and (to my ear) correctly in one go. This usually only takes 1-5 tries or less than a minute, unlike SLC's 2-5 minutes, so ROL allows me to practice a wider variety of content in the same amount of time. ROL allows me to carefully hit all the tones and sounds to my satisfaction, fixing all of my "known mistakes" and only leaving the "unknown mistakes", where as with full speed SLC I sometimes hit an upper limit where it is clear I'm not yet able to verbally perform even with a LOT of attempts. Yes, I can slow the audio for SLC, but interestingly it doesn't help that much unless I do it to the point of it being unnatural (>20% slower) which kind of kills the point.
In the end, I don't want/need to be able to speak like a native, I just want to speak clearly and be very easily understood so I'm not as concerned about speaking with speed and connected speech. Combining these two methods seems like a good path for now.
Goal - 25 iTalki lessons
Progress: 5
EOW Target: 6
Since I had a conflict last week I got behind in my iTalki sessions, but I'm doing my session this week and not moving up the goal, so in the end I'll be on track.
Goal - 100 hours of Listening
Total Progress: 27:00
EOW Target: 24:00
Intensive: 16:30
Extensive: 10:30
I'm way ahead in my listening and will likely get even more ahead this week. To me this is the most important of the goals and ironically the most enjoyable.
As much as I was sending love to the dual subtitles capability of "PotPlayer", it had an annoying tendency stop showing the subtitles after a few minutes which would correct itself if I skipped back a few seconds. This wasn't a big deal when I listened intensively as I did skip back regularly to re-listen to sentences. But I noticed that, honestly, I don't really need the English subs 99% of the time as I can read most SWC subs fairly easily. So I'm now back to using VLC with just SWC subs most of the time.
I've also collected a hair over 3k vocabulary entries from all my listening (only 2.5k of it is in Anki at the moment) and I'm starting to notice a bit of a slow down in new vocabulary items. Probably 50-75% of the things I look up now are already in my Google Sheet (I made it so duplicates highlight in red) or things I wouldn't put in there (place or organization names I don't care much about or technical vocab about things I don't have an enough interest in to Anki, e.g. "commodity futures").
In general, I can feel my motivation waning a bit which is something I always take seriously. I've been pushing hard the last few weeks and 'stealing time' a bit too egregiously. So I'm going to take it easy this week, play a little guitar, and next week try to find a slightly lighter pace.
Goal Pace
Start: Week 23 of the year = Project Week 1
End: Week 52 of the year = Project Week 30
Current: Week 29 of the year = Project Week 7
Target Pace: Finish in 25 weeks (allows for vacations, etc.)
Progress 24% of 25 weeks effort
I've pushed really hard the last few weeks and I'm feeling a little crispy around the edges, plus my Telecaster is giving me dirty looks from the corner due to neglect so I'm going to take one of my 5 "off" weeks this week and not bump my targets. I will still do my Anki reviews and the iTalki session I have scheduled, plus I'm sure I'll do some listening, but I'm generally going to take it easy.
Anki
Daily New: 20
Daily Reviews: 120-150
Daily Time: ~20m
Total Cards: ~5000 (~2500 words bidirectional)
Young: 903
Mature: 347
For the first time in a while, I _almost_ didn't do my Anki reviews yesterday... I was running around in the morning when I usually do them and honestly just wasn't into it. But right before bed time I managed to clear them, mostly out of fear of seeing the jump in due cards the next day.
Goal - 50 Journal entries
Progress: 12
EOW Target: 12
I still haven't done anything to utilize my corrections and won't do it this week either. Someday...
Goal - 25 hours of Chorusing, Shadowing or Reading Out Loud
Progress: 6:00
EOW Target: 6:00
Two items of note here,
1) I messed up the target in last week's report, that should have been 6:00.
2) It felt like the Chorusing I was doing was making me a little sloppy about correct tones and sounds in order to hit the speed I needed. So I changed this goal to include Reading Out Loud (ROL) which allows me to get some needed practice in perfecting my pronunciation of tones. After doing this a bit, I actually think the two things, Short Loop Chorusing (SLC) and Reading Out Loud (ROL), complement each other really well and also give me some variety in pronunciation practice.
With SLC I tended to loop the same phrase for 2-5 minutes in order to get it to the point I could say it smoothly, and it was great for noticing, understanding and practicing connected speech, i.e. how native speakers will truncate and morph things in full sentences. But sometimes, say 10-20% of the phrases were just too fast and complex for me to say them well and really hit all of the tones and sounds properly.
When I ROL I carefully re-read a phrase/sentence until I can say it fluidly and (to my ear) correctly in one go. This usually only takes 1-5 tries or less than a minute, unlike SLC's 2-5 minutes, so ROL allows me to practice a wider variety of content in the same amount of time. ROL allows me to carefully hit all the tones and sounds to my satisfaction, fixing all of my "known mistakes" and only leaving the "unknown mistakes", where as with full speed SLC I sometimes hit an upper limit where it is clear I'm not yet able to verbally perform even with a LOT of attempts. Yes, I can slow the audio for SLC, but interestingly it doesn't help that much unless I do it to the point of it being unnatural (>20% slower) which kind of kills the point.
In the end, I don't want/need to be able to speak like a native, I just want to speak clearly and be very easily understood so I'm not as concerned about speaking with speed and connected speech. Combining these two methods seems like a good path for now.
Goal - 25 iTalki lessons
Progress: 5
EOW Target: 6
Since I had a conflict last week I got behind in my iTalki sessions, but I'm doing my session this week and not moving up the goal, so in the end I'll be on track.
Goal - 100 hours of Listening
Total Progress: 27:00
EOW Target: 24:00
Intensive: 16:30
Extensive: 10:30
I'm way ahead in my listening and will likely get even more ahead this week. To me this is the most important of the goals and ironically the most enjoyable.
As much as I was sending love to the dual subtitles capability of "PotPlayer", it had an annoying tendency stop showing the subtitles after a few minutes which would correct itself if I skipped back a few seconds. This wasn't a big deal when I listened intensively as I did skip back regularly to re-listen to sentences. But I noticed that, honestly, I don't really need the English subs 99% of the time as I can read most SWC subs fairly easily. So I'm now back to using VLC with just SWC subs most of the time.
I've also collected a hair over 3k vocabulary entries from all my listening (only 2.5k of it is in Anki at the moment) and I'm starting to notice a bit of a slow down in new vocabulary items. Probably 50-75% of the things I look up now are already in my Google Sheet (I made it so duplicates highlight in red) or things I wouldn't put in there (place or organization names I don't care much about or technical vocab about things I don't have an enough interest in to Anki, e.g. "commodity futures").
In general, I can feel my motivation waning a bit which is something I always take seriously. I've been pushing hard the last few weeks and 'stealing time' a bit too egregiously. So I'm going to take it easy this week, play a little guitar, and next week try to find a slightly lighter pace.