Learning to speak Mandarin Chinese log...

[80Percent]

Saturday: Mid 3rd week
Still going. Still on schedule, still studying 1-2 hours every single day. Starting to figure out what does and does not work for me.

What doesn’t work - Going from resource to resource (currently using 3 or 4) each one having a new set of vocab and grammar points. = overwhelming and i’m getting a little of this and that instead of really internalizing anything really well. Background, i score very high on clinical ADD tests, so this is pretty common for me in everything. The struggle is real y’all!

Solution: Focus on one grammar point a day even if other resources want something else from me. This is difficult cuz i want to learn them all but i’m breaking up my resources per day as well so this will help. Plan is to visit that grammar point ALLLLLL day. Randomly thinking of sentences and trying to say them outloud.

What is (kinda) working for me: 3 harder new words a day and no more for now. (Some are easy I don’t add those). I need the words to stick and so far it’s the only way.. Saying them over and over again. Finding sentences online and writing them out (still pinyin only, *sigh*) and making up my own sentences with them and saying those sentences out loud. A lot of work for 3 words! Sheesh! Like i said, the ADD struggle is real. *smh*. Working on a new system for this.

Really working for me: Having set a detailed study schedule. This way i just look at the schedule and go do that thing. No trying to figure out what to study when it’s time to study which leads me to hopping all around again.

For example:
Sunday: 2 hours at home:
IC Textbook for 60 mins (Extend if needed).
IC Audio Dialog for 15 mins.
30 mins grammar point practice.
SRS 15 mins?

This keeps me on track. I feel like if i keep my head down and follow this schedule and any adjustments pretty closely i will improve, i just have to keep it up. The negatives to this (less flexibility) still better than trying to figure out what to do next by a long shot. Loving it. A load off my brain.

Working for me: I’ve been sending voice wechat msgs to my boyfriend in Chinese and he corrects me. Both actions are helpful. I’ll keep this up. He said i’m improving!

Also loving my textbook. This type of structure really works for me.

And today I spent time with my boyfriend’s parents and took his dad to my eyeglass store in Chinatown. I was able to say in Chinese “I’d like to introduce you to my boyfriend’s parents… (etc)....Tom needs new glasses.” Was also able to order food at the restaurant we went to. So that was cool. Definitely happy with my progress.

[80Percent]

End of Week 3
Still enjoying and looking forward to every lesson. This week i really enjoyed everything i learned. Frustrating to still not have enough vocab to work with BUT i accept that this is the way it is for now and am considering doing a strictly vocab week to deal with that. We'll see. Still on track with action plan.

Started looking at characters, now i remember why i originally opted not to learn them, booo, no likey, but i don’t want to be totally illiterate b/c after a while resources that i need in order to learn to speak use characters. Going to take this really really easy or there’s a very good chance i give up on characters totally and risk no longer loving Mandarin. Might do something fun like get a fountain pen or something. We shall see.

Spent a little time on this thing called reviewing! . Definitely useful.

Must remember to take better notes. My notes are all over the place and that makes review harder than it needs to be.

Reducing CPod 1 per week vs. 2 so i can have more time with my textbook.

Goals...Results:
Finish chapters 4-6 of IC L1P1. 2/3rds done. Just started chapter 6. That’s okay. Rather have a good foundation than a spotty one.
Meet up with study partner – Nope. She had to change dates this week, we meet tmrw.
Finish 2 ChinesePod lessons using Ari method. Check!
Keep to 9 hour a week /7 day schedule - Check.
Have and have learn 15 new flashcards - Check.

Goals for next week
Finish 2 more chapters of IC L1P1
Meet up with study partner
Finish 1 ChinesePod lessons using Ari method
Keep to 9 hour a week/6-7 day schedule
Have 15 new flashcards
Learn (to recognize) 2-5 radicals

[80Percent]

End Week 4:
Oh boy. Still going, still studying every day. Still trying to figure out how to best do this so I’m making it up as I go along.

1st or 2nd week of working on characters, I can recognize maybe 15. Not loving it yet but hoping after i find the right materials I start really getting into it. I am enjoying looking at written materials and picking out what i know, so there’s still a chance I’ll make it through this.

One thing i do love about learning characters is being able to text in them. I was able to text my bf that "i bought 2 dresses" and "I have to go home today to vote" "I'll go to my house after work before i go to your house" etc, b/c as long as it’s multiple choice, i can definitely do this. We shall see what the future brings here.

The cool thing is since I started my 3 month self-study program I’ve added 100 SRS cards so i know that i know at least 100 more words since i started. That is really cool. Memory is not my best strength so i’m super happy with the new 100. And had i not started this 13 week program i wouldn’t have those words under my belt.

What I’ve noticed is that i’m still lacking vocabulary to make up sample sentences for new grammar points so what i may do next week is no textbook grammar points and just a sh*t-ton of vocab and character work.

The only thing that frustrates me is time. Working 45 hours a week and watching 2 dogs, helping family, etc, doesn’t make the 2 hours a day that simple. Still working on this.

I’ve bumped up my study time a hair because i know i won’t have so much time after September, trying to put a chunk under my belt while i can. Once i have more under my belt, talking will be easier and i can get more practice that way when i have to lay off the books a bit. So i went from a schedule of 9 hours a week to 12-14. Happy with that choice. Boyfriend thinks i’m gonna burn out, we shall see.

4th week Goals to results
Finish 2 more chapters of IC L1P1: ½ Done. Finished 1. Methinks 1 a week is all i can handle.
Meet up with study partner: Nope. She cancelled again. People are just not reliable.
Finish 1 ChinesePod lesson (Ari method): Check.
Keep to 9 hour a week/6-7 day schedule: Check. Probably 12-14 hours.
Have 15 new flashcards: Check.

Goals for week 5
Finish Chapter 7 of Integrated Chinese
Be able to recognize and draw 10 radicals
Continue Character work, be able to recognize 10 more characters
Complete 1 Chinese Pod lesson
Meet up with Study partner if she can follow through.
See if I can keep up the 12 hours a week

[80Percent]

Almost the end of week 5. It’s funny, I can’t seem to stop studying. I spent 5 hours on Saturday and 5 hours on Sunday doing textbook, watching a learning Chinese tv show (CCTV’s “Growing Up With Chinese”), working on radicals, etc. And still having a great time doing it.

Was hoping to make a bigger bump in vocabulary than I did this week but at the same time I decided to deconstruct my study plan and do whatever my heart desires. I did so because im still catching up on grammar points and anytime I go further in app or book I have to many competing points to be learned.

My heart seemed to desire to watch the show I mentioned, great show except the audio is hard to hear bc it’s old I think. I’m on episode 21 tho amd always enjoy the radical explanations and a couple cultural points. I will say it’s much easier to understand than when I tried to watch it in my curious years.

Characters are going okay, found a book I like so far: “Reading and Writing Chinese”, published by Tuttle. Very enjoyable book. Thankful for NYPL ebook program for sure.

Oh, and downloaded 5 new apps to help with character work, currently using all of them deleting the ones I find less useful. Mondly says I spent 6 hours and know 500 words. Lol. Don’t even know what to think of that.

Having a good time.

[80Percent]

End of week 5, Goals to results:
Finish Chapter 7 of Integrated Chinese. Check.
Be able to recognize and draw 10 radicals. Well... i think i forgot to do this part. lol. Will do it today.
Continue Character work, be able to recognize 10 more characters. Check. Probably recognize 15-20 now.
Complete 1 Chinese Pod lesson. Check. But did my listening lessons through Chinese Skill this week.
See if I can keep up the 12 hours a week. Check. Around 18 hours this week.
15 more SRS cards. Check. I probably learned 25 words this week.

Goals for week 6.
Finish Chapter 8 of textbook? maybe not.
Be able to recognize and draw 5 more radicals.
Continue Character work, maybe 1-2 full study periods, be able to recognize 10 more characters.
Complete 1-2 listening lessons
Study 12 hours
15 more SRS cards.

Funny part is I'm at an impasse with all my materials, just had to stop my all my apps, they are all delivering too much information, which means all apps and book lessons are off. Right now it's going to be a focus on vocabulary and characters while my brain catches up to the grammar I've taken in so far. So finishing Chapter 8 could definitely not happen. lol.

[80Percent]

Close to the end of week 6. Almost halfway through my 3 month program. Cooooool. And lots to look forward to, like the forum's 6 week challenge that starts in August. And my Mandarin II class will start late Sept/early October. There are actually 2 classes, Mandarin II (using IC L1P2 textbook) and Mandarin III (uses IC L2P1 textbook). The MIII class is more speaking than anything and I might be taking that class as well. I spoke with the teacher and she said its okay if i'm not as advanced as everyone else. The class is mostly taught in Chinese though so that would be helpful, interesting and fun, especially if I can get my ABC boyfriend to attend with me, and i think he's down, that way if i don't understand what she's saying he can fill me in. ;D. Taking both classes would though mean 3 hours 45 mins straight on Saturday but i'm so down. Not the easiest for my ADD self but I'll just have to eat a healthy breakfast and do my best. Both classes are 1x/week for 8 months or something crazy like that. So pysched. that will be about 100 classroom hours to add to all the self studying i'll be doing that year.

I’ve done a couple things different this week. I've completely ignored my learning schedule and have been doing character and vocab week while i put my resources on hold until previous grammar and vocab is baked in a bit more.

Since I began this program 6 weeks ago I've downloaded and tried probably 15-20 apps and found amazing ones, really cool. I love it when they have a nice design, it’s such a pleasure to use modern looking apps like Mondly, Brainscape and Clever Deck. Feels high end. lol. And i'm a big fan of tech design/aesthetic in general.

Characters. Been looking through “Reading and Writing Chinese” and using Brainscape for my radicals. Brainscape for radicals has been excellent and not only that i totally got super in to characters on Sunday, spent 3 hours joyfully learning to write them. I didn't want to stop but made myself b/c too much in would mean i would be less likely to retain/absorb my 3 hours of work. Totally totally psyched that i got into it b/c i fought tooth and nail to not learn characters because i just didn’t like to learn them. But there’s hope for me!!!!! I’m still a little mad cuz wouldn't it be nice if i didn't have to learn them, but i know my understanding of the language will not be the same without them. The benefit to learning them has already shown itself to me so i will continue. I really love that after i got into the radicals writing the characters was so much damn easier than how most beginner materials do, which is learn all the beginner words first. Anyway, all good there.

Also decided that i’m gonna get into HSK/HSKK. Not sure when but i think i'll look into HSK2 and HSKK Intermediate (the spoken/listening version equivalent to HSK 3.5) in my future, whenever i think i can pass.

Oh, and even though my goals check in is on Wednesday with my friend i might reroute my end and beginning of week to the weekend, the Wednesday end of week is distracting, doesn't feel right to start a week on a Thursday. . I think after this Wednesday i'll switch to week ends on Sunday.

[80Percent]

Just 1 more week and i'll be past the halfway point. Man, i am exhausted, but no less motivated.

Goals to results for week 6:
Finish Chapter 8 of textbook: Check.
Add and learn 15 more SRS cards. Check.
Character work: Check! I can probably recognize 25+ now
Radical work: Figured it out, very helpful. Check.
Listening work: Barely.
Continue 12 hours+ a week. Check.

Week 7 goals:
Chapter 9
Continue Character work, be able to recognize 15 more characters
15 more SRS cards (in addition to 15 characters)
A couple short listening lessons
Continue 12 hours+ a week

And i registered for HSK II! I know it's said to be too easy to be worth it and my original plan was to go for HSKK Intermediate the oral test mid next year (900 words + grammar) but wanting to stay motivated in character work I registered for the HSK II written for December 2nd. That means i have 144 days to memorize 300 characters. 100% doable for sure but i just want to make sure i stick to it. Pretty psyched for it, sorta solidifies my commitment to characters and to Mandarin learning in general. I have some weird mental block that keeps me from believing i might be able to be speak Chinese someday, so i don't yet have the confidence that i'll stick this through to the end but i think stuff like this will help.

[80Percent]

Midweek 7? end of week 7? Dunno. Was gonna move my end of week to Sunday from Wednesday but the 6 week Challenge starts on a Wednesday. Hmmm. Anyway, okay, this'll be mid-week 7 then.

Finished Chapter 9 and made a change to my plan. I was going to, after the next and last chapter, move on to Level 1 Part 2, but now i plan on rewinding again. I'm going to grab/learn the characters from all the vocab in the book so that when my class starts with Level 1 part 2 in October i'll be able to follow the textbook in characters vs pinyin. Which will make the class even better and more productive.

But my study week has been good. A good amount of hours and lots of characters and now i'm having fun with characters, which is great. My American-born Chinese boyfriend is very surprised when i read HSK 1 readers to him. . He sorta knows a couple characters but i made him a copy of the same workbook as my own and now he's gonna learn characters too. And I have the perfect amount of time between now and my class in October.

Also been cruising through lots of books online related to characters and chinese language in general whether it's text or workbooks, downloading some from Scribd, borrowing ebook from my library via overdrive, etc. Printing some at work and binding them, so now i have lots interesting material.

[80Percent]

Still having fun, still pushing forward.

Goals to results:
Well...here's the thing. I didn't finish chapter 10 (but i'll do that in a few minutes), i didn't put in 15 more SRS cards...BUT i put the time in so that's fine.

[edit: ha! Just checked back, i was only supposed to finish Chapter 9, so i guess i'm more on track than i thought]

What I did do:
-Studied probably 14 hours last week, so that's an average of 2 a day. I'm very satisfied with last week. (Actually, more, work has been super slow so i've been doing character writing during the day)
-Can recognize maybe 75 characters now and write a couple dozen by memory
-Got myself lots of study materials printed out and bound, i have quite a fabulous collection now! (Workbooks, readers, even a picture dictionary for fun and random vocab)

Having finished my Level 1 Part 1 textbook, onto my whole new plan. I'm rewinding Level 1 Part 1 textbook for character work. I love reading Mandarin so far, its a trip! So i'm so looking forward to this. And something really cool, one of my character apps, Tofu Learn, has flashcard decks for IC Chinese Level 1 and Level 2! So now i can do the book, the workbook, and the SRS Integrated Chinese flashcard deck!

I love my new weekly plan for now until October:

1 Chapter of IC L1P2 for Textbook for Characters (so no grammar and i already know all the vocab phonetically)
Memorize 90% of the characters from the book
1 Chapter of IC L1P2 Character Workbook
Peppered into that will be HSK 1 & 2 characters and at some point lots of listening.

And excellently there are 12 weeks before my class starts, so that's 1 chapter a week and i'll be so ready to read Level 2 in characters!! Wow.

it's going to be fun to look back at how excited i am now when i'm 6 months into this cursing out Chinese. lol. But i've made up my mind now to slog through whatever happens for at least a year. I hope i do. I'm enjoying myself immensely.

Also looking forward to the 6 week challenge that starts in 13 days.

[80Percent]

So far so good. Finished the first textbook now i’m pretty much using just TofuLearn flashcard app to learn IC Level 1 and HSK2 characters and a notebook to practice in them. Also enjoying Clozemaster app, interesting.

The good news is after never wanting to learn the characters now I actually quite like them (even though i still find the idea of learning 1,000's of them quite disturbing). And knowing i don’t have to remember them all by hand is everything. I am aiming to be able to write maybe a couple hundred by memory, maybe, but no plans for any more than that. Hallelujah！

Finished learning HSK 1 characters, and reading HSK 1 readers is a riot. I feel so cool now cuz I can read Chinese. Okay, not much, but still. It’s really cool. Now i use the bank machine and metrocard machine in Chinese, good times.

Goals to results: Still working on it at least 2 hours a day, haven’t fallen behind in character goals so all is good. I know at least 150.

My goals now are all characters until Sept 29th, my class starting date which i thought was October 15. But my plan still works, 9 or 10 characters a day until Sept 29th and I'll know all the characters for both the first and second textbook (which we'll be using). woot! Gonna give it a shot. Even if i have 400-500 of them, that would be incredible. And then another 3 a day for HSK II in December but i suspect most of those will be in the IC words. If i get bored or get crazy i'll cut back and incorporate some listening instead.

Goals for week 9: 70 more Characters.