My Chinese journey inofficially began in January 2016.
I was traveling to Beijing and Shanghai in February 2016. In a last minute spur of the moment decision I purchased Pimsleur with the goal to just memorize a few phrases here and there so that I could show just a bit of respect for the Chinese people I would meet while on my trip. I only had two weeks to prepare and didn't expect much to come out of it.
In the end I was completely blown away by the friendliness of the Chinese people. They complimented me on the few words I knew and on my pronunciation. I felt very welcome and was glad that I had made the effort to prepare a little bit.
Once I came back I slowly continued with Pimsleur eventually moving to Volume 2 and 3. While Pimsleur 1 was a nice start to my Chinese journey I didn't particularly like Volume 2 and 3. I had difficulty retaining the sentences and I felt bored during the lessons trying to listen to the CD while staring at nothing. Hence progress was slow because I did skip days at times.
Chinese Journey
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Chinese Journey
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Re: Chinese Journey
After the inofficial start I officially began learning Chinese in November 2016.
I had just booked another trip to China for February 2017. In anticipation of that, I planned an intensive 3 months of studying to see where that would get my. My focus was on the spoken language. I wanted to see how far I would get and figured that by ignoring characters my progress would be faster. I also found that the old and well respected John DeFrancis series started out with pinyin only before moving to characters.
After browsing these forums I decided to follow the Professor Arguelles method and ordered Assimil. My intensive few months consisted of doing Professor Arguelles method by the book with one 45 minute session in the morning and one at night. That way I made it through Assimil quite quickly.
I had just booked another trip to China for February 2017. In anticipation of that, I planned an intensive 3 months of studying to see where that would get my. My focus was on the spoken language. I wanted to see how far I would get and figured that by ignoring characters my progress would be faster. I also found that the old and well respected John DeFrancis series started out with pinyin only before moving to characters.
After browsing these forums I decided to follow the Professor Arguelles method and ordered Assimil. My intensive few months consisted of doing Professor Arguelles method by the book with one 45 minute session in the morning and one at night. That way I made it through Assimil quite quickly.
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Re: Chinese Journey
Once done with Assimil I moved on to Colloquial Chinese. The one by P.C. T'ung and D.E. Pollard which was highly recommended here. I worked through it the same way as Assimil using the shadowing technique. I found Colloquial to have a very steep learning curve and to also have very interesting material and so it was a good way to follow up on Assimil.
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Re: Chinese Journey
My next book was Hugo - Chinese in three months. I used this in the way the book was designed. So I just moved through quickly doing the exercises and picking up some more vocabulary. Unfortunately I never found the audio for this book, but it wasn't really needed since I had done plenty of shadowing already.
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Re: Chinese Journey
From Hugo I moved to Langenscheidt. Someone on this board recommended the old "Praktischer Sprachlehrgang" series and I found it used at a good price so I moved to that. Like Hugo I used this the "normal way", working my way through the exercises. I found this book to be at a noticeably lower level than Colloquial and Hugo. This was nice in a way because it made me realize that I had made good progress. I still did learn some new vocabulary.
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Re: Chinese Journey
The next step was Linguaphone. I found a refurbished edition and while price I did pick it up because Professor Arguelles recommended it highly and I had to see for myself.
It was definitely worth the price. There is a lot of material. The learning curve is very steep. You can use these to study for a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Because the learning curve was so steep I copied all the chinese pages and wrote in the vocabulary. I found it otherwise to be too difficult. This took quite some time to do, but I'm also getting a lot of use out of it because the material is now a bit more approachable.
It was definitely worth the price. There is a lot of material. The learning curve is very steep. You can use these to study for a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Because the learning curve was so steep I copied all the chinese pages and wrote in the vocabulary. I found it otherwise to be too difficult. This took quite some time to do, but I'm also getting a lot of use out of it because the material is now a bit more approachable.
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Re: Chinese Journey
After Linguaphone I moved to "Talk Chinese" by Sinolingua. The book I got was titled "Daily Life Talk". This is an interesting series that is quite cheap. The books present hanzi, pinyin and english translation and are great for shadowing. The level is at a similar level as where Linguaphone ends.
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Re: Chinese Journey
Next up was Etape par Etape. The french follow up book to "Methode 90". This book was pretty challenging for me. It's another good book to do shadowing.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I finally decided to start learning characters. A lot of the more interesting intermediate level chinese books are only in hanzi and so I'm trying to prepare for those. I'm currently using Professor Arguelles method of writing out 100 characters per day from McNaughton's "Reading and Writing Chinese".
This takes me about 30 minutes per day. At the same time I'm reviewing Pimsleur Volume 3 and also reviewing Etape par Etape and Linguaphone.
I'm not nearly as excited about the characters as I'm about the spoken language so it's not moving all that fast right now.
This takes me about 30 minutes per day. At the same time I'm reviewing Pimsleur Volume 3 and also reviewing Etape par Etape and Linguaphone.
I'm not nearly as excited about the characters as I'm about the spoken language so it's not moving all that fast right now.
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Re: Chinese Journey
I'm making good progress with written chinese. I did 30 minutes each day this week in McNaughton's book writing out 100 characters each time. I'm starting to recognize radicals a little better.
I also did about 1 hour of Pimsleur each revising volume 3. Lastly I spend some time each day revising Linguaphone and Colloquial. Colloquial is particularly fun to me as I am understanding most lessons by just reading pinyin. With Linguaphone I still need to look at the translations for a good amount of words to understand the meaning of each sentence. I am also going through the early Linguaphone lessons to get some practice reading characters.
I also did about 1 hour of Pimsleur each revising volume 3. Lastly I spend some time each day revising Linguaphone and Colloquial. Colloquial is particularly fun to me as I am understanding most lessons by just reading pinyin. With Linguaphone I still need to look at the translations for a good amount of words to understand the meaning of each sentence. I am also going through the early Linguaphone lessons to get some practice reading characters.
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