Mandarin: HSK5 to C1

[RedInkstone]

列位看官: 你道此log从何而来？说起根由，虽近荒唐...

Hello everybody and a warm welcome to all 红楼梦 fans! Just as the quote in the beginning my username RedInkstone also stems from this excellent novel.

My background
I've been studying Mandarin in a degree programme at university since 2011 which included three semsters in Beijing, enrolled in a full time Mandarin course. During that time I've made great progress, from having only basic Mandarin knowledge and not being able to actually talk, to discussing topics such as the German constitution in Mandarin only. However, upon returning to Germany and finishing my bachelor's degree in 2015 I took a huge (and stupid break) from Mandarin all the way up until late 2017, when I suddenly had the urge to study all unknown HSK 5 vocab. In early 2018 I returned to China, but this time to Chengdu and rekindled my love for this beautiful and rich language. I took HSK 5 in June and got 250 points; the 79 points in the writing part of the exam make me extremely proud as it put me in the 80% range. As of now, I've applied to a language and business programme (the reply should come in any day now!) that hopefully helps me achive a better understanding and a more professional grasp of the language.

How am I studying?
As a very visual learner, reading and witing have always been my strong points. So during class I grabbed all my coloured pens and worked the sh*t out of every text in our course books. Colour coding grammar or chengyu really did help me remember new structures and expressions a lot better (Maybe I will post a picture of one of these texts some day;) ). Then I tried to immerse myself as much as possible, playing the audio recordings of the textbooks during all dull daily activities like brushing teeth or cleening my room and watching a lot of Chinese TV, speaking just Mandarin to my classmates and some Chinese friends, trying to read articles shared on WeChat and reading Detective Conan up to volume 40 in Mandarin.
Last year Anki became a huge part of my life and now I am learing new vocab with a combination of using the Chinese Text Analyser (you should check it out, it's one of the most useful tools ever!) for novels that I want to read and then importing the most frequent unknown vocabulary into Anki, to study it before reading a book/chapter.

Strengths
Having a very good foundation of both taditional and simplified characters, radicals, phonetics and some ethymology thanks to my uniersity programme.
Reading in general.
Newspaper language; I had a newspaper translation course (Mandarin to German), but the language used in newspapers in quite easy once you get the basics down.
Having a strong urge to learn more about Chinese history, culture, customs, literature, society, business and youth culture.
Consistency when it comes to Anki.
(Owning quite a big collection of books and ebooks as well as movies and series in Mandarin, so potentially having a lot of input resources.)

Weaknesses
Listening comprehention, especially in unusual situations or when people just come to me with random questions.
Being a bit too shy when it comes to output or getting too nervous easily.
Being not consistent enough with audio input.
Not making enough time to actually read enough.
Finding a lot of Chinese TV series either too boring, too long or getting annoyed by the dubbing of actors with supposedly "bad pronuncation" and thus not finding a series I really like and want to binge on.

What am I doing currently?
Upon waking up and making myself a cup of coffee I usually take out my phone to do Anki. The daily reviews fluctuate between 120 and 150, as most of the HSK 5 vocab is alrady in the mature deck and I'm now mostly reviewing stuff I recently learned. With the help of Anki I'm trying to get my reading comprehention to a solid level, in order to be able to read novels in the future without using the dictionary too often. Currently, depending on the book, the Chinese Text Analyser spits out "known word" percentages ranging between 70% and 80%, which is definitely not enough to enjoy a book without too much hasstle.

My Anki decks currently consist of:
• HSK 5
• Chinese Geography (including Province names, capitals, location and car plate abbrevation)
• Harry Potter 1-7 (the top 1850 unknown vocabulary out of all books, thanks to the Chinese Character Analyser)
• 莎菲女士的日记 (the top 100 unknown vocab, basically all words that appear 3 or more times that I didn't know)
• Business Chinese (a mixture of usefull sentences to say and important vocab)
• Pleco imports (just a wild mish mash of words I looked up and found intresting like 东正教、资本主义、偏心)
• Mandarin Sentence Mining (though the audio quality of the TTS software can be realy bad sometimes)

Apart form that I dabbled a bit into AJATT and the theory behind it and am now trying to play the CCTV4 stream on YouTube during my non work or non concentration hours. But I've not have had enough time for that recently.
Currently I'm also trying to find a series that gets me hooked. As this article suggests, Madarin learners should aim to watch at least one movie per week, with three movies a week reccomended to be the optimum. Chinese movies are generally getting better and better in the last years, however I really feel like watching a good TV series at the moment. So my quest is finding some good dramas or maybe some Chinese anime, which is sadly overlooked by a lot of fans!

What is my goal?
Ulitmately, to get from HSK 5+ to a comfortable C1 level. (The Hanban and it's European counter parts are not on the same page in regards to what HSK 5 equates to; so per my own experience, I would classify HSK 5 as a high B1 or low B2.)
Being able to communicate as freely as I am doing it in English. Having the ability to just pick up a random novel and read it without running into to many language problems. Reading 红楼梦 in Mandarin; not some abridged kids' version, but the real deal, the Red Inkstone version. Having a firm grasp of the business language and making myself understood in a professional manner.

But short term goals until the end of 2018 would be:
• find a TV series to enjoy ()
• read 莎菲女士的日记
• read the first Harry Potter book
• finish the Business and Pleco decks on Anki
• develop a better CCTV4 (or other audio input/podcast) habit
• make new Chinese friends at uni or find a tutor for weekly skype calls

So, that all for now. If you have any questions or suggstions, feel free to post them here!
-Red

[RedInkstone]

Wow the amount of y’all interacting with this log surprises me. Never thought that this would interest people.

I will edit the introduction post and correct some parts, as it contains billions of mistakes. During my first attempt to write something my PC crashed and everything I’ve written to that point was lost, so I was extremely frustrated and tired.

Anyway let’s take a look at the status quo of my Anki decks for a second. All decks have two cards per note, except for the sentence mining deck (1:1) and the geography deck (1:4). Today we’ll just look at cards not notes. These are today’s stats before my daily reviews.

• HSK 5
total: 2668 unseen: 0 mature: 2337 young: 331 average interval: 2,2 months

• Chinese Geography
total: 132 unseen: 15 mature: 94 young: 23 average interval: 1,7 months

• Harry Potter 1-7
total: 3693 unseen: 3175 mature: 314 young: 204 average interval: 30 days

• 莎菲女士的日记
total: 190 unseen: 0 mature: 14 young: 175 average interval: 11 days

• Business Chinese
total: 774 unseen: 732 mature: 0 young: 42 average interval: 4 days

• Pleco imports
total: 94 unseen: 58 mature: 0 young: 36 average interval: 4 days

• Mandarin Sentence Mining
total: 12332 unseen: 12272 mature: 23 young: 37 average interval: 17 days

[eido]

One reason I'm interested in your log is because not many people get to a high(er) level of an Asian language. Around here (this forum) they might, but they're the exception. I want to someday, so I follow all the Asian-language learning logs closely to see what they do, to see where I can draw inspiration. I wish you luck - it seems like you're quite accomplished already.

[RedInkstone]

One reason I'm interested in your log is because not many people get to a high(er) level of an Asian language. Around here (this forum) they might, but they're the exception. I want to someday, so I follow all the Asian-language learning logs closely to see what they do, to see where I can draw inspiration. I wish you luck - it seems like you're quite accomplished already.

Thank you for your kind words! Well, I will try and write down my favourite resources and techniques as well as things in general that I can or cannot reccomend some day in the future, because I really want to give back and hope to help other learners, just as learners before me, who helped me to become more efficient in the way I study.

[BalancingAct]

例位看官 -------> 列位看官

Note the pronunciation is different.

[RedInkstone]

So, today's entry will be rather dull and brief. (correction: ok it didn't end up being that short, why am I kidding myself? ) Maybe next time I have something more intresting like my favourite techniques to show you guys.

I dabbled a bit into Clozemaster today and must say I find it quite refreshing. Getting input from many different sources is extremely important for me and this is exactly what the website does for me. It takes away the hasstle to find input an lets me just go through some sentences easily. As I've already reached HSK 5, I will only do the sentences that are marked HSK 5 and above, because in my experience only content that is slightly above my level really helps me retain word and expressions effectively.

As for TV shows, I think I found one that really speaks to me. 全职法师 I know, it's anime, but hey stop! First of all, anime is great and I refuse to hear otherwise; and secondly Chinese anime improved massively in the last couple of years. This one in particular speaks to me because it has a 90s feel to it and not too many bad 3D animations. Though sometimes the dubbing is still a bit wacky and the amount of cost saving animation can be a bit much, it is really enjoyable. Even though I'm not a big fan of stories surronding magic, this one doesn't go over board with all the supernatural story elements. At this point I'm not too far along (episode two) but it looks like a show with a soft magic world but solid hard magic system. As a picky anime watcher myself, let me tell you that giving this one a try is definitely worth it!
Having something I enjoy watching is extremely important for me, as I tend to burn out after 30 minutes to one hour or dull and boring content. CCTV4 can be intresting especially when there is a documentation or news on, but they also show quite a lot of dramas that bore me to tears like the new 毛泽东 drama (Yes, you read it right, it's a drama about the life of Mao Zedong).
After finishing that anime I will probably finish 夏至未至 which I started ages ago and only got half wach through or go for something new, non anime related with real people.

Since I don't want to spam this log with daily Anki stats updates, I think I'll stick with posting Anki stats only once a week.

[Expugnator]

What an inspiring log! I've been studying Mandarin for about the same time but never got that serious! I'm probably somewhere between A2 and B1 but I wouldn't be able to place myself in the HSK range as I have several gaps at each level. I do Clozemaster everyday, but only 40-80 reps.

I was about to ask how you manage to talk about the Constitution and yet have trouble reading a novel, but then your line about HSK5 being realistically at the B1-B2 plateau clarified it.

Have you thought about audiobooks? I've enjoyed them quite a bit even for translations, and the little reading skills I have now I own to them and to Clozemaster, because other than that I only watch 1 video from Yabla intensively and 10 min from a TV series everyday, but focusing more on reading subtitles than on reading.

[RedInkstone]

My Harry Potter project

Mini overview of this article:
1. The problem with written Mandarin
2. The solution!
3. My project

The problem with written Mandarin
Today I want to shed some light on the Harry Potter reading project, I'm currenly working on. My aim is to read all seven Harry Potter books in Mandarin. The good news is, I own all seven books as paperbacks and as ebooks. The bad news is, reading novels in Mandarin is hard. In most (european) foreign languages one can start reading the HP books around the A2 level, because of conext and cognates etc. However when it coms to Mandarin, tough luck. You know, Mandarin is split into what people call 口语 "spoken language" and 书面语 "written/book language", both are drastically different from each other and it somtimes feels like learning two related but not too similar languages. There are distinctions like this in every language, but unlike English for example where you have colloquial and formal words like "father" and "dad" or "discover" and "find out", Mandarin also has distinct words for many many more things (just look at the example below):

the word "birthday"
口语：生日
书面语：诞辰

口语：站在校门口的小子一看就不是什么好东西。
书面语：站在校门口的那位男子，面相猥琐，尖嘴猴腮，给人的感觉像是坏人。

Since the sterile written language used in news articles, the media etc. in comparison to the flowery and extremely descriptiv language of novels displays major differences as well, I would argue that the Chinese language sometimes feel like learning three related languages at the same time (formal spoken language is very close to formal written language in my opinion so I would classify it as one subgroup of Mandarin). Hence it takes forever if you want to get fluent in all areas and not just converstionally fluent. Being able to hold a fluent (colloquial) conversation in Mandarin is not that hard if you focus all of your time on that aspect. But people who reach oral fluency in colloquial and formal contexts as well as being able to read novels and media artcicles or university papers deserve nothing more than my utmost respect.

The solution!
Due to all of these factors it takes much more time and vocabulary to be able to read Harry Potter or any kind of novel in Mandrin. Thankfully I've stumbled upon the Chinese Book Club subreddit, where somebody shared this genious article on how to learn to read novel in Mandarin from a HSK4 (or HSK 5 base).

To briefly sum it up: If you want to learn how to read novels, studying word frequency lists like HSK will cost you a lot of time and not help you progress fast enough. When looking at the words used in the novel 《活着》the percentages of known words are as follows:

HSK 4 (1200 words): 61%
HSK 5 (2500 words): 65%
HSK 6 (5000 words): 68%

Studying 1300 words (HSK 4 to 5) for an increase of only 4% is ridiculous. But there is a more effecive way. If starting from an HSK 4 base you only learn the most frequent 300 unknown words each month the percentages of known words look as follows:

1. month (HSK 4 + 300): 83%
2. month (HSK 4 + 600): 88%
3. month (HSK 4 + 900): 91%

Not too shabby, hm?

But how do I find the most frequent unknown words? Look no further, the Chinese Text Analyser is all you need (not sponsored, though I wish I were haha)! It scans a text in seconds, gives you statistics on known and unknown words, shows you word lists according to frquency, first apperance or a mixture of both und let's you export said lists to a text file (and then to Anki).

My project
In order to be able to read Harry Potter I decided to let the CTA scan all seven books and then export all the unknown words that appeared 20 times or more, which left me with 2000 words at that point. The best attribute of the software is that you can export a list of the most frequent words, but then have them sorted accoring to first apperance, so you can learn ahead and then read along once you have studied enough in advance.
After exporting the list, I went through the vocab in Anki and deleted nonsense words or stuff I alread knew, which shrinked the list to currently 1830 expressions. When I tried to tag all cards with their corresponding chapter (of first apperance) I felt dumbstruck. In my enthusiasm I totally forgot that the apperance of vocabulary over the course of all seven books would be exponential, meaning that most unknown words woud appear early on for the first time. This left me in the unfortunate situation that out of all 1830 unknown words 1421 already appear in the first book. So to keep it realistic I aim to learn all vocab of HP1 and finish the novel by the end of 2018. (Though I think mid 2019 is the actual realistic goal here.) Once I finish the first novel the other ones should be a walk in the park. When I looked through the vocab for HP2 I was shocked to find that there would be noing to learn until one word in chapter 3 and then again 3 words in capter 5. But hey, then at least I can try and read through all of the HP books in the following year.

By the way, this is what a typical Anki flash card (cloze/meaning to character) looks like in the HP deck:

Anki example.png

For the character to meaning cards it is the other way around.

At the moment I am studying 5 new expressions per day, but I plan on going back to 10 per day once I finish another Anki deck I'm currently studying. So far I've studied 291 out of 1830 words which puts me at the beginning of chapter four (HP1) and I've read two chapters, though I might read chapter three today, depending on how much time and will I have.

- Red

[RedInkstone]

Hello strangers, it's been a while. I didn't forget about this website, I merely watched silently for the rest of the year. There were other priorities in life, than writing a post; nevertheless I was quite consistent with my language study routine.

(The following part is a formatting nightmare. If your eyes can't handle that, please skip to the last part of this post.)

---

So, let's have a look at the goals that I set for myself in 2018 and review the progress I made on Anki:

• find a TV series to enjoy
I thought I found one in 全职法师, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it, maybe watches 6 episodes So a 70% fail(?) I'd say

• read 莎菲女士的日记
After reading roughly 20% of the book I had to give up, it was just too boring for me. I konw the main character is not supposed to me relatable or likable but she just made me so annoyed with the whole book.

• read the first Harry Potter book
Didn't finish it, but made quite some progress, both vocabulary wise and regarding the amount of read pages.

• finish the Business and Pleco decks on Anki
Finished the Pleco deck; restructured the business deck, learned a little bit but didn't end up finishing it.

• develop a better CCTV4 (or other audio input/podcast) habit
nope, dind't happen at all. complete fail

• make new Chinese friends at uni or find a tutor for weekly skype calls
Made some great Chinese friends at uni, they are really talkative and don't mind us speaking more Mandarin than German.

• HSK 5
old: total: 2668 unseen: 0 mature: 2337 young: 331 average interval: 2,2 months
new: reset all the cards to 0 right at the beginning of 2019

• Chinese Geography
old: total: 132 unseen: 15 mature: 94 young: 23 average interval: 1,7 months
new: total: 132 unseen: 0 mature: 108 young: 6 average interval: 4,7 months

• Harry Potter 1-7
old: total: 3693 unseen: 3175 mature: 314 young: 204 average interval: 30 days
new: total: 3483 unseen: 2265 mature: 640 young: 519 average interval: 1,5 months

• 莎菲女士的日记
old: total: 190 unseen: 0 mature: 14 young: 175 average interval: 11 days
new: total: 190 unseen: 0 mature: 162 young: 38 average interval: 1,5 months

• Business Chinese
old: total: 774 unseen: 732 mature: 0 young: 42 average interval: 4 days
new: total: 742 unseen: 662 mature: 76 young: 2 average interval: 2,6 months

• Pleco imports
old: total: 94 unseen: 58 mature: 0 young: 36 average interval: 4 days
new: total: 120 unseen: 24 mature: 93 young: 1 average interval: 2,3 months

Vocabulary wise I'm quite satisfied with my progress. Even though I had a lot of days where I didn't feel like Anki I still did it anyway. That's definitely something I'm proud of. I didn't meet all the language goals I set myself but I learned a lot about setting doable goals for myself in the future. So, let's look at some new goals for the following months. previously I wanted to do goals for 2019, but who am I kidding? If I'm setting goals for a whole year, I will massively underestimate the time and effort I will have to put into studying and overestimate the amount of stuff I will hopefully accomplish.

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First let's have a look at where I'm currently at, as of January 5th:
10k known words: 7239 / 10000
Harry Potter 1-7 top 1830 unknown vocab: 523 / 1742 (It used to be 1830 words, but I'm sorting out nonsense or allready known words as I go)
Pages read in HP 1: 32 / 191
活着 top 500 unknown words: 36 / 472 (also sorting out nonsense vocab as I go)
Pages read in 活着: 0 / ???

New goals:
• Finish all the HP vocab by the end of April
• Finish reading HP 1 before going to China
• Finish all the 活着 vocab by the end of June
• Read 活着 before going to China
• Hit 10k known words by the end of 2019

[Purangi]

Good job! As you are interested in reading novels, I highly recommend 1988:我想和这个世界谈谈 by 韩寒. His writing style is straightforward, simple and quite funny, yet at the same time very authentic. I am about halfway through it now and its definitely not boring.