My 中文(ZH) & தமிழ் (TA) logs

[samothin]

"1. FSI Standard Chinese - A Modular Approach (as an audio course) twice per day, to and from work."

I ended FSI course early, as from Module 7 onwards it can't be used solely as an audio course. I'm replacing it with the Learn Chinese through Stories podcast, and I absolutely love it.

1. The way I do it is to listen the A side first cold, that is without transcript.
2. Then I'll read the transcript
3. followed with reading the transcript with listening the story out loud.
4. Finally I'll relisten it cold again, and listening to side B.

This is hard work but I enjoy it and I think it's going to improve my listening a lot.

I'm also watching / listening to CCTV Growing up with Chinese, mainly for fluency purpose as the lessons are more catered towards beginners.

P/S: I do recommend doing FSI module 1-6, in addition to it being free, I absolutely love the fact that the native speaker speaks at a normal speed for comprehensive tape, and the high retention rate after completing the production and drill tape.

[samothin]

As at 21 February 2019, my study plan has been revised to:

1. First half of the day is for Chinese, second half is for Tamil

Chinese
1. Growing up with Chinese (GUwC) on YouTube ~15mins
2. Learning Chinese through Stories (LCtS) podcast (cold listening) ~5mins
3. 4-panels comic translation ~5mins
4. SRS cards creation for patterns used in GUwC ~5mins
5. Joke translation ~5mins *
6. SRS review in Clozemaster, TofuLearn, duShu app ~15mins
7. Read transcript of LCtS using duShu, and re-listen (L+R) ~10mins
8. Read news using duShu (if I've the time) ~25mins
9. Relisten to LCtS cold, and listen to LCtS side B ~35mins

Tamil
1. jblmflc.com/Tamil, 1 activity each day
2. cram.com SRS for each activity above
3. cram.com SRS Survival Tamil based on Paul Nation's book
4. Joke translation ~5mins *

To be included
Chinese
1. More native materials (watching series, listening etc)
2. Prepare language islands

Tamil
1. to memorize all of the alphabets
2. to learn all of the pronunciations

[samothin]

*Joke translation

I've been reading Luca Lampariello's blog, and listening to Lydia Machova's YT presentation and became very intrigued with the bi-directional translation method. I've read that this method was once popular prior to 1900, and it was once considered as THE method.

So, I've been doing this method using Chinese jokes, and I quite enjoy it. The way I do it is like this:

1. Select a joke, I usually use https://m.zol.com.cn/xiaohua/new/hot.html because it has been voted on, so I'll always use the most popular/best joke
2. Use Google to translate the whole joke, identify the gist of the story
3. Identify the punchline, understand why is it funny
4. Translate to English
5. Dissect the joke, identify which area is fluff, unnecessary, vocabulary used is too complex
6. Rewrite it to fit my style, my fluency level
7. Put in TTS
8. Listen and evaluate. Plan the best way of delivering the jokes, the pause, intonation, flow of speech etc.
9. Memorize the joke
10. Tell the joke to a native speaker. See whether they "get" it or not.

I think jokes are great to be used as bi-directional translation method's material because:
1. A good joke is usually brief and economical. They'll only use the words necessary to convey the meaning.
2. Jokes usually employ techniques that make reading them predictable, easier. Techniques such as rule of 3, pun, twist.
3. Humor is universal but it still offers cultural view relevant to the language.
4. Jokes use both story telling and dialogues.
5. Jokes are memorable.
6. Since meaning is the most important part of the joke, it allows me to translate it back freely and make it my own.

However, I do note that there are certain challenges in using jokes.
1. If I don't get it, there's nothing for me to do, short of asking a native speaker
2. If it's political or meme like, it's really hard since I don't know the context of the meme.

For the time being I'm using only jokes in classic format as my material. I'll try it out for a few months and reevaluate, especially whether can I do the same for Tamil or not.

[samothin]

Chinese has progressed quite well.

But Tamil's terrible.
My original plan
1. jblmflc.com/Tamil, 1 activity each day Apparently this resource is literary and using a formal register. I replaced it with this app "Learn Tamil Quickly", but I'm missing basic grammar explanation etc.

2. cram.com SRS for each activity above
3. cram.com SRS Survival Tamil based on Paul Nation's book
4. Joke translation ~5mins *

I've learned the alphabets through YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmIj918XJuXt4N0d7-36iIqV0kxHlreE5

I also find a lot of native materials on YT with captions. The one that surprise me is that they dubbed Hollywood movies in Tamil, so there's some trailer available in Tamil as well.

But progress has been really slow for Tamil. My main plan right now is to finish the app, select the sentences, play around with it etc. When I have some vocabulary, I think I'd find someone for a language exchange.

The worst thing though about Tamil is that there's no good dictionary available. But I might be too pampered by Pleco. Hahahaha

[Axon]

Congratulations on your Chinese progress! I like the joke-a-day website.

May I ask how much written Tamil and Chinese you generally see day-to-day in Malaysia? I find the sheer act of making myself read the things I see around me in Chinese has had a great impact on my reading speed over time. If there was more (any) Tamil around, maybe I could keep the alphabet straight in my mind!

[samothin]

Congratulations on your Chinese progress! I like the joke-a-day website.

May I ask how much written Tamil and Chinese you generally see day-to-day in Malaysia? I find the sheer act of making myself read the things I see around me in Chinese has had a great impact on my reading speed over time. If there was more (any) Tamil around, maybe I could keep the alphabet straight in my mind!

Chinese is everywhere. Businesses usually use tri-lingual billboard, ad etc. (Malay, English, Chinese). Tamil not so much. Only in certain areas, somewhere like Brickfields, Little India in Kuala Lumpur.

[samothin]

As at 21 February 2019, my study plan has been revised to:

1. First half of the day is for Chinese, second half is for Tamil

Chinese
1. Growing up with Chinese (GUwC) on YouTube ~15mins
2. Learning Chinese through Stories (LCtS) podcast (cold listening) ~5mins
3. 4-panels comic translation ~5mins
4. SRS cards creation for patterns used in GUwC ~5mins
5. Joke translation ~5mins *
6. SRS review in Clozemaster, TofuLearn, duShu app ~15mins
7. Read transcript of LCtS using duShu, and re-listen (L+R) ~10mins
8. Read news using duShu (if I've the time) ~25mins
9. Relisten to LCtS cold, and listen to LCtS side B ~35mins

Tamil
1. jblmflc.com/Tamil, 1 activity each day
2. cram.com SRS for each activity above
3. cram.com SRS Survival Tamil based on Paul Nation's book
4. Joke translation ~5mins *

To be included
Chinese
1. More native materials (watching series, listening etc)
2. Prepare language islands

Tamil
1. to memorize all of the alphabets
2. to learn all of the pronunciations

As at 12 June 2019, my study plan for Chinese has evolved to:

Chinese
1. Listen to 3 different Growing up with Chinese (GUwC) skits (Downloaded mp3s from YT)
2. 4-panels comic translation*
3. SRS review in Clozemaster, TofuLearn, duShu app
4. Read 1 transcript of GUwC skit using duShu, and re-listen (L+R)*
5. Re-listen to the same GUwC skit cold.
6. Read few paragraphs in 教父 The Godfather**

*All 100% of unknown words are transferred to duShu for SRS learning
** I'm currently doing scaffolded reading where I read the paragraph in English prior to reading it in Chinese. Unknown words are not transferred for SRS, based on the logic that I'll encounter them again throughout the book.

Tamil's progress is poor. The new app is good, but I'm not retaining or learning much using my current method.

[samothin]

I found a great resource at my level for me to do "extensive" reading with. It's a local Malaysian comic series called 歌美俩。

The way I do it is by:
1. Read the whole story (20+ pages long) in a sitting, guessing the story based on words that I know, the illustration etc
2. Highlight the words that I don't know, search and learn the words from Pleco
3. Write down the pinyin in the same book (no meaning!). I can only do step 2 & 3 for 5 pages at a time.
4. Re-read the story with correct pronunciation and 100% known words

I think it's a great way of learning because:
1. Comics are natural story with relevant colloquial phrases
2. It's like a low tech SRS, since I'll re-read it everyday
3. There's two mode in comic, narrations (long full complex descriptive sentences) and dialogues (short, active 1st POV sentences)

[learningchayse]

买卖人的相声

大家好。我叫纳吉。我是一个买卖人. 我有一个手机工厂。 我有很多钱，太多可以制造塔楼. 我的希望是我的儿子会顶我的工厂，然后卖我的手机在亚洲遍地。

可是我儿子是白痴。我送他留学在美国大学。虽然他有企业管理硕士，他还不会做事业。

那天，我们有一个大的交易跟政府的员工。这是很重要的，所以我告诉他，“如果你要得到这个交易, 你必须送“蛋糕”给那个员工。平时要红包就得到政府的交易. 我儿子真是送一个巧克力蛋糕给那个人。

另一次，他上个月雇佣一位税务师。你看怎么样？我从来没有纳税。不管一块还没纳。我问他为什么他做那么样？他白痴说那是我们的负责。

还有我们的秘书的事。他上个星期没雇佣那个漂亮的女人。他知道我喜欢辣行的女人，可是他还雇佣这个娘炮的个子男人。秘书一般女人因为我们能摸一点，亲一点。这简单的事还不知道吗？

呃，其实他们都两位总是加班了.... 这样啊！我很高兴他还有脑。

[samothin]

As at 19 September 2019, my study plan for Chinese has evolved to:

Chinese
1. Read 4 pages of 哥妹俩 comic book; create cloze Anki sentence cards for all unknown words
2. Read 1 entry of chinesegrammarwiki; create cloze Anki cards
3. Watch YouTube videos (Malaysian content only) with subtitles
4. Rip the mp3s of watched YouTube videos for passive/background listening

I've been largely influenced by Japanese Level Up, and Mass Immersion Approach, and I'm trying to create a simulated Immersion as much as possible.

I also noted that there's a dialectal difference between China and Malaysian Mandarin, so I'm focusing to be immersed more in the latter.

I created a personal challenge dubbed It's Over 9000! Challenge, where I aim to watch 500 hours of YouTube videos, read 3000 pages, and create 7000 Anki cards by 31-12-21.