My name is David, and this is my seventh year studying Mandarin! I started as a teenager, around 16 or so, and my twenty-fourth birthday is this December, which means closer to eight years. In the mean time, I've entered university, tried studying half a dozen other languages, graduated from university, moved cities and got a full-time job in between, so progress has been, um, erratic (that would probably be a nice of the putting it). However, recently I've gotten back into serious study and I am starting to notice a real improvement in my Mandarin abilities. I'd like to start recording my progress in a language log, partly to share with fellow learners some great resources I've found along the way, but also partly as a way for me to concretely track my advances (and perhaps setbacks
).A bit on my current state: As a teenager, I originally started trying to follow the AJATT method, which means I built up a pretty solid knowledge of the Chinese characters before becoming discouraged. This means I can currently read most written Chinese texts with aid of the dictionary. I still have trouble with very informal texts, like on 微博 or "light novels". Otherwise, my speaking, writing and listening abilities were practically non-existent before a few months ago. I can now understand the very general gist of spoken Mandarin on the radio - I find that my understanding ability varies a lot given on the content of the show and the speed at which it is being spoken. I still have very little experience with written Chinese, but I have made a few Chinese friends that I do English-Mandarin exhanges with, so I can speak very basic Mandarin.
In sum, I would rate my skills as follows:
Reading - B1
Listening - A2
Writing - A1/A2
Speaking - A1/A2
I am planning to make this log a mixture between the mundane type of posts (setting goals for the amount of sentences I study in a month day - more on that in another post), more general and perhaps interesting observations on language learning, and also fun information on things I've learned and resources for other Mandarin students.
Thanks for reading!
. Here are a few of the songs I found:
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