#november progress

[rigelmejo]

11/2/2024 update - chinese:

1. Listening to something "harder" in chinese (poyun audiobook) seems to be helping. I listened to an audio drama today instead, just whatever my recommendation gave me (a crime solving BL which is the genre I'm comfortable in), and since it's an audio drama I definitely know at LEAST 95% of the words. I hear a few unknown words per minute, and when I look them up they're usually what I vaguely guessed when listening (so words I've read but struggle to recognize in listening). Since audio dramas are nearly all dialogue, I understand almost everything (i miss a few details per 5 minutes since theres still a few words I dont know and don't look up). I am not even paying attention, just letting it play as I scroll reddit ToT. I still understand almost all. So I think my quick-understanding speed is improving for more words. Poyun still feels equally hard lol, I catch dialogues mostly and then it's hit or miss if I understand descriptor paragraph's main idea when listening to the audiobook. But just listening to Poyun, while multitasking and just listening-in when I can focus, seems to be helping. So that's awesome! Maybe my test in a month will be if SaYe is clearer to me by then.

2. If you're a beginner learning Chinese, I again recommend dongchinese.com's Pinyin guide and tone pair drills. I'm begging you to spend a couple hours going through it. If you watch cdramas, even if you're watching with english subs, the ability to HEAR a word and type the pinyin into google translate app or Pleco app quickly for the translation is SO USEFUL. Early on, its useful for picking up new words and remembering them. But even now, as I'm listening to audiodramas, the skill of looking stuff up by pinyin as a beginner helps SO much now. I can hear unknown words in audio and instantly hear what pinyin I should type (zhi or zi or si or j or zhe or zha are very clearly different to my ear) and I'm used to expecting most words to be 1,2, or for phrases 4 hanzi long (so 1-4 initial-final pinyin pairs), with most words being 2 hanzi long, so if I hear an unknown word I can quickly identify WHICH 2 sounds are the new ones I just heard and look up the unknown word. These basic recognition skills get developed early on as a beginner, as you look up words and get used to the common patterns, and as you start reading and notice beyond the common 1 hanzi words, just how many are 2 hanzi.

3. If you're learning chinese and don't have the benefit of cognates with a language you know, chinese is still a bit "easier" to guess new words at a certain point. For reading, it's the multi-component hanzi which allow you to start guessimg rough pronunciation and meaning, and the 2 hanzi words which allow you to start guessing meaning is the 2 hanzi combined or perhaps related to the meanomg of the 1 of 2 hanzi you already know. With listening... there is also a benefit. Say you hear xiangfa - xiang think, fa method, you can guess it has something to do with thoughts or ideas or trails of thoughts. Xiang is a common verb so you probably already know it, or can guess it's THAT xiang based on context of a scene, and fa is also a fairly common word so you can guess it might be That Fa. It means idea. So guessing "thought" would be close enough to undersrand meaning. (And of course seeing it written 想法 thought+method xiangfa easy to see hanzi meaning and then guess idea or something close).

4. I'm hoping the comprehensible input/ALG suggestions of a LOT of comprehensible input actually help me with speaking tones. Even though I did tons of explicit study, which ALG thinks "damages pronunciation"... but I didn't actually speak much yet. At a certain point (around a year imto learning?) I stopped studying tones of new hanzi and words and just used audio in pleco or google translate (or TTS, shows, audiobooks etc) to hear how new stuff sounded if I didnt remember. Since I read a lot, so I just felt I needed to add more sound to not learn the wrong pronunciation... so idk how that will go.

[rigelmejo]

Clozemaster ain’t a perfect app but I gotta admit it’s specific form of gamification DOES motivate me

I’m currently doing it on my downtime while watching stuff etc, since I don’t have time to read for 30+ minutes lately.

The upsides of clozemaster: it is like anki/Memrise in that it is based in space repetition to help you remember things, it has audio, it is ordered by common words so I know I’m learning useful stuff, it is based on sentences so I get some reading practice (way less then usual but the trade off is I actually THINK about these sentences whereas when I read i speed through as long as I vaguely get it), and UNLIKE memrise/anki and other flashcard apps this is NOT slow

Clozemaster sessions take me about 1 minute each to go through 10 cards. And that’s so satisfying since, as we know, I take usually 1 hour to get through 10 flashcards. And because of the fact it’s presented in sentences, I feel I also get to pick up some extra new cards per sentence and review other partially known words besides JUST what the card is for primarily. Anki is also technically “like this” when you use sentence cards but anki takes me 1 hr to get through 10 cards so... nfmdksk

Clozemaster also purposely stops you after 10 cards. So you don’t burn out or feel it’s endless and start hating it (me on anki/memrise etc). I can just do one quick 1 minute round when a shows opening is playing or a video is loading or I’m waiting for tea kettle to boil. It’s easy to add them in without feeling overwhelmed. Also just for me... Clozemaster aesthetically/design wise suits me - it looks easily readable but like an arcade game, all I have to do is click and it grades me so I don’t have to focus too hard or stop what I’m doing (with memrise I have to type, with anki I have nothing grading me so I judge myself and that stresses me ans slows me down). It makes cute noises when you finish a round, and plays a gif when you studied X amount more cumulatively. It also paces reviews so that even if you haven’t touched the app, you see some new sentences each time (which is WAY more suited to me a random user who isn’t consistent, compared to memrise/anki that SWAMP you with hundreds of reviews if you haven’t used them in a while).

Finally, the biggest positive AND negative to me: it shows you your overall % progress through the sentences after each round. As in, out of 5-20k sentences how many have you studied so far. For Chinese? This is super motivating because doing 5 rounds (5 minutes) gets me through a whole percent. And the higher that percent gets the more I feel “satisfied” I’m making progress. But with French?? That percent moved like 0.05 or 0.005 per session or something ridiculously low (because there were like 10k sentences, versus 3k sentences for the Chinese fast track). So I felt demotivated like I would NEVER get through any lol.

I should say, a way around this is that when you click details it shows how much you got through each “level” like 100 most common words, 500 most common, 1000 most common, etc. And that breakdown is much MORE motivating. Because whether you have 3k or 10k sentences it still progresses you significantly through each level. So that’s what I’ve been looking at to see if I’m starting to “make a dent” in less common words.

Which, genuinely, I DO appreciate seeing this breakdown with Clozemaster. It’s similar to why I preferred memrise to anki - memrise has every course broken into levels, so you get THROUGH a level and feel you’ve made progress. With anki like 8k cards are in one deck, and online ankiweb doesn’t show the number u have gone through, so it feels like I endlessly am not making progress. At least to me I Need to see a visual reminder I’ve gotten something done. Otherwise I get demotivated fast.

Overall clozemaster is about as good as it was last time I used it for French: good for intermediate when u find reading a bit hard/want to make reasing easier/don’t have time to read. not great for beginners because there ARE errors in some sentences, so knowing basic words helps a lot with noticing which sentences are NOT literal and just need to be marked “mastered’” so you can skip them - a beginner would not necessarily skip these and might waste time trying to study them. And it’s also you know full sentences, so particularly for Japanese and Chinese learners there’s tons of kanji and Hanzi and having a base of known ones already makes the sentences approachable compared to a MESS of scary unknowns. Also - at least with the Chinese sentences - it’s mostly simplified chinese but some sentences have traditional Hanzi (common ones), and an upper beginner/intermediate learner will probably recognize them but a beginner might be totally thrown off by it. I did try the Chinese sentences as a beginner (and the Japanese ones once), and the difficulty of the characters is a big reason it’s just a bit STEEPLY difficult until you know some basics. Then it’s as easy as graded readers. I do think the apps own words: that it’s good to use after duolingo, to bridge the gap into getting into native content - is accurate. It’s beginning sentences are harder than duolingo, but easy and just right if you already think duolingo is too easy for you. And they do help bridge the gap from target language content being to hard, into it becoming approachable. (That’s how it was when I used it for French).

—

On a lighter note: what prompted me to get back into Clozemaster? On Reddit a learner got 10% through the fast track in spanish, is just doing Clozemaster and watching Spanish shows in Spanish, and they’re around B1 now. While yeah their comprehension is probably higher than their production, even if they’re only “A2” that’s great progress made! And I do see it technically being possible - Clozemaster is in a lot of ways like concentrated graded reader sentences made mostly exactly for your reading level plus a touch higher constantly, in audio/reading format, with built in review you don’t have to think about, organized from most common to least common words. So of course it should work fine as a study app at least as well as anki sentence decks (but easier for me to fucking study from because of the above mentioned Motivator/Focus differences). Add srs sentence study with Clozemaster to actual immersion for LONGER amounts of exposure, and I can see how a learner would make progress.

So anyway, that person got to a decent level by hitting 10% and motivated me to want to hit 10% too cause DANG if they can so can I! Plus lately reasing has been easier, but I do know “concentrated” study tends to give me like a temporary boost in comprehension that makes reading/listening even Easier for a while until I solidly learn what I crammed. And I just have limited time for reading rn, and sentences are the closest. (Aka at least I’m doing SOMETHING for now... and Clozemaster has helped boost me up in the past with French, so why not, can’t hurt...)

[rigelmejo]

I still need a real tutor I pay for eventually. But I am so happy to see on some level that:

1. me drilling tones and tone pairs a couple months ago did cause some improvement and also get my attention to explicitly and unconsciously pay more attention to tones I hear and replicate. (I should test my tone pair listening recognition again, but pronunciation wise I’ve definitely improved since BEFORE my 3rd tones sounded like ??? And my 1st tones sounded like 2nd tones. Now I can much more quickly just say the proper tone without having to correct - unless it’s in a sentence, which I’m aware of lol).

2. That me reading aloud to myself is NOT fucking up my pronunciation or ingraining bad pronunciation. (While I still need to drill some finals/endings cause those aren’t improving from reading aloud lol, the overall comprehensibility of my sentence speaking is probably benefiting from it - since I KNOW my sentences sounded worse overall a few months ago.) overall though, I’m mostly just glad my tones are okay. Because reading aloud is mostly how I memorize word’s tones, so if I was doing that wrong then I was learning the whole word Really Wrong. With the initials/finals I’m mostly fucking up pronunciation because I can’t HEAR the difference between how I’m saying c versus c sounds in chinese etc. So while I’m probably ingraining that for now, I’m hopeful if I improve being able to HEAR what I’m saying wrong, and reproduce the correct sound, then in future that’ll also be corrected as I read to myself out loud.

3. That all my passive and active listening the past two months might actually be helping my pronunciation a little. A bit surprised to discover it’s not even x that I’m screwing up. But c s q j - basically initials I assumed were close enough that I could skip more drilling (HA apparently it’s time to drill them now lol)! I was sort of hopeful all this listening would help with primarily my listening comprehension - and I think it definitely has. I can recognize many more words by sound than before, and in the pronunciation practice today a lot of the no-pinyin sentences with unknown words required me to rely on my listening skills to successfully replicate them. So clearly the listening comprehension is improving. I was also hoping in an ideal world it helped with pronunciation a little - I personally doubt that. But, having a more solid mental recognition of the “correct” sound of a word must help a bit.

[rigelmejo]

I’m gonna be fair. I tried listening-reading method very lightly. I think I only did maybe 10 hours of it over a month or two. Whereas it’s made with the suggestion to do like 1-8 hours a day, for a month. So like, it’s supposed to be intensive.

So my perspective of how effective it is, must take into account that this is how effective it is when you BARELY do it. That said, I do think based on the results I got, that doing it more would likely be quite effective in the ways i read it’s supposef to be. Considering how much it helped even with the little I did of it.

So what results did I see from the little amount I did?

- definitely increased listening comprehension (which is the stated main result listening-reading method is supposed to have, so I can confirm it does do this).

- specifically I noticed it boosted up my listening comprehension of words I had already studied once with flashcards, looking up in reading, random lookup. So basically, it brought up my listening comprehension of any partially known words, up closer to my reading comprehension. Which is great, since I don’t study audio much when looking up new words. So basically now, when watching shows I have a much easier time hearing the words I know before I see the Chinese subtitles/even if I have no Chinese subtitles. And now when I watch with English subs, it’s easier to still hear the Chinese words I do know in the audio.

- it also specifically improved my ability to hear full phrases when listening, whereas before I’d recognize individual words I knew but struggle to follow the full phrases they were making. This is a major help. Now when I hear sentences I can recognize whole phrase chunks when listening. It’s pretty obvious how this benefits listening - I can waste less time trying to recognize the words I Do know and less time trying to figure out what they mean in combination, since I already immediately recognize their meaning in X combination when listening. Today I heard the phrase in my show: 但如果你....亚诺，我.../ 亚诺 I don’t know how to spell i just heard someone’s name. The ... represent the unknown words i heard. But the rest, I heard the full chunk of “but if you” etc. And that helped me figure out what the definition of the smaller unknown word chunk was. So I didn’t have to waste time going “dan - but ruguo - if, wait what else did they say!” So like... in short, doing listening-reading has helped me recognize phrases easier when listening, which lowers the effort I require to figure out a sentence and figure out which part of a sentence I don’t know.

- so basically yes, listening-reading is great for dragging listening comprehension upward if it was lagging below your reading comprehension or overall vocab.

- can listening-reading method help you pick up new words? I’m not entirely sure how effective it is for this particular aspect. According to the person who made the method, yes it can do this well. But for me - I only did maybe 10 hours of this method. And so a lot of what I picked up was clearly low hanging fruit first. I picked up the words I half knew but couldn’t recognize when listening, and I picked up words I’d looked up before at some point but never studied, I picked up more set phrases made up of these recognizable to slightly-familiar words. Those are what I noticed picking up most, likely because theyre what I still needed to solidify first. I’m guessing that if I did this method more, I would continue expanding that and picking up more new words.

[rigelmejo]

ok things I know I need to work on:

SHORT term:

1. I REALLY need to either read through my hanzi books, or start finishing that Mnemonic Flashcard deck. Knowing me, reading will probably be marginally easier. I KNOW right now the biggest hurdle in the way when I try to learn new vocab is just not recognizing new hanzi and therefore forgetting them easily. Doing this, will make my chinese novel reading more effective for picking up words. Also will probably make guessing word meanings from context slightly easier. Basically - if I want my other studies to be going easier, I really SHOULD do this soon regularly for a while. 

2. Keep reading. Just because idk how long these gains in skill will stick if I ignore reading for too many weeks right now. And this task is increasing my vocabulary, which is good and should be continued.

3. Keep listening to that Spoonfed Chinese Audio in the bg or during walks sometimes. I do genuinely think it’s been helping improve my listening comprehension (and it is such an easier Commitment to do compared to listening-reading).

I really think these are short term goals I am capable of at least doing SOME of within the next 30 days...

LONG term:

1. use that pronunciation app again. Keep practicing the drills, both words for nuanced correction on my parts of words, and sentences for tone change flow.

2. i probably won’t do it, but finish reading the dongchinese.com pronunciation guide. I have a few weak spots on initial and final sounds and this really would help. Also it’s tone trainer is low effort and easier to get myself to do, compared to the anki cards for tone pairs.

3. do the short like 800 flashcard traditional/simplified hanzi comparisons flashcard deck i have. I know most of the traditional equivalents, but knowing them a bit more instinctively and having no gaps in knowledge would help me with reading novels.

4. Listen-reading method some more. I do think this was helping, its just intensive so I haven’t wanted to do it consistently. I would very much LIKE to do it with Guardian in December but... we’ll see. Or to keep doing it with Silent Reading, or DMBJ. I think it was really helping me pick up on spoken speed language better in phrases instead of just hearing isolated words. And i do agree with who made the method - i think it helps more when I do it with denser texts. When I did it with Silent Reading, SVSSS, those in particular it really felt like I was picking up a lot of vocab and STILL had so much more I could pick up if I kept listening, Whereas ttwtadsl was a really good reading choice for me, but also so easy to read I preferred doing that INSTEAD of l-r method, and the text was consise enough that I didn’t feel like I was getting repeated-listening of words long enough to learn them. I think dense text helps more with hearing words/phrases repeated enough to pick them up.

5. finishing a novel in chinese... when will I finish something instead of bouncing between things... ;-;

6. trying to translate a bit more, @a-whump-muffin u inspired me and i sort of want to try translating and studying the way u do, although i probably will get wrecked by it lol. Tamen de gushi novel is almost certainly what I’d pick to use, because i wish more people knew about it ToT And I’m planning to reread it/finish it anyway since it’s reasonably short, and its modern daily life so realistically I should know most of the words or should really learn them eventually. The biggest hurdle with tamen de gushi is literally just trying to decide how to word grammatical things and how to try and preserve the ‘tone’ of the writing when it’s worded into english...

7. personal goal: write some of my original Nanase story. I am going to write more of it these next 12 months...

8. not urgent: practice hanzi writing, just because my writing and ability to recally hanzi in order to write on paper is pathetically weak. i learned enough cyrillic to be able to write comics, i really should know how to write hanzi enough to make small comics too at least ;-;

9. not urgent: eventually start chatting with language partners again, and study wise just focus on what grammar mistakes I make when I’m writing/talking that i need to fix

10. not urgent: work on listening comprehension without reading to aid me. but genuinely, i don’t think this’ll be something i’ll want to do until i’ve gotten a decent amount of benefit from listening-reading, to the point i can follow some audio for most meaning without reading to aid me...

[rigelmejo]

In lighter news lmao, French knowledge does NOT translate to learning Spanish much as I initially thought. Yes, I can understand Dreaming Spanish intermediate videos. But if I try to watch a show in spanish with spanish subs, I can't guess at half the words. Even a show I've seen before in english.

I know I can read science articles in spanish but that's probably where the bulk of french/english/spanish cognates are. Maybe French has more cognates and near cognates with english aside from scientific words. So like marcher/walk (march) avion/plane (aviation) comprendre/understand (comprehend) par exemple/for example observer/observe continuer/continue tourisme/tourism

[rigelmejo]

November Goals Update

oh wow so i checked my november goals and... wow did I barely follow my own plans lol ToT

i am sad to report that i hardly did anything on that list.

I think I did:

 roughly 4-6 chapters of Listening-Reading method.

read maybe 10 chapters in chinese this past month ;-; I also read a few pages of a few new novels (Peach Blossom debt, demon wants to hug, Sa Ye, Poyun)

did like 2-4 hours speaking practice with my putonghuaxuexi app

got into clozemaster again, did 559 sentences on the Fast Track (I’m currently in the 1000-2000 most common words region)

got onto tandem, texted in chinese a bit (but very basic convo and not much, so it wasn’t really improving)

watched a lot of chinese shows but it was with an eng sub so it doesn’t really count (I’d like to think it makes a tiny bit of difference tho, since I have been noticing better listening comprehension lately)

listened to like 2 audio files in the Chinese Spoonfed Audio files (so little...)

watched roughly 1 episode of a chinese show with only chinese subs (I SHOULD up this number honestly, because when i did the episode it was not draining and i was relaxed and sleepy so like i clearly Can do this task without mentally draining myself now... its just motivation...)

for the sake of my heart... i did write 3 little mini chinese stories, just for fun. they were not hard though or very challenging, and probably a hot mess though, so all this really means is maybe my active vocabulary is getting a touch bigger. i also had a few convos with myself in chinese just to see if i could word my thoughts in chinese - i guess upside with this is my rough chinese active vocabulary is getting closer to my french >o>

The only real positive I see here is... ToT I at least did some things, so my skills won’t slip too much! But this is not nearly as much as I’d hoped to do. I do not think I did much to actually Improve this past month...

So I think my November goals will move forward and also be my December goals... I will do a December goals update post later.

If I think I did anything decent this month is was: 

Reading - not nearly as much as I wanted, but it feels directly helpful Every time I try to read more, so I’m going to keep doing it. And I’m glad I read at least a bit this month.

Clozemaster - while it is an activity I just do maybe 10-20 minutes a day in minute long bursts, I am happy i’m doing it because i was ABLE TO DO IT CONSISTENTLY. it was easy enough to get myself to do, that when I got too busy to read, I could do this each day still. Its a compact way to at least pick up some new vocab and hanzi. It’s roughly similar to anki, but unlike anki, I can actually focus on Clozemaster (for now). So I’ll probably keep doing it. It’s easy to slot into down time like commercials or when I’m waiting for things. If nothing else, it helps keep me studying at least a little. Also you know me i LOVE the challenge of hearing what someone else did and trying to do it TOO to prove if it works. Someone said they did the Spanish Fast Track in Clozemaster, watched shows in Spanish, and that’s how they got to B1. So of course... I have to see if doing the Chinese Fast Track, and watching more shows in only Chinese, will boost up my own language ability lol. (This is also how I got myself to learn the 2000 most common words AND try to read initially - someone posted they used X common word decks, then jumped right into reading, and so I was like “if they can do it so can I” and I did it too ToT which was rough but did sort of work).

Incorporating more LISTENING. I did a few hours of Listening-Reading, and honestly I just need to in SOME WAY be increasing my listening practice! I’m thinking about just listening to audiobooks in the background again, or listening to condensed audio files of shows in the bg. Because like... although I think Listening-Reading is the FASTEST way so far I’ve used to boost my listening skills (and pick up some new words while doing it), doing any listening has clearly been helping a ton. I know that in the few months I HAVE been adding more listening activities, I’ve already seen major benefits. Its much easier for me now to hear words before I manage to read the eng or chinese subtitles - and to be able to hear ONLY audio and still be able to understand the sentence or phrase. I was watching Fearless Whisper in only chinese last night, and I’m not sure if they have a Shanghai accent but I could tell they were saying some words differently but it was still quite easy for me to pick out the words/phrases being said (again, faster then glancing at the chinese subtitles). In Go Ahead, which I’ve been watching with chinese eng dual subs, I can catch a lot of the dialogue (since its daily life) without needing to look at the subs. I’ve been having a much easier time hearing chinese songs and picking out the phrases and words I know and guessing at the song’s lyrics (and singing along’s been easier just since I can catch the sounds without needing the text lyrics as much). Just like... in general I am well aware this listening more has definitely helped the skill. And its so easy to improve too!! You just LISTEN MORE! (Although, Listening-Reading is quite mentally draining, but with that you’re also picking up new words so its worth the drain a bit). But like.. if you just read, then separately do listening practice, the listening skill seems to drag itself up to match what words you know in reading. So at this point ANY listening activity I do is helpful! The Chinese Spoonfed Audio is so useful! I just get so bored of ‘educational’ style materials I avoid doing it. (Which is why clozemaster is useful - I only have to see educational material for 1 minute at a time - but if i do too much of that I’d probably avoid it too). So like... I’ve been avoiding Listening this past month because I don’t want to listen to something boring, and I don’t want to do something as intense as Listening-Reading. So I think the lesson for me is just... do something involving listening. Its okay if its ‘less perfect’ because its just random audio like a audio book or audio drama - if it gets me TO listen to something, its helpful enough.

[rigelmejo]

i really love the fanfic hanshe

i can REALLY tell my vocabulary has increased from reading it. sometimes i can go through 1-4 pages and only look up 1-2 words for clarification, its exciting. like i can actually speed read this fic now in some scenes.

its hilariously funny to me seeing which scenes i know the words for lol. i am CLEARLY biased in learning detective/crime novel words, the scenes with the murdery ghosts and people i can zoom through cause dmbj/silent reading/guardian been teaching me ‘bloody drips’ ‘knife’ ‘hand’ ‘scent of blood’ etc for months ToT

then like as for the other stuff - hanshe’s been good for me picking up description of actions ‘pat his shoulder, look at, pick up, go upstairs, run to, wince, smirk, look confused, blink, grab someone and hug, push someones arm away’ etc, and also for daily life objects like shirts/bottles/cups/plates/boxes/counters/cupboards/bikes/food stands/doors/stairs/etc. since it all takes place in one town, mostly the hanshe of xiaoge’s and whatever job-of-the-moment location wu xie works at, all the area’s common words get more familiar the more i read. right now its a lot of park and celebrity/acting lingo. which i am already sure will help me later if i read a story about someone in showbusiness - i’m picking up the words ‘bodyguard, personal assistant, set workers, daily workers, day job, food truck, acting scene, celebrity, actor, singer, singer fan, fanmail, costumes, makeup, shoot a scene, set manager, company’ and also ‘flowers, blossoms, canopy, trail, park, scenery.’ Whereas the first 10 chapters in this novel focused on a clothing store, so i picked up mostly the hanshe’s common words and then various clothing items/working in a store words. if the setting keeps changing for each new case in this fic, it would be cool to keep getting new vocab in new ‘settings’ i learn.