31 Days of Chinese πΊοΈ
Stats
(TogglTrack used for data visualization)
With Passive Immersion
Without Passive Immersion
An hour or so per day is not bad at all, though I'm aiming to push that to 2 hours for next month. There's also too much inconsistency across all activities on a day-to-day basis.
Overall, decent progress for my first month. Good job James!
Vocabulary
(31 Day Streak)
As for Anki, I started out with 10 cards per day which has been a consistent but not overwhelming pace. Around the 3rd week I dropped it to 0 new cards to focus more on immersion (though I ended up not doing that, which has been quite silly of me).
I've been really satisfied with the Refold 1K Deck. Feels polished. Each card came with a word and sentence, alongside provided audio. It also comes with an image representing the word, though I have not found it to be that useful other than to make the card look nice.
Seeing the word being used in a sentence definitely helps with retention. It acts as a useful anchor. Whenever I'm unable to figure out the meaning of the word, I just take a look at the sentence it's being used in and the memory comes rushing back.
Around the same time I dropped my new Anki cards to zero, I somehow stumbled upon Hanzi Hero which is heavily inspired by Remembering the Hanzi. What piqued my interest was that it reminded me of Mandarin Blueprint, which I've wanted to get awhile ago but the price tag kept it just out of my reach.
My first impressions are positive. It's too early to tell how effective it is but the idea of breaking down characters into components and using mnemonics to memorize every aspect of a character (pinyin, tone, meaning) resonates with me.
I will be writing a review once I exhaust the free tier, so stay tuned!
Grammar
I've been using AllSetLearning's Grammar Wiki, which has been an amazing resource for learning grammar. I spend roughly 5 - 15 minutes on the website every day to prime my brain whenever it encounters grammar rules I don't quite get yet.
I have no intentions of spending more time on this as of now.
Tones
My tone recognition is abysmal and is definitely my weakest ability, so I've been carving out 10 - 20 minutes per day to just work on recognizing tones. As per Luna's recommendation from the Mandarin Refold server, I decided to try out Word Swing's Tone Training course.
Here are the results:-
Not bad but I still have a long way to go. And I feel like the results are a bit positively skewed because the last test was kinda a fluke.
(In this very image, the website crashed on me)
(No crashes so far)
Once I was done with that, I've started using the MΗ or MΓ ? website. It focuses on tone pairs instead of tone in isolation. The website is laggy and constantly keeps crashing on me though, so I downloaded the free Character Mine web app from the same creator that includes "MΗ or MΓ ?". That has been more of a smooth ride.
Besides that , I think I should watch more videos that explain the 5 tones in more detail. Maybe I'll finally figure something out by doing that because at this point I'm thinking I'm tone-deaf. I wonder if practicing relative pitch improves tones. Hmm...
Listening
Based on my stats, I spend most of my time (excluding Passive Immersion) on listening. My major source of listening so far has been ChineseTrack (formerly ChineseLearnOnline) and ChinesePod.
I figured out a nice way to include a lot more listening into my daily life has been to listening to an hour of ChineseTrack while I take a daily walk in the early morning. ChineseTrack is a progressive audio course that gradually reduces the English used throughout the course, replacing them with Chinese. I'm a big fan of ChineseTrack and I plan to write a review for it once I complete all 420 (!) lessons.
ChinesePod is more for when I need something to listen for fun and is more useful for me as a passive immersion tool. I can randomly listen to any episode when I feel like it. Newbie, since Beginner is a little too much for me.
I found the hosts (Ken Carrol + Jenny Zhu) to be charming and likeable. Apparently they left the company long ago though so it seems that I'm listening to some really old lessons. Also, the loud intro and annoying mid-roll "quiz" are a little annoying, to say the least.
Reading
Around the 3rd week or so, I finished reading my first Graded Reader, "Twenty-Three Cats" from Imagin8 Press. It's a silly book about a kid that has twenty-three cats. There is no riveting plotline to be found here and that is to be expected. Reading to it though was surprisingly fun, as I discovered I could already read 100% of the words and understand roughly 98% of all the sentences. The audio is completely free on the website.
The next day I got In Search of Hua Ma by Mandarin Companion. I've only read the first chapter so far but it's definitely a step-up in terms of being interesting. I went through my listen > read + listen > read > read + listen routine that I do with any written media and that helped me a lot with getting through it.
Been procrastinating on reading though, so I hope to finish another graded reader or two by the end of next month.
Watching
(Might rename this to "3-Channel Reading", since that's how Refold classifies it)
Most of my watch time has been dedicated to Mandarin Click. Quality-wise I think it's better than most. The use of images, clear voice and the ability to turn on and off subtitles makes it a really attractive channel for me. I even bought their audio files on their website so I can get access to their "normal speed" audio (and to help them out for their great work).
The Algorithm Gods at Youtube decided to show me this show and I gave them my blessings. I really enjoyed this. The plot was unique and horrifying, the art style is stunning and the characters are well-developed. Can't wait to see the next episode!
It turns out it has both Chinese audio and Chinese subtitles, so I decided to try it out for fun. I could pick up a few words here and there which was encouraging. I plan to revisit this video in a few months to see how far I have progressed.
Reflection
Things I'm Happy With:-
- Read my first Graded Reader and did it easily too.
- Figured out a schedule that works for me.
- Feels like I'm already at a HSK2 level.
Things I'm Not Happy With:-
- Didn't immerse in reading as much as I wanted to.
- Consistency across all activities is sorely lacking.
- Tone recognition is still poor.
For (3) though, I probably just need to listen a lot more.
Goals
- Read more (especially Graded Readers).
- Listen more.
- Stay consistent.