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rigelmejo · 4 years

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Unrelated completely, regarding listening reading method:

I am genuinely so excited to test the listening reading method out wholeheartedly. When I looked up the method, few people were trying it with Chinese, and of the people I saw a lot were beginners with less vocabulary than I have which I think both made the task harder for them and made their progress look different than I imagine mine will.

For example, in my first attempts using listening reading method, I noticed I picked up a TON of words I could already read, and a TON of phrases I could already read but didn’t properly “chunk” until I heard them aloud. Whereas the beginners tended to document picking up entirely new words, and not understanding much of any paragraph for the first several chapters. Whereas again, because I had more vocabulary, my first chapters I listening reading method did I heard a TON of individual words/followed the main gist, and it took several chapters for me to start finally understanding full phrase chunks and sentence chunks together. I 100% think the listening reading method can work with mandarin, I just think since few people have tried it and shared the experience, I’m going to find out how much it can improve someone’s mandarin myself...

I saw people who did listening reading method with german, and Dutch, who like the creator of the method ended up going from 0 to B1-B2 listening and sometimes-reading* skill in 3-5 months (reading skill tended to depend on how much they focused on the actual text during target language audio/target language text portion). The people with the most success usually already had a foundation of several hundred or a couple thousand common words, and had seen some grammar summarized beforehand (both of which I have already done with mandarin). I’m extremely curious how far the listening reading method can take my reading skills specifically - since the method mainly improves listening, and reading is simply affected a bit as a consequence of picking up new words/reading target language text along with the audio during one of the steps. With Chinese I suspect I’ll have to do more Hanzi learning, and reading-only work like intensive reading, to supplement my reading skills. However I already do a lot of intensive reading, so maybe that will keep the skills relatively even.

I do know that only couple dozen hours of listening reading method already boosted my listening skills a TON. So listening reading method definitely improves listening skills, as it is intended to. The actual method suggests learners listen read through an entire novel in a week or two, then do another novel etc, at least 3 novels though potentially more - and redoing some novels again from the start if desired. For my kind of novels - like Guardian by Priest, that means 106+ chapters, 800+ pages, 30 minutes audio a chapter (53 hours for the English text-chinese audio portion, another 53 hours for the Chinese text-chinese audio portion, and lets say half as many hours to read it in English 26.5 hours). So that is 132.5+ hours to listen read to Guardian. The listening reading method assumes you do a few books, so let’s say around 3 books, 396 hours (roughly 400 hours). Well... no wonder people saw such improvements! 400 hours of listening to comprehensible input in a European language will get an English speaker quite far into learning. Most European languages according to FSI take around 600-750 hours for an English native speaker to learn. Listening reading method would fill a huge chunk of those hours, and if you focus on the reading portion too, then that should definitely at least be a solid foundation into B1 I can imagine.

Listening reading methods creator also tends to do these in 6-12 hour reading bursts per day - which I absolutely never do because I’m lazy and unable to focus on things for too long usually without switching things up. But like I’ve mentioned, even me just doing maybe 12 hours of listening reading method so far, in small 30 minute to 2 hour chunks, has been enough to make noticeable improvement in my listening comprehension. If someone is already intermediate and just wants to improve their listening skill, I think they’d see fast results like I have regarding their listening skill dragging up closer to their reading skill level.

When I read the listening reading method creators website, they sounded like 10 hours was about how long it took (for beginners in a language) to start parsing individual words and recognizing them, 30 hours to start hearing word chunks and phrases they could understand, and 60-100 hours to start comprehending a majority of the words.

I am therefore very curious what my rate of improvement will be. I do feel chinese study using the listening reading method at least for listening skills will see similar levels of improvement. I’m wondering if my listening skills will improve a bit faster, since I’m already past the “progress at 30 hours” mark expectations wise - I can hear many individual words, can hear many sentence chunks/phrases, and just struggle to follow some full sentences and catch brand new words until I’ve heard them several times. I do very much want to completely go through Guardian with this method - for many reasons lol. 1. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in english and I’ll have a chance to use that for study which is cool, 2. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in chinese and this makes it doable/more comprehensible for my current skill level (aka following along to the audiobook I will read at a less slow pace/comprehend more since the English will be fresh in my mind, compared to if I just read it extensively on its own), 3. Avenuex made a beautiful audiobook I adore and I’ll have an excuse to listen to it while actually comprehending everything since I’ll have the English and Chinese novel to look at while o read! So... once I’m through Guardian, I’ll be able to answer for myself what over 100 hours of progress doing the listening reading method produce, how well it works when using a book with a more complicated/high vocab style - which is sort of priest, reading challenge wise, and the kind of novel the listening reading method creator recommends using. Also, I’ll have read Guardian! ovo)/ and I will have read a full priest novel, so I’ll have picked up words by my favorite author that will hopefully make other priest novels easier to read (the same reason Tian Ya Ke may be helpful).

———-

Another thing people who have tried the listening reading method suggest doing first (particularly if studying a language much different than your native language, but for any language tbh). The creator of the method suggested: knowing a few hundred to a few thousand common words, and having looked at a grammar guide or overview prior. That’s something anyone who’s already a bit of a beginner, to low intermediate, probably has done or is doing. In addition, some people who have done this method suggested using something like sentence audio flashcards (in English and target language audio) and listening to them a few times, repeating them, until one felt comfortable with them. Generally common word/grammar ones, and you could do “listening reading” with those sentences too (reading them while listening to the audio). This would serve as a primer to learn the basics comfortably before going into listening reading novels. They suggested doing yjis would make the method work better - they got to B2 in Dutch in a handful of months of intensive listening reading by doing this beforehand and they think it helped a lot. While I think it’s not necessary, I do think of listening reading is hard, then getting a basis beforehand as a beginner and/or covering a easier basics common language material first will help. I use the Chinese SpoonFed Audio files which basically amounts to the same thing but no reading (if I used the flashcards still, it would include reading). So I do have some sentences/phrases/words I have a good listening foundation for already. Also, as mentioned, I do read, so for many common words and Hanzi I already can read them. I do think this advice is very good for beginners though, if they want to see noticable results sooner (versus 30-50 hours into listening reading before they start learning significant amounts - basically it just means they’d do 30-50 hours prestudy instead of basic common words/grammar, to make the listening reading initially less difficult). A total beginner could dive right into listening reading (just like my chaotic self first started to try to read Chinese knowing 500 words and brute forcing mdzs and guardian a few paragraphs at a time), it just means it’ll feel more difficult at first for a while, and they’ll be mostly learning basics for a while first before they build enough of a basis to comprehend more. Which is fine. It all just comes down to how much incompréhensibilty can you personally tolerate without giving up. The creator of the method? Can tolerate a TON. Me? I can tolerate a brutally large amount, surprisingly, but usually I need to comprehend had least the main idea and that’s a minimum of like 40-60% depending on which parts I’m comprehending. Most people will feel it’s unbearable until they can comprehend at least 80-90% (and I certainly PREFER material I comprehend that much of). And most people ideally are comfortable once they understand 95-98% (think reading a book in your native language with some unknown words you can figure out easily from context, or graded readers made to feel this easy with around this many unknown words for you to figure out in context, or maybe manhua/manga/comics once you’re a pretty decent intemediate level in a language etc).

#January progress #listening reading method #rant #I am genuinely like #so excited #as soon as I’m in the right mood to do it #I can’t wait to #because it’s just like a bunch of stuff I wanna do #!!!!!!#and I really do think the method has merit #since I discovered it and at the Least #combined some of its points into my regular study routine and reading #it’s improved my listening skills a LOT

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emmastudies · 6 years

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Emma, I’ve never struggled with school but I just came out of year 11 with average scores, and I’ve always been an A+ student I’m not too sure on how to actually study, what are some ways I can study?

Hi! Here are a few things :D Hopefully it helps! Obviously, do take it with a pinch of salt as not everything recommended may work for you. But it is about figuring out what is effective for you!��

Firstly, it is important to make the distinction between what you’re studying for. As in are you studying for your finals, an in-class assessment or just a topic quiz in your next class? Obviously, bigger exams require a lot more studying and generally over a longer period of time whereas a topic quiz might just be some quick revision over a couple of days. Understanding the format of your upcoming exam or test can be important for knowing how to study!

Figure out what you have to study. Write down what you need to go through to revise. You could do it on a computer, as a to-do list or as a mindmap - whatever works best for you. When you’re studying for several things at once, separate your subjects and use subheadings for each topic. I always use my syllabus or curriculum to see what I’ve got to cover. It’s always a good idea to make a point of anything tough topics. For example, if there is something you’ve struggled with during class, make that a priority rather than studying something that you already know.

Make a study plan! Having a schedule is a great way to organise and methodically study prior to your upcoming test. I would recommend using one my study schedule printables which you can download here (under weekly schedule) for free. Plan out your weekly routine - including activities you already have. Then you map out when you can study. You can check out an example of planning it out here.

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Figure out how you’re going to take study notes. I will generally do new study notes if I have big exams coming up. For me, I find writing study notes easiest on OneNote. You can see my formatting here. I will read through my in-class notes and textbook to take really brief notes. I will also add any additional information I find useful from the internet. You don’t need to re-do notes if you’ve already got some that are good for studying. I generally won’t re-do my notes properly if I have a smaller test coming up - perhaps just use flashcards or make some rough notes.

Sometimes simple notes aren’t as effective than other revision methods. You could try writing flashcards (for things like vocabulary, definitions, summarises, equations), mindmaps for linked ideas (for things such as facts about a person or subheadings under one topic) or timelines/cause-and-effect maps (for history subjects or seeing connections between events). Figuring out what style works for you will make your study more effective. If you’re unsure what your learning style is, take this quiz! Once you know you can find more precise ways to study.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Read through past papers or sample answers. Depending on what examination system you’re doing, you might be able to access previous years tests and the recommended style of answers. This is a great way to see how you compare and what you can do to improve your answers! It’s always a good way to test yourself if you do timed practices papers. That way you can see if you’re within the time frame and can finish.

Check out YouTube for any educational videos on what you’re learning! Sometimes they’ll be short, descriptive videos about the topics you’re studying. It can be good to watch someone else teach you about it - especially if you’ve had trouble understanding from your teacher.

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to destress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

Here are a few other links that could be worth reading:

how to prepare for exams

how to revise from notes

how to structure a weekly review

things (personal, academic, etc) to do every week

how to stop avoiding studying

what to do when you feel exhausted before studying

how I stay motivated

tips on maintaining motivation

10 tips to increase your motivation for study

how to remove distractions

types of procrastination and how to deal with them

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fictional-worlds-are-exquisite · 5 years

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parents saying shit like ‘my kid wants to be blah blah but they’re just not smart enough’ gets me so mad honestly

when i was little and we started learning multiplication timetables, i struggled so much, i just couldn’t keep up with the other kids and i was falling behind. my mum made me flashcards with something like 3x6 on one side and 18 on the other, there were flashcards from all multiplication possibilities from 1-12, my parents helped me practise with them every day after school. I started to have fun, actually. when we did ‘basic facts’ tests in class that featured maths, including multiplication, division, addition and subtraction, i wasn’t very good at first. a year or so later (we did this at pretty much every year level at primary school) I was the fastest and most accurate in the class. I think my record was like 100 questions correct in 1 minute 30? But I also have vague memories of trying to get below 1 minute 10 so it’s possible I did better at an older age.

when we learnt more complicated maths i never once understood any of it all the way through primary school. my parents tried to help and i learnt some of it but it just wasn’t working. the teacher wanted us to use all these weird methods to solve problems and my brain wasn’t going with them. basic facts tests were the only kind of maths tests i was good at, and that wasn’t much to brag about going into high school.

in high school a teacher told me a fraction is just division, top divided by the bottom. i CLICKED and i started understanding all this stuff, fractions were one of the things that had stuffed me up throughout primary school but suddenly i got it. every time a new concept was introduced i usually needed some extra help from the teacher, and this didn’t change throughout high school. I always asked the most questions and probably needed the most help. I didn’t understand all the homework and I’d bring it in to the teacher the next day to get help. Sometimes I made appointments with them especially for help. I’ll tell you what, I was often near top of the class and I think actually top of the class once. I got a reputation as being smart. I wasn’t, really, I struggled so much but I was determined. And I started to love maths, it had formulas and a certain way of doing things and if you did that you’d get the right answer. It was cool.

I went on to do calculus at high school and love that too, even when the teacher for it was utter shit and didn’t help, he barely taught. I learnt how to teach myself and i WOULD ask for help even if it took an argument for him to actually teach me properly. I just came a long way on that path. I was always behind everyone else but I always pushed my way ahead each time. It was work and I loved it. I could’ve gone into a maths career, I have no doubt I’m determined enough to take that path. I didn’t, but it was a choice. Maths did become more fun and relaxing to me than anything else though so it’s more something to enjoy now.

SCIENCE. I never did science in my 8 years at primary school. one time a substitute teacher put a nail in some coke or something and we observed what happened but other than that? Nah. my best friend at high school? Didn’t really do science. Her parents were quite religious and well, evolution isn’t really their thing. We were pretty much matched on knowledge there. We both got asked to skip a year in science because we showed the potential to, along with 3 other girls from another school that had taught science. We all accepted. One of the girls from the other school got top of the class once or twice, my best friend got placed sometimes too, I never did but was getting top marks for everything theory-based, I just struggled when it came to practical experiments. It was a bizarre trip but one of my favourite things I got to do at high school.

I always got top of class in history and before that I tended to get placed in global and local studies aka social sciences or whatever you call it. Never did history at primary school, never did geography, never did any of that. Have I mentioned I went to a shitty primary school? i did lmao. We got taught a solid schedule of english, maths and P.E. there. it was all new to me whereas everyone not from my school seemed to catch on quickly.

I’m not here to brag about my marks, the point of this is I was given the right resources or the right teachers suddenly and that changed everything. I never got top marks for anything at primary school, I wasn’t ‘smart’ there. At award ceremonies I think I got maybe 2 awards total? (keeping in mind it was a small school and there were more awards than kids sjdfhdf). I normally got at least 2 things each year in high school.

if you think your kid isn’t smart enough to do a certain career, maybe you should be thinking about how you can help them improve to get there. in my experience, i’ve learnt that if I’m determined and stubborn enough to do it, I’ve always been able to WITH the help of the people around me. like my parents. maybe they won’t get there in the end but I’m telling you, you cannot decide that for them.

#i read a lot on quora and there is a weird amount of parents that pose this sort of question #(i'm aware there are people paid to post questions that could be some of these but when you check the asker you'll find they're often real #parents)#it's so weird #why is it always how do i break it to them not how can i help #yeah some people aren't made for some careers but?? they are?? a child?? they have so far to go still #if your kid wants to do rocket science then fucking help them don't go oh that's a bit tricky #and if they don't get there well that's something they have to deal with #you're not protecting them you're just limiting them #because i have seen it posed as i don't want them to be upset later when they don't get there!#let them be. it's life. you're not helping.#i'm really not trying to pose as the example smart child sdkfsdf i'm just saying i worked hard #and got somewhere

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professorjjong · 7 years

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Hi rose I was wondering if you had any tips or suggestions on how to learn Japanese by oneself. Do you think knowing Chinese would help in learning it? It's so cool that you know more than one language I wish I could be that cool ;w;

hahaha i’m really #NotCool lol

i actually learned japanese by myself so i’m literally full of tips and suggestions haha.

addressing knowing chinese--do you mean that you’re currently learning chinese? if you’re considering learning them side-by-side i honestly don’t think that would be very helpful? the two languages developed independently of each other so they’re virtually unrelated grammatically. japanese kanji does come from china but, unless you’re talking about traditional chinese, almost all of the characters were edited to be faster to write, whereas the original versions are still used in japanese. i do think kanji is important (and fun!) to learn but you should take it slowly and don’t make it your first priority. you’re not going to want to learn a bunch of kanji right off the bat because you’re going to forget all of the ones that aren’t used in common words. i’d say learn a few every week or so? find a pace that works with you best.

if you mean that you already know chinese, there’s a handful of words which are similar and, if you can write it,you’ll be able to pick up kanji faster simply because your brain is already wired to interpret and recreate such characters. but tbh i don’t think it would be much of an advantage.

but before you even touch kanji, learn both kana systems. you can find guides fro them easily enough online. some ppl recommend not learning katakana but tbh i find that katakana is used very often. learn hiragana first going down the rows. at first i learned it five per day but i bumped up that speed after a while. keep writing them. write them whenever u have a free minute just write them over and over again and try to make their sounds as you do.

from this point.... it’s a little fuzzier? there’s a fuck ton of japanese resources out there online. not including textbooks you can buy or rent at ur local library. my suggestion is to find a resource that starts from the beginning and get going with it. no matter what website or book it is it’s not going to be perfect. keep this in mind. i remember with my first book it explained adjectives so poorly i gave up on learning japanese for months because i thought it was just too hard--but then i eventually found a different source which explained adjectives in like two sentences and it made perfect sense. so, whenever you’re using your primary reference and it confuses you, go to a secondary source and see if it explains it better. there’s so many resources out there you can find the explanation you need for any topic.

when you have a basic grasp of grammar, like ‘AはBです” levels of basic, start speaking and writing it. i have a little gaudy pink journal which contains my very first japanese journal to myself, written in glittery pink pen. for these journals don’t look up new words and don’t worry about being grammatically correct. just write. set a length requirement--maybe only four or five lines at first and then let that requirement grow larger and larger as it gets easier and easier for you to write. if you find yourself needing a word in english, like you got halfway through the sentences before suddenly realizing you don’t know the word you need, try to sound it out in katakana. believe it or not, it’s sometimes a struggle to understand english words said in japanese, so try to get yourself used to this concept. do try, however, to only use words you know and to write every day. it doesn’t matter if your journals start out like ‘my name is susan. i am seventeen. i went to school today. in the morning i ate breakfast. i had a test.’ just write.

as for talking, virtually the same rules apply. at first you’re going to have to force it, so try in the morning while you’re getting ready, or in the shower, while cooking... etc.. look up pronunciation videos online and soon you’ll find yourself not forcing out the japanese when you’re talking to yourself.

once you have a good basis in grammar, you can move on to learning more vocabulary. i, personally, used the jlpt sets on memrise, starting with n5. but, as with all sets, these aren’t perfect. memrise is, however, fucking great. use it to build sets of the vocabulary in your primary resource or vocabulary you think might be useful to you in your journals. memrise is themed around learning words being similar to taking care of plants, so it times when you should review different words. on the mobile app you can set it to alert you at a specified time to go over your words, and you can also set goals to drive you to review words or learn new words for a certain length of time every day.

personally, for the words i add to my own personal lists, i don’t worry about kanji, as the jlpt sets all have kanji. you will, however, need to learn kanji using something else. personally, i used he book remembering the kanji but it’s not perfect. as with grammar, there’s a lot of different resources so find the one that explains kanji in the way you like best.

for me i made flashcards of kanji and went over them daily. when the number became too great for that, i went over all of them once a week and put the words i got wrong into a separate pile called my ‘stress words.’ i would go over these several times a day and then, once a week, would learn a few more kanji and add those to the new ‘stress words’ for that week. i also bought a mini white board to use when writing kanji but it’s also a good idea to practice with graph paper so you can learn to keep them in the proper shape and size.

another great app i liked a lot is hellotalk. it’s virtually an instant messaging app meant to connect you with people who are native speakers of the language you want to learn. since i used it, it has also become a little bit more facebook-esque,which i think can make things a bit awkward--as you can make a post about what ur eating or whatever and a japanese person might see it and then you can use that as a way to start conversation and avoid the awkwardness. it also has ways for you to limit what sex and age range can talk to you, but when i used the app recently i had people voice call me virtually immediately and i’m personally not comfortable with that :/ i’d hope that the app has maybe changed that setting but i haven’t checked. i’d suggest downloading it and seeing if the setting has changed or if ur comfortable with just refusing calls from people because having ppl to talk to is the best way to learn.

another website similar to hellotalk is lang-8, but, instead of instant messaging, on lang-8 you write journal entries in the language you’re learning and native speakers correct it--and then you correct their journals in exchange. obviously, you have to be a bit more advanced in japanese to manage this, but it’s very useful! your journals don’t have to be anything insightful--i remember writing one about how iced coffee is more popular in asia than it is in america and another about going to the grocery store. it’s also a good way to potentially meet ppl you may befriend and speak japanese to some day!

these next two are hella amazing. one is an app called imi wa? it’s a great dictionary app that helps you conjugate verbs, search kanji by not only radicals but by ‘primitives,’ and, best of all, has an analyze function which lets you paste in a block of text and defines all of them so you can translate sentences with much more ease. the other is rikai-kun (chrome), -chan (mozilla) and -sama (i forgot?). it’s another dictionary for ur browser that will let you scroll over words and immediately look over their definitions. you can develop an over reliance on it but at the beginning stages it’s going to be hella useful so, download it.

a great resource in particular to use with rikaikun is nhk easy , which is japanese news articles written for elementary and middle school students--and foreigners! you can set it so locations/names/businesses will appear in different colors and you can scroll over some words for definitions. the articles are also relatively short so i’d recommend going through at least one a day to practice your reading. also considering following japanese fans or artists on twitter and trying to translate their tweets--but if you find yourself getting overwhelmed by the number or length of tweets, don’t feel pressured to understand all of them. a lot of learning a language by yourself is trying to avoid frustrating yourself--since you’re studying alone, there’s nothing to keep you from giving up aside from yourself. so if you find yourself getting very frustrated, you should probably switch up what you’re doing.

in terms of practicing your listening skills, i’d recommend watching dramas. try to find half hour long dramas (or just watch half an hour long episode) and then immediately after watching the half hour, watch it again without subtitles. at first you’ll feel like you get absolutely nothing out of this, but stick with it.make sure not to play with your phone or distract yourself while listening. try to remember what the characters said or what’s going on in the episode. soon you’ll find yourself recognizing words!!! then phrases!!! then sentences!! then you’ll be able to understand it on your own!

if you really like anime, you can also watch anime at first or every once in a while--but i’d really recommend dramas. people in anime don’t speak like normal people do, but it can be easier to recognize words and such because their voices are clearer. dramas better reflect the way actual japanese people speak. (however i wouldn’t recommend watching something like terrace house because it is actual people talking and the mics aren’t perfect. if you’re a student, i’d say to watch high school dramas because they will contain words which may be relevant to you in your journals and while talking to ourself and what not!)

you can also rewatch episodes with the screen blackened, so you’re just listening to it? i personally think this is lots of fun but that’s just me.

songs tend to follow their own grammatical rhythms so they’re not too useful for studying aside from vocabulary.

the key, to me, at least, was to study every day. my schedule was:

1. talk to self.

2. study stress words (once a week go over all kanji)

3. half hour drama episode (watch twice)

4. nhk article

5. journal

6. memrise vocab

7. translating tweets

the key is to try to study every day and to make a schedule of your own which lines up with how much free time you have. you can divide drama episodes into ten minute blocks, read your article on the bus, write your journal before bed and do memrise while waiting in line at the grocery store. just find something which works for you--and don’t let yourself get frustrated. even if you’re tired as all fuck, try to at least reach your memrise goals or watch your drama episode, or whatever study method you find the most useful. it’s hard work, but be nice to yourself!

頑張って！

#i talked A LOT so i put it under a read more otl #answered #anonymous #Anonymous

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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same, feel free to talk to me! Language learning can be lonely, it definitely helps to have others to motivate you and share ideas. I wouldn't say my methods were efficient but I love translation work, so I would brute-force translate my favorite novels! it helped bc i'm the type to skip words I don't know and never look them up lol. this definitely increased my vocab/literacy since I had good listening comp but was terrible at reading japanese. also provides a goal to reach towards!

I used to do that brute force translating novels! I definitely do see how it helps stop skipping over unknown words! When I read my physical novels, I can tell what’s an ‘adjective’ probably or a ‘description’ and if my eyes see unknown words they just kind of jump right over those things instead of trying to figure them out. whereas when i translate, i have to actually pause and figure out those adjectives/descriptions even if i don’t know them beforehand.

i would love to hear how you worked on speaking/writing!

my grammar in chinese i know is attrocious when i produce (write/speak). I was only focused on reading the first 6 months. So I always was working on understanding grammar, but not producing it correctly. Then after that I joined HelloTalk and started chatting with people. I rushed to learn like 2000 common words so i wouldnt struggle to communicate my basic ideas/so i could follow casual conversation. It worked as far as understanding others, and they could mostly understand me - i just know i would pick ‘odd’ word choices (like gaoxing instead of kaixin, or chang-taste instead of ‘shi’ try, etc, just picking a word that technically means something understandable but is NOT how it would be communicated in chinese), or i would just express things in a weird way (need to reword if i want to sound better, need to use a le in a different place, need to put everything X before a de, etc). Eventually I got a speaking partner, and i realized how attrocious my tones were lol! (main problems were just - i did not realize how to say 3rd tone right, and i could say tones ok when speaking very slow and thinking about each syllable - but when speaking fast at conversational speed my tones would change and be wrong a decent amount). I was okay saying the REALLY basic stuff fast - like phrases in casual conversation that come up constantly (weishenme, nizenmele? xianzai, etc) but other words i ‘knew’ if i said them fast sounded ugh...

So I was going to work on just listening/repeating tone pairs for a while. Nail those basics so they’re more instinctive maybe. And I’ve been listening to a ton of audiobooks and audio-flashcards the past couple months, just trying somehow to get my speaking more instinctive... but i really am quite lost on how to improve it.

Listening/reading have been much easier for me to figure out how to study/improve lol!

Did you ever learn from watching dramas and picking up words through context?

I’m curious how you learned hanzi too! If you just learned them as you learned new words, or studied hanzi a bit beforehand! I know for me, it seems like when reading - new words with hanzi i already know are miles easier to learn! Whereas words with brand new hanzi i can see 20 times in a row in a book and still struggle to recognize the word.

#replies #@a-whump-muffin

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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8/19/20 progress

I already knew this I supposed... but further confirmation that

It’s easier to immerse in a new material, if you look up keywords for the first episode or chapter. (Those first chapters are when a lot of the genre specific and story specific words pop up, so if you catch the keywords then it will be easier to follow all main-plot information in the following material).

immersing more DOES improve comprehension the more you do it.

I am watching Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang (The Shaw Eleven Lang). I first tried to watch it in December, then in general I tried to watch shows in only-chinese more in January-May. In those months, shows got consecutively a little bit easier to follow without looking words up - although mostly, each new genre the difficulty spiked again a bit. So difficulty was like: 10, 8, 7, 8, 6, 8, 6, 4, 7, 5, etc... where 10 is most difficult to follow. I do notice that overall, regardless of genre differences/show differences spiking difficulty back up, I am getting overall better at some things.

My reading speed, ability to catch words quickly that I’ve studied, ability to read through grammar easier, ability to read through *some grammar at a quicker speed, ability to look away from the screen more and still follow the plot (so listen comprehension is better, reading speed to catch up to when I look away is improved). Overall, just the comfort level of the activity - it doesn’t feel nearly as draining to immerse in only-chinese, it doesn’t feel like I need to use a translator to look up key words if I don’t want to. As in I feel I can at least minimally follow a plot even if I skip looking up words that catch my attention. I notice overall that I have more ability to figure out at least SOME words from context alone in bigger sentences - so not just verbs. And a super noticeable skill that has improved: my ability to notice name/place/proper noun introductions is WAY IMPROVED. For the whole year of learning Chinese, I really struggled immensely with recognizing when words were a name of something instead of a noun/adjective/verb to figure out. The only time I could tell was if someone said ‘zhe she’ or ‘mingzi’ or ‘jiao’ or ‘jieshao’ first to clue me in that it was about to be a proper name, or for people hearing ‘xiaojie, gongzi, shifu, shidi, shijie, shixiong, xiong, xiansheng, laoshi’ and eventually catching on that it’s a name. But places and named objects like swords or specialized tools like shovel types or named reports completely escaped me.

I remember that the first time I watched Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang, I could only follow the fact “there’s a sword they want, they know each other, and a princess (?) is running away from her fiance (?) who wants the fancy sword her family owns that everyone seems to want.” Which... to be honest, I do think that’s the minimum gist of the plot, so I did pretty well for my no-lookup guess of what was going on back in December. But this time when I watched, I looked up a lot of words more for double checking my correct comprehension or specifying details, not because I needed it to follow the plot. And for names, I just caught them: We’ve got Xiao Shi Yi Lang, Lian Chengbi, SiNiang, Shen Kunbi (the princess, I’m not sure I caught the second part right unless I can see it’s characters on screen), Xiao gongzi (the evil small woman who also looks like Lian Chengbi sometimes?), Jiao Zhu (Lord Jiao, the snake clan’s leader), the empress (? or queen, Shen family, I can’t quite catch if the first part of her name is a title or her name). The 4 great masters that Yi Lang, SiNiang, and Xiao gongzi just annihilated from importance... I caught the servant of Shen’s name too, the girl who begged Lian-xiong to take her with him to find her princess, but they haven’t said it enough for me to remember it.

I also catch that they’re mentioning the named place of the region often (Jiang something), the Shen clan area, and the sword does have a name (which I recognize the characters of but can’t remember the pronunciation of). I caught that Xiao gongzi is from a clan/kind of people too, the Heaven-something. All of this is a ton more specific detail-wise than I was ever able to catch back in December. Some of this is because I know new words, some is because I can read/comprehend faster so I have the TIME to catch other low-hanging-fruit details I should understand, some is because I’ve gotten much better at recognizing proper names versus nouns/adjectives/verbs. I’m really happy about the proper noun stuff... it was probably the HARDEST thing for me to distinguish in written chinese, whereas any other grammar issue was a bit perplexing but noticeable to me if I could just get extra time to read through it. I think again I probably have Tamen de Gushi novel to thank for this... it’s writing style used first person so it was easy to follow, but many other characters were always name-mentioned without usual introduction scenes, and yet others were left unnamed and so I had to get used to ‘that person’ and ‘aunt and uncle’ and ‘the gang of friends’ and get better at recognizing vague characters being talked about too.

I think a lot of these comprehension improvements in the last 8 months were partially just WATCHING more chinese-only stuff, and also doing 2000 word cards and reading in some short bursts (I’d read 15 chapters of Tamen de Gushi, a few chapters of Priest novels, and Mandarin Companion Sherlock).

In addition, I notice a decent increase lately from maybe May-August. I think what I added recently, that’s been helping - listening to chinese audio, and flashcards with sentences.

For Chinese audio I have 2 main sources - audiobooks/audiodramas where I just play them whenever I want either for background noise or to listen to and try to follow the plot, and an audio of Spoonfed Chinese sentences with english then chinese sentences so its very comprehensible audio ‘flashcards’ i can just play in 30 minute chunks in the background for ‘review’ or ‘exposure’ to i+1 sentences. This audio addition to study has been super easy to add, I just try to play it more. I think the audiodramas/books are helping me solidify the words I DO know, get more familiar with what ‘sounds right,’ increase my listening speed comprehension, and help set ‘phrases’ stick better in my head. The audio 30 minute ‘flashcard’ loops are like audio reinforcement of the sentences in anki I’m doing, and they give me more audio-only review and exposure compared to anki - helping me work on listening comprehension, and on hearing easy new i+1 sentences I can always comprehend and learn a little new stuff from each day. I really love big audio files of ‘flashcards’ and I discovered the study idea back when I studied japanese (the website japaneseaudiolessons.com was basically entirely based on this concept of teaching/study, and also to a degree I think Michael Thomas and Pimsleur are just paid versions of this method).

They let you be introduced to new things to learn in a very easy to understand way building on what you already know, and review in a way where the flashcards remind you of the translation in case you needed it. Its very low effort, but it really reinforces what you’ve learned and helps you pick up new stuff. (And it’s higher effort if you also try to repeat it and practice speaking). However, audio flashcard files I think work BETTER if you try to pay attention - at least if you hear any new sentences. That way you actively TRY to figure out what you expect the answer to be before you hear it, and note what the actual answer was so you remember this new word/grammar. Whereas reviews with this audio, you can pay attention a bit less actively, since its only going to be important to focus if you CAN’T automatically guess what the right answer is - in which case, listen more to that piece of audio. But if you’re replaying it over and over, even if you only actively pay attention some of the time, you’ll pay attention enough to pick up new info, and passively listen to things you comprehend already enough to review them. So overall, its definitely lower effort than listening to audiobooks/audiodramas and trying to purposely follow the plot. (Although I think passively listening to audiobooks/audiodramas is the easiest task, I don’t think it efficiently teaches you more as quickly as listening to audio-flashcard loops since in audiobooks/dramas you comprehend less).

Chinese flashcards with sentences in anki - right now all my anki flashcard decks use sentences mostly. The Spoonfed Chinese deck is helping with words IN context and WHAT contexts to correctly use different words. This is helping strengthen the foundation of words I know. Likewise, my HSK deck in anki also has sentences and explains individual character meanings, so that’s also reinforcing it. I’m mostly using these decks for exposure/recognition, so I’m not working on trying to correctly speak/produce such sentences very much (just occasionally). So they aren’t helping a ton at improving my speaking/production grammar. But they are helping me a lot with comprehending better, and with remembering the proper tones in words I know, and the proper words to use for different situations (especially with near synonyms). I think these cards are making my reading speed comprehension in chinese better (just like reading more in chinese was helping).

I have also been reading more - without a dictionary when possible, because I’m lazy. I haven’t been reading as much as I want, but I do feel what I’m doing is challenging myself. (I guess I just wish I challenged myself more ToT). I read chapter 1 of MoDu with no dictionary twice - the second time was much easier, somehow. I read part of chapter 1 of Guardian, part of chapter 1 of Tian Ya Ke. I read a little bit of Tamen de Gushi with no dictionary, I read a Mandarin Companion book. I notice that in general reading is helping me recognize phrases like how authors tend to word descriptions of body movements or appearance, or descriptions of emotional displays (like he rubbed his neck, put his hand in his pocket, face grew pale, eyes glanced away, mouth curled upward in a slight smile, etc). Those descriptions are getting much easier to recognize and read quickly. Also, I notice with more difficult novels, I’m getting better at roughly guessing unknown words with unknown characters - the hard part is getting myself to focus on paragraphs where I see a lot of unknown characters, because my eyes would prefer to just skim over them all. I have to make myself actually look, find the words I do know and grammar I recognize, then actually look at the unknown characters for clues of if they’re part of a 2-part version of a word I know the other character in, if they’re characters I can guess roughly the meaning of, if I can guess their sound or not, and what their word type is grammar wise if that will help me - is it a name, title, verb, adjective, noun.

Usually I can skip adjectives without losing the main idea of the plot, but I still slow down and try to figure out the adjective if it keeps popping up - it means the author relies on it a lot. Names automatically get easier once I realize they’re just names to recognize. And unknown characters part of 2 character words, if i CAN guess a meaning from context, are generally the most important for me to pick up. Because they usually contribute to plot or details, and they’re words I actually can keep relying on later on in the writing if I figure them out. As usual... dialogue is my strong suit, and the easiest part to follow. Action descriptions of things going on are the second easiest. Then finally, long descriptions of places/people/economy/looks/situation/group etc are still my weakest point since those parts are noun and adjective heavy, usually with less already-known general words I can lean on to help me.

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I am really pleased about my show comprehension improvements though. I’m thinking, as long as I look up the words in new shows for the first couple episodes, I should be able to get into new genres/new shows without them feeling draining anymore.

I’m going to keep working on my flashcards until they’re in the 2000s, to match up with my original old single-word 2000 cards. Then maybe focus more on reading. I’d like to get more comfortable reading novels (even though lol I know that’s probably THE HARDEST of my comprehension goals).

Also surprisingly I’ve been really picky about my tones lately, so I’m spending probably 1/3 of my study time overall just on focusing on tones - tone training, pinyin pronunciation basics again, listening carefully. I noticed my active vocabulary has decreased a little these past couple months... but I suspect that’s mostly because I’ve NOTICED where I was incorrectly using the wrong word for a situation, so now my mind isn’t auto-supplying a word to use unless I’m relatively sure its supposed to be used for that situation. So in the long term it’ll probably be a good thing. Likewise, words are auto-showing-up in my mind less to use if the tones are less solid.

I’ve been using the Hanzi flashcard deck on and off again (anki version). I’m contemplating adding my own pronunciation mnemonics to them, so they’ll be more thorough.

Other notes:

- nothing seems to make those words like ‘turan’ ‘suiran’ ‘jinran’ ‘shihou’ ‘zhiqian’ ‘ranhou’ ‘ziran’ really seem to stick for me except reading/listening more. They’re all ‘explanation’ words usually used in telling stories or descriptions, and since they’re not directly anything you could ‘draw/visualize’ then for me I find I just need to be exposed to enough examples of them being used.

- similarly, the way authors/storytellers say descriptions of people moving hands/eyes/heads/looks really is something to just... get used to. All the words are simple, its just getting used to seeing them in those combinations.

- i still have no idea if ‘repetitive listening’ of 50-100 times helps a LOT lol. But i do think listening MORE in general, definitely helps to a degree. Especially once you’ve got 1000-2000 words you’re vaguely familiar with. That means there’s a lot of words you’ll eventually Recognize when listening, even if you can’t comprehend full sentences.

- immersing in content you’re already familiar of the context of, is always easier. whether its because you read it/watched it in english before, or because you looked up keywords/summaries for the first couple episodes before diving in. That said, I prefer to also do some immersion where i go in knowing absolutely nothing (so if i need to, i’ll look up keywords while watching). Because i like to see exactly how much i can understand when i had nothing to rely on going into it. That said, that’s more for gauging progress. For actually PICKING UP NEW WORDS from a show or audio, I think having context ahead of time improves the ability to pick up new words.

- if you’re learning a language that happens to make audiodramas about stuff you like??? I 100% recommend checking them out! Chinese has been a treasure trove for me, because if I like a book or show, then there’s a corresponding book/show, and there’s usually also an audiodrama, and usually also fanmade dialogue-containing music video edit videos and AU edit videos, and regular music videos, and osts.... and you can find ONE story you like and have like 200+ hours of material to sink into. If I like one story (lets say MoDaoZuShi by MXTX) then I can watch a drama, read a novel (in chinese and english, in traditional or simplified characters), listen to an audiodrama, listen to ost, find a ton of music video edits with dialogues, find fanfic in multiple languages, watch donghua if I wanted animation instead of live action. And also check out any of the author’s other works. Same thing with getting into something by Priest - I can watch Guardian, listen to fanmade audiobooks, find music video edits with dialogue, listen to the ost, read the novel in traditional or simplified or english. And several other priest novels ALSO have audiodramas along with all this other stuff. A person can easily find a visual show, an audio drama/book, a text only novel, and a picture-text manhua all about some story they like. So they’ve got this very easy to find ‘study material’ to immerse in a variety of different ways. Whether they ‘need’ practice in each area, or are just more comfortable with say ‘audio’ or ‘manhua’ instead of reading novels, they can still find stuff to enjoy. When I studied french I always found reading material I liked, but I should have been looking harder for other materials in other areas, like I am in chinese. Likewise, in japanese I could often find visual shows or manga i wanted to check out, but I had trouble finding audio-only I was interested in... I could have been looking for a broader variety of materials than I did at the time.

#august 2020 progress #august progress #progress

2 notes · View notes

emmastudies · 6 years

Note

What's the best way to study?

Hi there! I’ll list a bit of a step-by-guide for what I tend to do:

Figure out what you have to study. Write down what you need to go through to revise. You could do it on a computer, as a to-do list or as a mindmap - whatever works best for you. When you’re studying for several things at once, separate your subjects and use subheadings for each topic. I always use my syllabus or curriculum to see what I’ve got to cover. It’s always a good idea to make a point of anything tough topics. For example if there is something you’ve struggled with during class, make that a priority rather than studying something that you already know.

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to destress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

Here are a few other links that might be useful to you:

solutions to common procrastination problems

tips for memorising information

applications to use (includes organisation, notetaking, self care)

my note formating method + colour code

ways to stay motivated

how to take notes from a textbook

10 tips for improving your productivity

I hope this helps! Best of luck with your studying. Remember to stay focused and positive. It is all worth it in the long run xx

608 notes · View notes

emmastudies · 6 years

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hi emma, i’ve got major exams coming up soon, and i feel like i don’t know any material for any of the subjects 😣 i really don’t know what to do for revision 😭

Hi there! I’ll list a bit of a step-by-guide to getting started and actually studying. Hopefully, that will give you some pointers and you’ll be able to revise! As a first note, I do have this study and revision printable pack - it contains 26 pages of study related worksheets to help organise for exams! It might help with your revision and providing structure to your studies :-)

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to de-stress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

Here are a few other links that might be useful to you:

solutions to common procrastination problems

tips for memorising information

how to coordinate studying for several subjects

how to study from notes

applications to use (includes organisation, notetaking, self care)

my note formatting method + colour code

ways to stay motivated

how to take notes from a textbook

10 tips for improving your productivity

10 tips for improving your study motivation

I hope this helps! Best of luck with your studying. Remember to stay focused and positive. It is all worth it in the long run xx

#q #question #ask #asked

119 notes · View notes

emmastudies · 6 years

Note

How do you study/prepare for finals?

Hi there! I’ll list a bit of a step-by-guide to getting started and actually studying. Hopefully that will give you some pointers and you’ll be able to revise!

Firstly, it is important to make the disctination between what you’re studying for. As in are you studying for your finals, an in-class assessment or just a topic quiz in your next class? Obviously, bigger exams require a lot more studying and generally over a longer period of time whereas a topic quiz might just be some quick revision over a couple of days. Understanding the format of your upcoming exam or test can be important for knowing how to study!

Figure out what you have to study. Write down what you need to go through to revise. You could do it on a computer, as a to-do list or as a mindmap - whatever works best for you. When you’re studying for several things at once, separate your subjects and use subheadings for each topic. I always use my syllabus or cirriculum to see what I’ve got to cover. It’s always a good idea to make a point of anything tough topics. For example if there is something you’ve struggled with during class, make that a proirity rather than studying something that you already know.

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Read through past papers or sample answers. Depending on what examinatinon system you’re doing, you might be able to access previous years tests and the recommended style of answers. This is a great way to see how you compare and what you can do to improve your answers! It’s always a good way to test yourself if you do timed practices papers. That way you can see if you’re within the time frame and can finish.

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to destress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

Good luck xx

145 notes · View notes

emmastudies · 7 years

Note

hi emma ! i am still new about studying reguarly this might seem stupid but i still dont know how to study properly i have always studied 3 days before exams i want to change this and how can i find my studying style thank you ( my english is not good sorry )

Hi there! I’ll list a bit of a step-by-guide to getting started and actually studying. Hopefully that will give you some pointers and you’ll be able to revise!

Figure out what you have to study. Write down what you need to go through to revise. You could do it on a computer, as a to-do list or as a mindmap - whatever works best for you. When you’re studying for several things at once, separate your subjects and use subheadings for each topic. I always use my syllabus or cirriculum to see what I’ve got to cover. It’s always a good idea to make a point of anything tough topics. For example if there is something you’ve struggled with during class, make that a proirity rather than studying something that you already know.

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to destress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

Here are a few other links that might be useful to you:

solutions to common procrastination problems

tips for memorising information

applications to use (includes organisation, notetaking, self care)

my note formatting method + colour code

ways to stay motivated

how to take notes from a textbook

10 tips for improving your productivity

things (personal, academic, etc) to do every week

10 tips to increase your motivation for study

I hope this helps! Best of luck with your studying. Remember to stay focused and positive. It is all worth it in the long run xx

193 notes · View notes

emmastudies · 7 years

Note

hey emma!! i’m a big fan of your posts, not to mention tht ur notes are incredibly cute 😇 i hope you cld share tips on how you study? thanks a lot !

Hi! Thank you so much, you’re too kind!! :-) Here is a step by step guide:

Figure out what you have to study. Write down what you need to go through to revise. You could do it on a computer, as a to-do list or as a mindmap - whatever works best for you. When you’re studying for several things at once, separate your subjects and use subheadings for each topic. I always use my syllabus or cirriculum to see what I’ve got to cover. It’s always a good idea to make a point of anything tough topics. For example if there is something you’ve struggled with during class, make that a proirity rather than studying something that you already know.

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to de-stress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

Good luck!! :-) x

#ask #q #Questions

114 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 4 years

Text

Someone please come chat with me about how you’re studying Chinese! Please I would just love to hear about everyone’s individual approaches! Or send me off to some area where people chatted about this, please, so I can check out some varied perspectives.

(Under the read more is just my personal experiences with some study methods, feel free to ignore it if you want. Mainly I’m curious about what other people are doing to study ^-^)

I... am considerably interested in the massive immersion approach, as might be obvious by the various posts I’ve made looking into it. I just... I really am personally not a flashcard kind of person, and that method (along with methods like AJATT, like the 10k sentence method idea etc) all really heavily tend to rely on using SRS flashcard systems. It’s hard for me to find examples of people trying that approach, but substituting heavy flashcard use for something else. I found one polyglot who makes herself a list of words studied, and reviews/quizzes herself on it, and that was the best example I could find of a person who did not use srs digital flashcards. Yes, I am aware spaced repetition systems are designed to help people remember easier, and study more efficiently by only when they need to study to create and maintain long term memory. I know this, and I recognize the value in using them. I’ve seen personally how useful SRS flashcards can be - the first 6 months I ever used them, they boosted my reading ability in japanese more than Genki 1-2 and 2 years of self study did. (Although I’d also argue I had really poor self-study methods I was using at the time, before I discovered a nice structured SRS flashcard course to follow which was about as structured as a textbook to be honest.)

I have a really difficult time focusing on flashcards. It can take me an hour to look at 10 flashcards because I struggle with focusing on them, and remembering them, so much. So while SRS has its benefits, if it takes me an hour to get through 10 cards, its not very effective for me personally. Every several months I’ll manage to get the focus necessary to get through 1 flashcard a minute, and during those times I GRIND through hundreds of flashcards while I know I’m capable of doing so. As you might know, grinding isn’t exactly the most easy way of getting through SRS oriented study plans - usually its suggested to study 5-20 cards a day, and keep your reviews manageable and short. But I’ll do 20-100 new words, then have 300 reviews, etc. Then, of course, once I lose focus again I’ll still have ‘500+ reviews’ and just stop doing cards for a few months until I can find a way to get myself to focus on cards again and get it to take less than 10 minutes a card.

I can happily say though, even with my very inefficient way of using SRS flashcard systems, they’ve STILL managed to help me retain information quite well, and I still found them useful for learning a bulk of necessary information quickly - so I’d say go easy on yourself if you don’t always keep up with reviews or consistency, it tended to work out for me as long as eventually I did do some more... regardless of when I eventually did some more. For one deck I went through 100 a day, and didn’t even do any reviews until after I’d gotten 1/2 way through the deck at 500 words. Then I did reviews for a couple days - reviews of 100s of words I was now familiar with were easier than the initial study sessions. Then I stopped reviewing again, and chugged through 50-100 more new words a day until I finished the other half. Then, finally, I reviewed again. And finally, I started doing those flashcards at a realistic pace - 20-50 reviews a day, when I had time, low pressure. Now that specific deck gives me 20 reviews for every few days, after having finished it a month ago. I know pretty much all the words in the deck. So at least in my own experience, yes I could go through it in a way SRS flashcards decks are not meant to necessarily meant to be gone through, and still managed to learn from it. So, as usual - any way I can get myself to study and learn, is better than giving up. And this was how I could get through it. I just cannot focus on flashcards except for once in a while.

So, at the time, I decided to chug through the words because I wanted some familiarity with those words ASAP. Because I wanted to watch shows and see the words in shows and RECOGNIZE them, and I’m sure in a way seeing the words I just studied, constantly appear in my shows, was a form of spaced repetition. I know myself... and I am much better at focusing on DOING real things with a language, even if its brutally hard. Even if it’s brutally hard, I can focus for a few hours. But if it’s flashcards? I am not kidding when I say 70% of the year or more I literally take 10 minutes to learn a flashcard, otherwise I repeatedly completely blank on what I saw on the card, and so it takes me 2 hours to get through a 20-25 ‘learn new words’ on memrise. Whereas I know if I’d been struggling through a book I would have looked up 20 words in several minutes, if I’d been watching a show I would have looked up 10-20 words in 40 minutes. So... my goals for srs flashcards are usually just to chug through those resources when I have the ability to focus, with the intent to be moderately familiar with the content (vocab/grammar/whatever). Then as soon as my steam runs out, hopefully all that familiarity will pay off as I go back to what I’m good at focusing on - watching, listening, and reading.

With study books its a mixed bag. I had more success learning 500 hanzi, by forcing myself to read a reference book, then I would with flashcards. Because at least I could get through 20 characters in 20-30 minutes of reading (again, faster than my slow 10 flashcards an hour pace that’s most common for me). But with reading, there’s no SRS system to help me study to effectively remember. So I generally just hoped the characters I studied popped up in my reading/watching. I also occasionally opened my character reference book randomly, and read or reviewed or skimmed random pages. Now I know 90% of the characters in that 800 character book. Even though most characters I only read once, or skimmed and never even fully focused on studying. It was a combination of being exposed to them in my reference book, then in reading and show subtitles, then seeing them once in a while in the reference book again etc. I have a 2100 character reference book too, and it’s the same case for that book. I forced myself to read when I could focus (because it was faster for me than looking at flashcards), and then just skimmed it a little when I couldn’t focus, and used watching/reading to reinforce the characters I’d seen. I learned fastest on the weeks I purposely read X character entries per day, consecutively. Because, of course, studying the characters in the reference book first made them easier to learn later in watching/reading. Whereas the characters I saw first in watching/reading, and only skimmed in the reference book later to mark them as ‘known’ now that I’d seen them - I had less of a pre-read ‘foundation’ on those characters.

So if anyone else does this, I really would recommend following these book’s general advice of ‘read a new chapter regularly, and in a few months you’ll learn these characters.’ Because I only thoroughly read some chapters, and that’s a major reason I still don’t know all the characters in these books - because I was a bit chaotic about how I read the pages in them, after I got through the first several chapters. Anyway, my main point though - because I could not usually focus on flashcards, I found reading reference books plus immersing every day to further get context, helped me learn at a reasonable pace.

I don’t care if I learn a bit slower without SRS flashcards. I see SRS flashcards as a crutch for myself because I know my ability to focus on them is unpredictable and rare. I personally cannot maintain a study plan where I’d do sentence mining SRS flashcards as 1/2 of my entire study plan. Because that 1/2 of my plan, I would suck at for a majority of the time. I know I could keep doing it occasionally, every several months when I get the burst of ability to focus long enough to grind through some flashcards. But that is not a good ‘consistent’ study method for me.

I would love to hear about people that don’t use flashcards for the most part, and what they do to study. Because maybe there will be methods useful to me in that area, that I don’t know of and can apply. A reason I’ve generally liked Steve Kaufmann’s learning ideas is because he’s mostly focused on reading/listening, looking words up, then doing it some more. He doesn’t usually use flashcards (although he does sometimes to drill through something fast, because after all they can be useful and help with progress). He mostly tries to increase his knowledge through exposure and looking things up. Which is something I am much better at focusing on consistently.

It’s very much what I did in French - I never used a single flashcard for French (which was great! I am miserable when I use flashcards). I looked up frequency lists - and read them, then just like my hanzi reference books now, I would go back and skim the lists or read new words on them every so often (every several days). And that was it. The first few weeks I consistently read through the list - which is when I am purposely trying to get myself to learn the word. Then after that, even though the list wasn’t done being read (it was 5000 words), I just glanced through it - reading some new words, reading some old words, skimming to see if I’d learned any. And the other portions of my time I was: reading through grammar guides, and reading French stuff and looking new words up in a dictionary when I couldn’t comprehend the gist of a sentence or paragraph. That’s it. Once I knew around 500-1000 words, I stopped looking at the frequency word list (except maybe once a month to glance at it). I read more instead, looking words up as usual. And I read a grammar guide in french once I could understand french better, to continue my french grammar studies. Then I kept reading French stuff... and eventually over a year in I just stopped looking up most words, because I could figure out a majority of ‘confusing’ words through context. I never had to use flashcards...

I just would love to know if there’s a mass immersion approach anyone’s tried, or anything like it, where flashcards are minimal and abandoned once no longer absolutely needed.

(I do think flashcards are VERY useful for the learning hanzi/kanji and the first 1000 words stage - I think that characters stage can take years without flashcards, and most people use flashcards to speed character learning up from years to a few months, and the first 1000 words in any language make immersing and learning from immersing much easier. So using flashcards to speed up learning those words is pretty worth the short term misery in any language - it makes the process take 1-2 months instead of 6+ months, it took me about 6 months in french to learn those words without flashcards and from word lists and immersion instead.)

What do people do instead of sentence mining? Can people do something instead of sentence mining? Please? Has anyone come up with alternatives? I do think sentence mining is a valuable and useful exercise, especially for learning new words and grammar in context. But if a person wants to abandon flashcards as soon as possible, what can they do instead? My solution for myself has always been - just read a ton. But is that fine? Is that good enough? Does anyone with more years of study experience know what’s worked for them? Please let me know.

Does anyone else have bad focus issues with flashcards? (Surely, I’d imagine, since so many study methods exist since different things work for different people). I’ve genuinely considered reaching out with the guy Matt who came up with the massive immersion approach, just to discuss if he’s got any ideas on alternatives to flashcard use for sentence mining. But I do think there’s a significant chance he’d suggest that the massive immersion method as he designed it, just isn’t suited for me/people who can’t focus on flashcards. Since being able to grind through flashcards and/or be consistent with flashcards is a big sign methods like MIA method/AJATT/10K Sentences will work for someone as a study approach.

So anyway, please feel free to share with me the myriad of ways you study languages. I am deeply interested in how everyone approaches the task differently, and how well their plans work for them!

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*As an aside, if you ALSO are absolutely brutally bad with focusing on flashcards, I have a recommendation. (Or if you’d just like a possible alternative to flashcards). If you can focus better on reading (which is something I can manage), the following resources may be of interest to you. There are certain books written, to teach you words from context, and to slowly increase in difficulty to teach you more words/grammar. These books usually also keep reinforcing old words they introduced, so its a naturally created sort of spaced repetition to make sure you retain old things you studied from the book. The books are all full of sentences and long bits of text, so they’re providing you comprehensible input in sentence form to teach you new things (sort of like a non-flashcard sentence mining source). The only caveat is that these books are only available for some languages, and don’t always contain all the information you specifically may need to learn. I would personally be over the moon with joy if someone took the method of how these books were written, and wrote books using this method for some more languages, because its phenomenal.

Examples of these kinds of books (which are sometimes found under labels like “the natural method”): Lingua Latina per Illustrata (probably the most famous example, still in use by some school Latin courses). le francais par la methode nature - a french version, which I’ve read half of, and which helped me so tremendously despite it’s age that I definitely recommend you check it out if you’re studying french. L'Italiano Secondo Il Metodo Natura - the italian version, which I’ve read some of and also seems incredibly valuable. There is an Ancient Greek book written in this style too. There is also one for learning English.

I haven’t found quite as specific a resource for Chinese or Japanese (although I genuinely WANT to write my own Chinese version based on the french book I mentioned above, because I wish it existed that much). But I have found books focused on teaching CHARACTERS that follow a very similar design of - introducing new characters/words, providing ample comprehensible input to read, and continuing this process for each chapter while still bringing up older characters/words so you don’t forget them. For Chinese and Japanese I made a whole post about books that do this. The DeFrancis Chinese Readers for Chinese characters (approximately 1500 characters covered, and a huge portion of words they combine to make). I’ve started reading these Readers and they’re dry reading material but incredibly effective for my learning style. It feels effortless to learn new characters, new words, and to improve my reading speed. Reading Japanese by Eleanor Jorden, and A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language from Tuttle Language Library, for Japanese (covering at minimum 1500 kanji total, along with a plethora of words, and based on reviews getting through even the first half of the Tuttle book would prepare you for reading almost anything in Japanese except for very specialized text and historical text - and finishing the Tuttle book would prepare you for those final specialized reading areas). I have actually bought all of these books, I’m reading through the DeFrancis ones right now. The Japanese ones I plan to use when I go back to studying Japanese. (I’ll probably ATTEMPT to do Nukemarine’s LLJ Memrise course when I can focus on flashcards, since it really did help me tremendously last time I studied Japanese, and then use the other portion of non-immersion study time reading through these books).

All of these books I’ve just listed work effectively as study material as an alternative to flashcards, for acquiring the many common words and basic grammar of the language. They’re a good jumping off point to learn from immersion after these (or during if you’re like me and don’t mind how steep the challenge is for a while). For the Chinese and Japanese books, they work as an alternative to flashcards for studying the characters and SOME high frequency words (but these books aren’t aimed at teaching vocabulary that aligns with either JLPT or HSK, so vocabulary and grammar are areas you may still need to work on filling in the gaps yourself for).

#rant #chinese studyblr #chinese langblr #langblr #studyblr #please share your study methods!#or link me to them and i'll read them #i'm really really interested #ajatt #mia approach #10k sentences #*if you did read my under the cut #*wow you are kind #*im sorry u had to sift through those #*paragraphs of rambling #i genuinely do have a lot of trouble with flashcards #i wish i didnt

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emmastudies · 7 years

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Hi Emma, I'm in year 9 and was wondering if you could tell me exactly how to study? Like what should I be doing after school and stuff like that? Thanks xx

Hi there! I’ll list a bit of a step-by-guide to getting started and actually studying.

Figure out what you have to study. Write down what you need to go through to revise. You could do it on a computer, as a to-do list or as a mindmap - whatever works best for you. When you’re studying for several things at once, separate your subjects and use subheadings for each topic. I always use my syllabus or cirriculum to see what I’ve got to cover. It’s always a good idea to make a point of anything tough topics. For example if there is something you’ve struggled with during class, make that a proirity rather than studying something that you already know.

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to destress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

After school, I would have a break for a bit! I’d get changed, have a drink and a snack, then write out a little to-do list of things that I want to get done. I’d determine what’s due first and then work through that. Then when you’re not doing homework or have a spare half-hour, you should revise old notes too! x

#q #question #asked #answered

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emmastudies · 8 years

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dear,emma may you please help me with my studying i do not understand how to properly study

Hi there! I’ll list a bit of a step-by-guide to getting started and actually studying. Hopefully that will give you some pointers and you’ll be able to revise!

Figure out what you have to study. Write down what you need to go through to revise. You could do it on a computer, as a to-do list or as a mindmap - whatever works best for you. When you’re studying for several things at once, separate your subjects and use subheadings for each topic. I always use my syllabus or cirriculum to see what I’ve got to cover. It’s always a good idea to make a point of anything tough topics. For example if there is something you’ve struggled with during class, make that a proirity rather than studying something that you already know.

Get out everything you will need. Tidy your desk, pick out a few pens, a notebook, your laptop. Whatever you think will help!

Have a read through your textbook (if you use one). Highlight or flag anything important. If you want to, summarise each chapter in 5-10 bullet points once you’ve read it.

Once you’ve finished notes, you need to review them! Read over them when you can. Highlight them. Teach your friends or family members!

Whilst studying is important, remember to take regular breaks and not overwhelm yourself. Taking time to destress is very important for your health. Burning out from over-studying isn’t fun.

Here are a few other links that might be useful to you:

solutions to common procrastination problems

tips for memorising information

applications to use (includes organisation, notetaking, self care)

my note formating method + colour code

ways to stay motivated

how to take notes from a textbook

10 tips for improving your productivity

I hope this helps! Best of luck with your studying. Remember to stay focused and positive. It is all worth it in the long run xx

#answered #question #q #ask

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rigelmejo · 5 years

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how my chinese progress is going:

i can watch a cut of zhu yilong’s character in border town prodigal and mostly understand all the dialogue/chinese subtitles in real time. like, 80%. some lines i can follow completely. but to be fair its easy stuff like “first we aren’t friends, second don’t touch my sword” and “no i don’t want to get drunk/drink” and “i’m leaving”.

i also watched the pilot of The Shaw Eleven and followed it well enough to at least jump into the second episode (which had english subs), and have been familiar with most of the plot (except i hadn’t been clear on if zyl’s character was the brother or fiance of the main pretty girl - turns out he’s the fiance). but to be fair - this show is pretty much a fighting game as-a-drama, so the plot is ridiculously simple, and easy to follow, and most of the show is just fights - which require little language skill to understand lol. but yeah, anyway, when i watched the first episode i just read the chinese subtitles/listened and tried to follow along in real time, so i think that’s pretty decent comprehension. no where close to like total, but i followed the gist. i translated some lines to my roomate chilling in the room with me.

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i want to get to the point i can READ a novel and. wow. that is so far away. i want to also get to the point i can watch case-type shows without english subs and... i imagine cause those plots are Puzzles that i am a ways... away from managing something like THAT. i want... to watch anti-fraud league. and it apparently isn’t subbed anywhere in english. i followed the pilot well enough without english subs but... because its a case-type show, i doubt i would continue to manage to follow along decently enough to comprehend whats going on...

and a note for myself: my comprehension skills are definitely outpacing my production skills. i can recognize a lot of characters i cannot write (and there’s a decent number of words i can listen to and recognize, but don’t know what they look like). that’s not a major issue right now, but it might be later if i’d like to ever speak/write decently, so i should probably work through a grammar book again/textbook and practice writing some, in the future when that’ll be a goal i want to focus on. also - my reading ability is outpacing my listening ability just a bit. the gap is less extreme than it is in french, but i definitely can scan through text and make guesses/inferences, whereas if i am listening to dialogue i only really recognize the words i already am sure i KNOW. since reading, ultimately, is my main goal, this isn’t too much of an issue. but i need to remember to play audio when possible, when i’m reading. and i need to remember to try and read aloud to myself when possible, when i know the pronunciations of characters, so i can practice their pronunciations and make efforts to remember them.

it is interesting to me that certain things are easier to ‘learn’. in reading, im getting much better at following ‘time explanations’ and dialogue. reading more, just general reading practice, has also helped the grammar start to make more sense to me without very much conscious effort or self-explaining on my part. its just, i’m seeing the sentence structures more and more and they’re becoming easier to follow. descriptions especially are starting to become easier to parse out. so i guess, i’d say at least within my own experience, the advice of ‘read more and expose yourself to the language more, and the grammar will become more understandable to you’ is pretty on point.

#rant #i SWEAR the only way i really learn and learn fast #is to just get thrown headfirst into deep water and be FORCED to understand #because i've learned most of the characters and words i know #from making myself read and watch shows without english subs #i learned the characters for eye and foot just because i kept seeing them over and over in Silent Reading #i finally learned anzi means case and an means case because it shows up in EVERY think i watch #i learned sha and su super easy cause again. guess what turns up in EVERYTHING i watch.#i think all the ways to say "you okay? im fine #. its nothing. of course' would make sense if i hadn't seen them in context over and over in Detective L #since they can mean both 'its nothing' and 'its right' and 'okay'#whereas when i try to learn from flashcards it is a STRUGGLE to get through like 10 an hour and my brain hates it #and when i try to read a structured book on characters AGAIN my brain fights it to just get through a few pages #but like? me trying to Actually READ in the language itself?#my brain feels filled to the brim and like its working HARD. but its engaged. it can keep up its attention. at least for 20 minutes or so.#but because its ENGAGED i actually remember a bit more from the study session even though it was INTENSE #i think in part its because as much of a struggle it is - its interesting and feels like puzzle solving like im achieving something #and because later when i try to do it again - i can physically FEEL the difference in ability. and literally SEE how much i've learned #based on how much easier the task is to do the next time i try it.

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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A little update on possible usefulness of dual subtitles:

I do think dual subtitles have one noticeable benefit - being able to quickly pickup new words that are combinations of characters/words you already know. I know maybe 1000-2000 words pretty solidly, so to be fair - when I watch dual subtitles I CAN read the parts of chinese subs I recognize (as in know the character OR word) really fast, and I do sometimes read the chinese subs first if its audio phrases I’m very familiar with. Or if the eng sub is not translating as closely - so when they start changing names/titles in the eng sub, my eyes gravitate toward the chinese, or when the grammar is following the chinese pattern and its words I know rather then the very differently structured eng subs grammar. So I’m not sure this benefit would help someone as much if they didn’t already have some comfort with some chinese, and some practice watching and relying on chinese only subs.

I should note that for the characters I do not recognize, or new words not at least PARTLY formed by words/characters I do know (so only 1-2 unknown new thing), I struggle a LOT to even catch the word on screen. The only totally new words I’m catching, are ones that repeat over and over because of the specific context of the show - just like how in the beginning of my chinese learning ‘ni fang xin’ and ‘bie dan xin’ and ‘xing’ pop up so much that ultimately you pick them up.

But these words are truly few, because usually the ‘new’ words that keep bombarding me are words at least partially spelled with characters I’m already familiar with - so its pretty easy to ‘associate’ the new compound word and its context then remember it. These partially-familiar new words are the ones I’m picking up the quickest because of dual subtitles.

I have noticed that the benefit of dual-subtitles with no lookup, is pretty similar to watching a dual-subtitle on viki or netflix WITH lookup if i were only looking up show-specific vital keywords (instead of every single new word). The words that are show/genre specific ARE the ones that keep hammering over and over, and with dual subtitles its easy to catch what their english equivalent is. For example: The Lost Tomb Reboot repeats words like ‘old tomb’ ‘shellfish’ ‘kneel down’ ‘drop (weapons)’ ‘keep up/stay with me’ ‘be careful’ ‘mural’ ‘thunder’ ‘old ways’ ‘underground river’ ‘mute’ ‘lungs’ a LOT, and that in combination with me often knowing one/both individual characters means these words are easy for me to pickup after a few episodes of dual subtitles. Beyond these words, a lot of the words are for more specific details, and the plot COULD probably be followed without them. Once these words are picked up, watching this show with NO english subs could potentially be doable.

However, getting to watch WITH the dual subs DOES make picking up all these words much quicker and easier than with just chinese subs. The difference being - with just chinese subs, you’re also practicing real-time listening/reading comprehension, quicker immediate recognition of known words, and trying to follow the visual context of scenes in real time. Now, new words can definitely be picked up WHILE practicing/developing those skills. But its more intensive work, and its adding another bit of work to other skills you’re already practicing. Whereas if you watch with dual subtitles, you can decide how much to practice your real-time reading/listening skills versus being able to slow down and just pinpoint/analyse new words with the framework of eng subs to rely on if that means you do not catch the next following line etc, because you were still thinking of the recent new word. I do think that either way, ultimately watching with ONLY chinese subs is something you should do. I think that’s what practices/develops real time comprehension skills which are ultimately what you’ll need most. Dual subtitles are more of a ‘pick up’ vocab tool like flashcards are, but more laid back/slower than flashcards.

I think I still need to do chinese sub only practice, and no sub chinese audio only practice more. I am just making this to say that, yes, dual subtitles can have their place in study. There are things that dual subtitles help with - especially if you’re making a concious effort to regularly LOOK at the chinese subs, and regularly either lookup new words or else focus on trying to pick up some new words from the surrounding eng subs and context for help.

I also think dual subtitles, and chinese subs in general, are easier to pick up words from once you: have a decent basis of basic chinese words/characters, and once grammar slows you down in reading less. The more comfortable I got with seeing chinese grammar patterns, the quicker I was able to comprehend chinese subs and pinpoint new unknown words I might be able to figure out. The worse I was at grammar - the more even sentences with ALL known words perplexed me in real time (and still do somewhat, which is why I’m still working on it lol).

For reference, if you want to try this yourself and wanted to get a comparison on where I’m at: I studied about 2000+ common words, I probably only firmly know 1500 and likewise probably firmly recognize 1500 characters on their own. I read a grammar guide early on, and since then read once in a while so I’m pretty comfortable reading grammar and my weak point is just when it gets sped up to the real-time speed of dialogue/subtitles or when I’m trying to talk and come up with correct grammar fast. I think if you have less familiarity with grammar, simply pausing scenes to read through the dual subtitles when you’re trying to pick up a new word would work - that’s what I do when the sentence grammar is hard for me to parse out quickly enough in real time. And I’m not sure if you’d have less success with less known characters - but I’m sure you’d do way better than me if you already know more. Lastly, its important to focus on the chinese subs as much as you can - there’s a tendency to look to the language we’re more comfortable relying on and ignore/tune out what we can’t interpret as well. I know when I get tired or lazy I just defer to the eng subs, and when I do that I’m not really studying or picking up anything new.

#dual subtitles #chinese studyblr #dual sub #review #progress

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