Made a list of all the resources I have access to in order to improve my Chinese. It includes drama series which I use for listening practice, new vocabulary and colloquial phrases and just to make my learning a bit more fun; and also books thanks to this glorious gem here. [Seriously, never undermine the value of google books].
Anyways, so far I have:
Drama - Currently completed 1/107
Completed one series (Devil beside me), gotten halfway through another (It started with a kiss) and watched an episode or two of another 3. So, 1 out of the 107 Taiwanese drama shows I counted on the drama website with another 4 in progress.
Grammar books - Currently completed: 0/15.
I've read 30/50 chapters out of the grammar book: A Practical Chinese Grammar [which I would really recommend] but I still have another 14 to start in order to pick up some new material not avaliable in the other books and to refresh already studied grammar points.
Textbooks: Currently completed 0/21
At University we follow the material set out in New Practical Chinese Reader. I think we've currently completed 8/9 chapters. I've also completed 5/20 chapers of Mandarin Chinese the easy way.
Character focused books: Completed 0/6
It would be impossible to gauge how many character I've learnt since I recognise some from haven studied Japanese and I prefer to learn vocabulary as opposed to formally studying characters but so far I have officially studied 7/100 characters in 'The First 100 Characters'.
_____________________________
As for today, I studied two grammar points: 一点儿 [yi1dian'r3 - a little more] and 所以 [suo3yi3 - so]. Also listened to a video on youtube about coffee and tea and which is better and learnt 让 [rang4] can also mean 'to make' as well as 'to let'. There was also something on 对 but I still haven't fully demystified those tricky little co-verbs as of yet.
Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resources. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Progress 18/07/2010
After googling aprender línguas into Google Brasil I ended up discovering that Babble does online language courses for around 5-7 languages, Portuguese included. So I decided to try the free trial which I found really good! There's speech recognition which forces you to pronounce the word correctly before moving onto another vocabulary piece. There are many different courses for each language too with many subunits. You learn vocabulary and then reinforce what you have learnt through small exercises. I was quite impressed with it and might consider paying £8 for a month's trial. However I currently have three other courses in process: Livemocha 101, Busuu A1 and FSI Portuguese unit 1 so I would like to finish one of these before venturing onto another course. So I completed the Sports unit on Busuu and I'm just about to go onto livemocha to finish another part of 101.
Update 19:19
I submitted two exercises on livemocha, both a writing and a speaking exercise. I also looked over a short introductory video at graspchinese.com which teaches basic phrases such as '你好’ [ [Hello], ‘我很好,你呢’[I'm fine, yourself?], '我也很好谢谢‘[I'm fine too, thanks] which I already know but as long as I keep on studying for at least 5 minutes per day in a language then I'm satisfied.
Also on Huitalk where you can read reviews on different language books and it's becoming more and more tempting to go on ebay now but I already won a Japanese book off there today so I don't want to spend anymore money.
Update 19:19
I submitted two exercises on livemocha, both a writing and a speaking exercise. I also looked over a short introductory video at graspchinese.com which teaches basic phrases such as '你好’ [ [Hello], ‘我很好,你呢’[I'm fine, yourself?], '我也很好谢谢‘[I'm fine too, thanks] which I already know but as long as I keep on studying for at least 5 minutes per day in a language then I'm satisfied.
Also on Huitalk where you can read reviews on different language books and it's becoming more and more tempting to go on ebay now but I already won a Japanese book off there today so I don't want to spend anymore money.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Progress 16/07/2010
After my last post, I went and studied two tapes of the first module of FSI Chinese and apart from it taking forever to get through, it was very useful! It focused on tones and had a couple of good exercises to practice distinguishing tones from one another. I think I'll continue with it.
As for Portuguese I took down a note on 'Por mais que' which means as 'Much as...' which I got off a nice wee blog for Portuguese speakers wanting to learn English. I wrote a new introduction on livemocha in Portuguese too and then read a message from a nice Brazilian guy who directed me to the site www.palcomp3.com which is a music site for independant Brazilian bands so that should help with my listening skills which I have definitely seen a bit of an improvement in recently.
Then I did another speaking exercise on livemocha and got '5 estrelas' which made me feel quite good.
Then I signed up to sharedtalk to practice speaking and my bottle crashed. In fact my bottle completely smashed into tiny little shards that it was no longer recognisable as the remains of a bottle. It's a great thing that the girl who I was speaking to was great at English. So then I decide to try to teach her a little French. I decided to translate 'I don't know what to say' in French only to forget halfway through, the French word for 'to say'. I give the girl a thumbs up for being able to understand my accent though! I might not be ready to start speaking but I'm a introverted person who doesn't talk a lot. After reading an article on a blog I've know forgotten about the 4 different skills in language learning [Reading, writing, listening and speaking] and how people often never get round to speaking a language after studying it for so long, I decided that I'm not going to let that happen to me and I'm going to practice potentially the most important skill in language learning. It didn't go at all like planned but I have to persevere.
Update 21:21
I need to start learning everyday language [not colloquialisms but language about hobbies, sports, food, routine etc] before things such as dieta, nutrição, viagens. So my new topic is hobbies!
As for Portuguese I took down a note on 'Por mais que' which means as 'Much as...' which I got off a nice wee blog for Portuguese speakers wanting to learn English. I wrote a new introduction on livemocha in Portuguese too and then read a message from a nice Brazilian guy who directed me to the site www.palcomp3.com which is a music site for independant Brazilian bands so that should help with my listening skills which I have definitely seen a bit of an improvement in recently.
Then I did another speaking exercise on livemocha and got '5 estrelas' which made me feel quite good.
Then I signed up to sharedtalk to practice speaking and my bottle crashed. In fact my bottle completely smashed into tiny little shards that it was no longer recognisable as the remains of a bottle. It's a great thing that the girl who I was speaking to was great at English. So then I decide to try to teach her a little French. I decided to translate 'I don't know what to say' in French only to forget halfway through, the French word for 'to say'. I give the girl a thumbs up for being able to understand my accent though! I might not be ready to start speaking but I'm a introverted person who doesn't talk a lot. After reading an article on a blog I've know forgotten about the 4 different skills in language learning [Reading, writing, listening and speaking] and how people often never get round to speaking a language after studying it for so long, I decided that I'm not going to let that happen to me and I'm going to practice potentially the most important skill in language learning. It didn't go at all like planned but I have to persevere.
Update 21:21
I need to start learning everyday language [not colloquialisms but language about hobbies, sports, food, routine etc] before things such as dieta, nutrição, viagens. So my new topic is hobbies!
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Progress 06/06/2010
Did two speaking exercises on livemocha. Found out that I really need to practice the word 'eu' and I think today was the first time that a native speaker has ever told me to speak their language slower. Did the speaking exercise on careers and on time. Learnt some good time phrases off semantica :
às vezes - once in a while
De vez em quando - once in a while
De vez - for good; forever
Para sempre - forever
Ao longo do tempo - over time
Outra vez - again
Todos os dias - everyday
O dia todo - all day long
O tempo da minha vida - the time of my life
em vez de = em lugar de - in the place of; instead of
I think I'll make up a lot of sentence with these words for practice.
Also completed unit 13 of FSI Portuguese. Learnt that a lot of question word are followed by 'é que'. For example:
Onde é que... Where do[es]
Por que é que... Why do[es]
Quando é que... When do[es]
O que é que... What do[es]
Wrote down a lot of questions with these words and put them into anki. Also had some practice with the verb 'achar' and the phrase 'parece que' as well as using 'perto de' and 'longe de'. FSI is getting back into my good books. The level of study in FSI is catching up to my current level of Portuguese, plus there isn't so much of the tedious repetition as before so it's become much more enjoyable within the last 2 lessons.
Update 19:50
I was really tempted to move onto Spanish after watch a video on youtube about the passive voice in Spanish and realised how much easier it would be to learn Spanish but I might be spending the next 4 years learning Spanish and I don't think it's a good idea to study Spanish and Portuguese at the same time due to their large similarities so I'm going to continue with Portuguese. Acabo de estudar como usar o verbo 'acabar de' . I've just studied how to use the verb 'acabar de' [although I'm not sure if the second half of that sentence was right]. I also just realised how valuable a resource google books is, for a student how has next to no money. I would still much prefer to buy a book but at least I can use google books to learn a bit of what I otherwise might not be able to.
às vezes - once in a while
De vez em quando - once in a while
De vez - for good; forever
Para sempre - forever
Ao longo do tempo - over time
Outra vez - again
Todos os dias - everyday
O dia todo - all day long
O tempo da minha vida - the time of my life
em vez de = em lugar de - in the place of; instead of
I think I'll make up a lot of sentence with these words for practice.
Also completed unit 13 of FSI Portuguese. Learnt that a lot of question word are followed by 'é que'. For example:
Onde é que... Where do[es]
Por que é que... Why do[es]
Quando é que... When do[es]
O que é que... What do[es]
Wrote down a lot of questions with these words and put them into anki. Also had some practice with the verb 'achar' and the phrase 'parece que' as well as using 'perto de' and 'longe de'. FSI is getting back into my good books. The level of study in FSI is catching up to my current level of Portuguese, plus there isn't so much of the tedious repetition as before so it's become much more enjoyable within the last 2 lessons.
Update 19:50
I was really tempted to move onto Spanish after watch a video on youtube about the passive voice in Spanish and realised how much easier it would be to learn Spanish but I might be spending the next 4 years learning Spanish and I don't think it's a good idea to study Spanish and Portuguese at the same time due to their large similarities so I'm going to continue with Portuguese. Acabo de estudar como usar o verbo 'acabar de' . I've just studied how to use the verb 'acabar de' [although I'm not sure if the second half of that sentence was right]. I also just realised how valuable a resource google books is, for a student how has next to no money. I would still much prefer to buy a book but at least I can use google books to learn a bit of what I otherwise might not be able to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)