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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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march 3/15/2021

im trying to read through tae kim’s grammar guide right now because i’m officially further in the nukemarine LLJ memrise decks (there’s tae kim grammar guide sections in there) than i am in actually reading the grammar guide. And obviously these example sentences in the memrise deck would teach me more if i CLEARLY understood why they’re like how they are. which i... need to read the grammar guide section to understand lol.

my goal rn with japanese is? to get further in the nukemarine LLJ decks than i did last time. I’ve already mildly accomplished that (have done officially MORE of the tae kim section than before, have NOT redone the 190 common words i did last time i did this though). there are about 400 more cards in this tae kim section (LLJ 4) and then 1000ish cards in the common word section (LLJ 5). I would love to get them done.

it would be sweet if i could get them done before April 22?/24? whenever Nier Replicant comes out because then I could play that baby in english and japanese! Then Nier Automata! ToT The Entire thing that kicked me back into wanting to study japanese was my old love for certain video games and desperately wanting to know what their stories/characters are like before translation/localization. So it would be cool if I could play them a little ;-; or at least check out lets plays.

(which, checking out the kh2 lets play has been going pretty well so far... also that part where namine says “we aren’t meant to exist” and roxas says “how could you say such a thing? even if it were true” he says in japanese like “thats brutal/harsh to say. even if its true.” ...great to know that line is equally raw and heartbreaking in japanese lol. KH2′s localization did real good on like equal vibe to original just like ‘less nuanced’ if that makes sense. also thanks to the chinese hanzi i know now watching the KH2 lets play means i can figure out a lot of noun’s writing even though i don’t catch the pronunciation... also i’m catching a lot of words that mean like ‘beautiful/good’ as in like ‘great move’ and ‘dang’ lol.)

i had to stop myself from redoing the chinese flashcards i’ve done in the past! because i get ‘into a zone’ lol. And i really don’t need to waste time redoing those 2000 cards. i also needed to stop myself from doing the hsk 5-6 cards. because realistically? i know half of them, i should just set a lot to ‘ignore’ on the computer but im too lazy, and i’m learning a lot of vocab from reading right now. i don’t need hsk words to pass any test. The words i’m learning right now in reading are a lot more applicable to the actual shows i watch/things i listen to/things i read. its more useful to me to keep reading. and also to not sidetrack my japanese lol. i have read... 39 chapters this month... this month is only half over! hanshe is truly motivating ToT it also helps the story CONSTANTLY ends on cliffhangers so i keep clicking next chapter. who knows, maybe hanshe will help me kick up my reading speed. it already shaved off 10 minutes per 20 pages - now my 20 pages are down to 30 minutes to read, which is better than a few months ago. hanshe has 155 chapters so i HOPE it speeds up my reading lol.

hanshe is increasing my vocab though, its definitely noticeable over time. and hanshe has really good repetition of vocab which helps with learning and later the payoff means i never have to look up the word in future once its learned while it remains useful to me and i keep being reminded of it. after i get bored of hanshe OR i finish it, whichever comes first, its either back to a priest novel or into another pingxie fanfic written by hanshe’s author. The author did one fanfic that’s only 33 chapters so that would be NICE to do after this one lol ToT

summary of what’s turned out to be my studying methods this month:

Japanese:

reading through grammar guides (the one yue-muffin made and tae kim’s). so just grammar explanation reading.

doing nukemarine LLJ decks (in the ACTUAL order they are in the deck to completion - last time i did like 3 per time and never finished any lol. this is bolded because it’s the primary activity i’m prioritizing). so SRS flashcards. it’s working well right now because i can just put this activity in anytime i have downtime, like when i pause shows (since we know me i gotta take a break from a show every 20 minutes lol). i am bafflingly in a flashcard mood and i’m trying to take advantage of it while i got it.

*when i feel like it: watching kh2 lets play. so some immersion where i look up words. (and when Nier Replicant remaster releases next month I’m likely to at least a tiny bit try to play it in japanese ToT lol we’ll see)

so grammar reading, srs flashcards covering some grammar/listening/reading/vocab, and some optional immersion.

(a note: i gave up on the japaneseaudiolessons for now because i got bored. its a great resource! i just don’t feel like it right now. and from an efficiency perspective, nukemarine LLJ decks cover vocab, grammar, audio, reading - so I don’t need another resource for that right now).

Chinese:

reading through hanshe. so immersion reading, intensive reading looking up unknown words. (unknown words are happening less so its getting less ‘intense’ lol)

listening to Chinese Spoonfed Audio. so listening to audio flashcards. for building up listening comprehension/repetition to pick up some more common words. (i’ve been doing this during daily walks making it much easier for me to consistently do, doing it mainly to supplement the Reading Heavy study i’m doing, i can drop this and pick it up later if i want since its mostly easy background listening)

*I am slowly rereading the grammar guide on www.chinese-grammar.com for explicit grammar clarification. but this is not a high priority, since I sort of implicitly understand a lot of this and i’m not working on fixing production mistakes yet. i just... miss knowing wtf is going on in the grammar lol.

*when i feel like it: Listening Reading The Glass Maiden/Love and Redemption Novel. I’ve done 2-3 hours of it this past week, but i don’t know when or if I’ll just stop. Thankfully l-r is beneficial somewhat even if i switch up books later. i WANT to L-R you have no idea (to Silent Reading and Guardian REALLY badly lol). But its so time intensive, and requires a lot of focus, and i have to really plan to do it for an hour at a time usually. I am so bad at doing stuff for that long consistently. I was in the mood earlier this week! ToT

*when i feel like it: watching chinese shows raw. I was super in the mood this month because Word of Honor came out, and Killer and Healer came out, and Rattan came out, and I didn’t want to wait for subs. As a result I watched a LOT of raw episodes this month. However, english subs have caught up and since I’m lazy I’m inclined to just watch the subs - especially since youku ITSELF just put english subs on their most-ahead viewing schedule version of the eps on youku vip. so guess who’s buying youuku vip today? -3-)/ That said... even if I stop for a while, if Rattan subs move too slow I’ll probably watch those raw. And as SOON as 2ha’s drama Immortality drops I am highly likely to watch the raws for that since I likely won’t be able to wait. Watching shows is pretty highly dependent on how much I want to watch something and if subs take a while lol.

so reading, and listening. and a little listening-reading method too. mainly just working on reading, listening, vocab acquisition. chinese is going good - for a few months now i’ve just had the plan ‘read often while looking up unknown words, and add some listening study activity when i have time.’ It’s simple, and its been working well. later on down the road i’ll need some explicit grammar clarification again, but this is bare bones enough of a study plan at the moment. i’m clearly picking up words and phrases and hanzi at a reasonable pace. its not the Fastest obviously, but it is causing improvement over time and since i’m enjoying it i see no reason to change it up.

ending things

...who knows WHY i am so well focused this month with so much energy... tbh... i track how many chapters i read a month/audio i listen to/show episodes i watch etc, and this month is like as much as 3 other of my usual months combined. also my japanese has been basically ‘dabbling only’ prior to this month.

although... maybe in part its how i’ve gotten better at reading hanshe? Reading being easier certainly motivates me TO read more. And watching shows was MUCH easier this month (still not ‘easy’ but following the main plot is) which definitely makes me Want to watch more. Also i am... unbelievably motivated by a challenge. I think i got it in my head that i ‘really want to do more of Nukemarine’s LLJ courses and see how much i understand after them’ and now... i really want them DONE. so maybe the current things motivating me will hold out for a while.

(On the listening-reading front meanwhile, that activity takes SO much concentration its hard to do if i’m tired, BUT i have so many TRANSLATED novels i want to read recently and honestly its fun hearing the chinese narration and audiobook actors so like... i very much Want to do l-r so i can hear them as i read the translation... immovable object of me tired versus how much i’m interested in them lol ToT).

also thank u thank u @a-whump-muffin for sending me those lets plays because honestly it got me so excited again and its so cool to see them!!! <3 <3 and its so much easier to watch them versus committing to playing a whole game myself just yet ToT

#rant #march progress #march #it is wild how much i've already done this month #i really have done a Lot?#maybe my reading kick from early this month is just transfering to chinese #from january on i read 11 books in english? or 12 #and now hanshe i'm speeding through? i think maybe hanshe just got easy enough to feel like reading a hard english book #and since i was reading english like non fiction i am already in a 'can handle takes a while per chapter' zone #since non fiction takes me like 1 hour for 20 pages or something horrific like that lol ToT

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studiousbees · 7 years ago

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[App Review]—LingoDeer (Chinese)

Doing my Saturday post a bit early!

Finally got around to testing out LingoDeer’s Chinese course! This will be my last LingoDeer review. I’m going to handle this review just as I did my LingoDeer Korean and LingoDeer Japanese reviews, by talking about things I noticed as I went through the first few levels of the course (you can see below I did 8% of the course to write this review. I think that’s sufficient just to judge the starting levels, yes?). Ready?

(Apologies if some parts sound like copypasta from my previous reviews!)

What is LingoDeer?

LingoDeer is a language-learning app for the three major east Asian languages, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. In this review, I will of course focus on the Chinese course!

Very first impressions

I already mentioned this in my previous two reviews, but LingoDeer app’s design and interface is very clean and visually appealing. The slow loading that used to plague me back when I wrote the Korean review is no longer a problem :) The loading screens I do see are processed very quickly!

Settings

In case you aren’t aware, I study Mandarin using traditional characters. It’s a preference of mine that hung over from studying Hanja in Korean. Since all of the Hanja Korean uses are traditional, I just stuck with traditional when I started learning Mandarin. You can choose to have LingoDeer display the traditional set of characters if you go into your settings! You can’t change this during learning levels, so if traditional is your preference, make sure to set it before you start a learning level! However, during learning levels you can choose if you want to see just the Hanzi (Chinese characters), just Pinyin, or both together.

"Alphabet”

The first block on the learning path is labeled “Alphabet,” and you can skip it if you would like, though of course I went in for the sake of this review! The explanation of Pinyin and the sounds that Chinese uses is VERY thorough, with a ton of great audio files so you can listen to the sounds. Again, this sort of explanatory notes system is, as I found in the Korean and Japanese courses, very robust and informative.

When you do the Pinyin learning levels—and I admit I didn’t go through all of them because I got bored—it has you listening to initials and finals separately, then combining them into the full sounds. Doing the levels that I did, I felt like I would feel very well prepared if I were a total beginner at Mandarin.

While the Pinyin notes and explanation were awesome, what honestly blew me away was the Pinyin chart included. It shows every possible combination of initial + final + tone in Mandarin (you select the tone separately; the chart changes depending on if a particular initial + final combo is used with that tone or not). Every one of the initial + final + tone combinations has its down audio file and an option to record yourself. You hear the audio file pronunciation, then record your own, and then it plays your recording and the audio file on loop so you can compare your pronunciation to the file. Cool, right??

One more thing in the “Alphabet” section that neither the Korean nor Japanese LingoDeer courses has is a section for “Survival Chinese.” This includes a ton of useful phrases that you might need while traveling, all divided into different categories ranging from health to flirting to signs you might see in public. These are not normal learning levels—rather, you listen to the read-out of each phrase, record yourself saying it, and if the app deems your pronunciation to be good enough, you get a happy little green flag! This is an excellent feature for people who just need to learn some quick phrases. I do have one bone to pick with it, though—even with my settings set to the traditional character set, it only displays in simplified :< Boo.

Grammar notes and some oddities

After getting Pinyin down (or skipping it because you’re a boss and already know it), you can start with the first level. As with the Korean and Japanese courses, you can’t test out of the lower levels if you are already somewhat familiar with Chinese. This is unfortunate many other comparable apps, including HelloChinese, allow you to test up.

Anyway, once you tap into the first section, there are notes waiting for you if you swipe to pull up the tile to the left, only the edge of which is visible as it starts you right on an actual lesson tile. It would be nice if the notes were the first tile, because some people might miss it. Anyway, the notes are extensive and generally well done, but I did notice a few grammatical oddities and such. While they don’t really cause any misunderstandings, I feel like a more thorough editing by a native English speaker would make it feel more polished. Also, in the notes for Basics 3 I noticed some blatant errors where the wrong Pinyin was written with two characters (I reported the errors, of course). Also, I was disappointed to see that the notes were only available in simplified.

I found some unusual grammar and translation choices in the actual learning levels as well. Again, while they did not obscure meaning, they definitely could have done with some editing. For example, the English sentence “ Peaches are a type of fruit” is the given translation for the simpler sentence “桃是水果 (Peaches are fruit)”. Another somewhat uncomfortable example is “ 這個中國人在吃桃。,” which is translated as “The Chinese is eating the peach.” The meaning is clear, but (at least to me) it sounds strange, almost inappropriate, as we don’t usually call out a person using the form “the (insert race, ethnicity, etc. here)” except with countries where the adjective is also the noun used to refer to the people who live there. “The American is eating the peach” sounds alright, but sentences like “The Chinese is eating the peach” and “The boy likes Korean” (intended meaning was “The boy likes Korean people”) are iffy.

Getting into learning

Now for the actual learning! Same as with the Korean and Japanese courses, the activities in the learning sections are very similar to Duolingo and HelloChinese. You can expect to do activities like matching spoken and/or written words to pictures, unscrambling sentences, filling in missing elements, deleting unnecessary elements, and more. Unfortunately, there were no speaking questions to be found. Considering that there are speaking elements in the Alphabet section, I had gotten my hopes up.

Among the actual questions and problems you do, there are some screens for practicing writing characters. The stroke diagrams are really smooth and nice, and it’s a great way to get used to writing! But... again, all simplified! T T It really seems like the inclusion of the traditional character set was just an afterthought since so many aspects of the Chinese course do not have traditional characters in them.

Once you finish a learning level, there is the option to review what you just went through. This feature is in the Korean and Japanese courses, but I admit I never actually checked it out when I wrote those reviews and it was only later while continuing my Japanese studies that I checked it out >.> In the review section, it breaks down which new sentences and words you did poorly, well, and perfectly on. You can then choose to do more questions on those categories, or you can just tap on the words and sentences to hear them read back again. Personally, I like using this section as dictation practice, tapping on the tiles, listening, and then writing what I hear :)

There is also an option for timed review if you go back to a previously done learning level. In these timed reviews, you must try to answer all of the presented questions in a short amount of time. If you want a quick review, that’s a good way to do it!

One thing that I like a lot about these beginning learning levels is that you quickly build up vocab and they have you making sentences of five or more characters in short order! I did not feel like it babies beginner users but rather tries to push them to quickly acclimate using sentences that aren’t super short but are still simple in meaning.

Upon completion of a level, you can get up to five stars. When you first start studying, you set a goal for how many stars you want to get each day, and if you choose the lowest possible number (five) and do a single level perfectly, your study for the day is complete.

Review and stats

If you want to go back and review vocab or grammar flashcards, there is a section where you can do that. The review questions are the same as the regular level questions. You can choose to do a single lesson, or you can combine lessons for a comprehensive review. Also, there is spaced repetition listening practice, which is pretty cool. After listening, you can reveal the correct answer and rate your recall/performance “weak,” “good,” or “perfect.” You can of course use these features to make sure your knowledge doesn’t deteriorate over time!

As for stats, you can check how long your learning streak has been ongoing, and it even tells you how long you have studied for. There are some little achievement badges similar to Duolingo for things like learning time and streaks also. You can also set a time for reminders to study if you would like.

Conclusion

LingoDeer’s Chinese course is very quality despite some grammatical errors and incomplete support of the traditional set of characters. It lays a good foundation for Mandarin Chinese beginners, starting with an excellent intro to the sounds used in Chinese and moving into a well-paced course.

PROS:

GREAT audio files

Pinyin chart is AWESOME

Lots of good notes and information on grammar

Spaced repetition practice and flashcards

Study reminders

Course is paced well

Survival Chinese section

CONS:

No function to test out of lower levels

Strange grammar in notes and in learning levels

No speaking practice for normal levels (speaking on Pinyin chart and Survival Chinese is adequate)

Traditional character support is limited

#studyblr #langblr #chinese studyblr #chinese langblr #mandarin studyblr #mandarin langblr #LingoDeer #LingoDeer Chinese #app review

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aliverosencrantz · 7 years ago

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Spooky Scary

Plastic skeletons hung on walls outside of houses, some clanking together in the wind, now in full daylight but soon they would be lit only by the dim light of Jack-o-lanterns. Middle-aged men and women got in their cars and drove to the supermarket to load up on sweets and chocolates, while little children bounced their way to school like they were on a pre-emptive sugar high.

Parker loved Halloween. He also kind of hated Halloween.

“Just say it one more time, I want to make sure I’ve got this right,” he asked to probably the only person he wasn’t terrified of inconveniencing.

“Okay,” Terra said with a smile. “So the party’s starting at five, but you can just come straight home with us if you want.”

He shook his head. “I need to go home for my costume.”

“Right, well, you know how to get to my house, right?”

He nodded. Well. He wasn’t really sure how to get to the Saffron household, because no matter how many times he’d done the route, he sucked at directions, but he’d figure something out. If all else failed, he could text Isabelle and get her to virtually walk him through getting there, or he could just get lost on the streets and bother no-one. One or the other.

“I’m really excited for this party. It’s going to be really fun, we’ve decorated the house all super spooky and everything, everyone’s going to love it!” When Terra spoke about things she liked, she always tilted her head a little closer and smiled with her eyes and maybe laughed a little, but not because it was funny, just because it made her happy. She was doing it right now. The smile was infectious, and he grinned, not his nervous grin but a genuine one.

Parker took a quick look at the time on his flip phone, then pulled his schoolbag up onto his lap. “Can everyone come?”

In a fraction of a second, all the light and smileyness in Terra’s face died. “Unfortunately,” she said. She sighed and stared in Parker’s direction, but she wasn’t staring at him. She was staring past him, and Parker turned around, trying his best to follow her line of sight.

Rose and Cedrick sat at the next table. It was impossible to tell what they were saying, but Rose had her laptop out (one of the shiny Apple ones, of course) and she kept tapping on his shoulder and he kept shaking his head until finally he gave in and turned his attention to her screen. He watched whatever it was with a confused frown for a few moments while Rose stared right at him, grinning.

Terra’s voice was hard to hear now over the general din of the cafeteria, but Parker could just about make out, “What is she…?”

Something must have happened on the screen, because Cedrick jolted. He immediately went very red in the face, folded his arms and said something vicious to Rose before collecting his things and walking away.

Parker looked at Terra for an explanation of what the heck just happened.

She didn’t seem to notice his pleading look, just kept staring at Rose and shook her head. “I swear, if she pulls anything fishy at the party, I’ll end her.”

Terra’s American accent was barely noticeable most of the time, maybe because he was so used to it, but it seemed to get only more intense when she got angry. Right now she was bordering on Disney Channel levels, which made Parker worry a little. Even if he knew Terra wouldn’t hurt him, and that her anger was elsewhere directed, it still made his stomach flip when he managed to notice that kind of tone in someone’s voice.

“Oh! Don’t worry,” she said, with a smile considerably more put-on than the last one. “It’ll be fine, I guess. I just wish no-one invited her?”

Parker was about to nod when the bell rang, “See you at break,” he said, and Terra nodded before they both scurried off to their separate classes.

Parker got pretty far before he realised he had no idea where he was going. He stopped in the middle of the corridor to get his timetable out, causing a lot of exasperated sighs and hands pushing him aside to get through. He really hoped he didn’t have Maths first thing…squinting at the colour-coded boxes for a moment, and tracing the lines of the columns and rows with his finger, he was able to say pretty confidently that he had tutor group first. Which he realised, after a moment, was in the exact opposite direction than he was walking.

He had to sprint against the one-way system to get to class on time. The teacher eyed him with some weird emotion he couldn’t identify. Parker, panting, went to his table in the back of the room.

The table was just him and his elbow partner, who wasn’t here yet. The gentle buzz of chatter in the room felt safe and normal, and Parker got out his notebook and pencil case. The pencil case was a ratty old thing now, but you could still just about make out that it was designed to look like a loaf of bread. Parker laughed every time he thought about that—who would put PENCILS inside BREAD? He unzipped it and took out his pencil, which was now pretty tiny from having been sharpened so many times. The led was always snapping, so he pressed extra-lightly as he started to doodle on the lined paper of his notebook. He drew a pretty general Halloween scene at first, just some pumpkins with funny faces and a few bedsheet ghosts. His lines were shaky but he drew one of the ghosts with a Jack-o-lantern on her head, which was completely hilarious and he had a small giggling fit in the back of the room. It was then that he felt a certain presence beside him, and he swivelled around to look. Sure enough, it was Sena, taking her seat beside him with a tired kind of smile.

“Sena-sensei!” Parker greeted her excitedly. “Uh…ohayou desu?”

Their Japanese lessons were going well enough, and his pronunciation tended to be fairly spot on, but the grammar was a struggle.

“Ohayou gozaimasu,” she corrected not unpleasantly. “Or just ohayou. That’s more casual.”

He nodded and scribbled down a note in his book that he would definitely not understand when he looked back at it later. “Ohayou,” he said, and felt kind of proud of himself. “Oh!”

Sena raised an eyebrow at his exclamation.

Parker was buzzing. “Sena, Sena! How do you say ‘Happy Halloween’ in Japanese?”

Her smile changed. It was still a smile, but one with some sort of different meaning Parker couldn’t quite decipher. “In Japanese, it’s usually just ‘Happi Harouiin’.”

Parker paused. “That’s…that’s just ‘Happy Halloween’ in a Japanese accent.”

“I mean, it’s a borrowed concept, so we just render it in katakana.”

“Right, let’s get going, kids,” the teacher said. “So we’re going to talk today about the Christian influence on the modern celebration of Halloween.”

Sena said under her breath, “Oh, great.”

Parker frowned. “I didn’t think that would be your kind of thing.”

“It was sarcasm,” she said.

So Sena had been trying to joke with him. He decided to return the favour, but in a language he understood. He leant in as close to her ear as he could manage and whispered, “What room do ghosts not need?”

She grunted, and he guessed that basically meant “I don’t know, what room do ghosts not need?”

“The living room!”

Parker fell apart laughing, and half the class turned to look, and Sena might have smiled, if he squinted.

In French, the teacher said they could watch a movie instead. “You’re not going to listen anyway—it’s Halloween, for f…God’s sake.”

Rose stood up from her seat at the front of the class. “Ooh, sir!” she called. “I have a memory stick with movies on, I actually have the French dub of Princess and the Frog, which is like, totally scary and in the spirit and it has English subtitles and—”

“Yeah okay whatever.”

Parker thought it was probably a little strange to carry around a memory stick with movies on it that included French dubs of Disney masterpieces, but he guessed Rose was a lot smarter than him so maybe she could predict when really specific things would be useful. She grinned as she walked to the front of the class and stuck it into the USB port, and Parker felt uncomfortable, because every time Rose smiled it meant bad things. Still, he tried to swallow down the feeling and pulled out his phone to muck about until the movie was on. What to do…he decided to send a text. He may as well use all his texts for the month, seeing as they wouldn’t roll over to the next.

To: Citrus<3

“Je suis dans mon class de francais”

Cedrick wouldn’t answer until he was out of class, obviously, because even with explicit permission from a teacher he wouldn’t feel right going on his phone in class. Parker understood that, and knew he wouldn’t be getting a response until lunchtime. Texting Cedrick still made him feel somewhat better. He knew his French was probably awful, even though he couldn’t see the mistakes. He was kind of looking forward to a lecture on exactly what grammar he’d screwed up. Cedrick was one of the only people willing to discuss the intricacies of French grammar with him and it was probably the reason he wasn’t failing the class, so.

The movie flickered onto the SmartBoard and Rose took her seat again. “No need to thank me, guys,” she said to the class, which got some funny looks from pretty much everyone.

Parker liked this movie. It came out when he was nine or ten and his mum took him to see it as a special treat. He had loved the magical feeling of seeing a new Disney princess film in a movie theatre, and had cried three times in the course of Tiana’s adventure. It was different in French, probably, and he couldn’t really understand most of the words, but it was still nice. He remembered most of the dialogue anyway so it didn’t really matter.

It was in Dr Facilier’s song, Friends from the Other Side, when things started to get weird. Parker was enjoying it in that extremely on-edge way he enjoyed scary songs, and trying to recognise as many words as he could. So far he was able to comprehend “mes amis”, probably because he was specifically listening out for those words. He was gonna tell Cedrick about it at lunch or something, and maybe Cedrick would be proud and—

A shriek erupted from the SmartBoard, and the picture flashed to the picture of the Scary Maze Game girl. Parker didn’t have time to process what was going on. He screamed along with the noise and felt tears prick at his eyes as he hid under the desk. His body shook like a leaf and he hugged his knees close, trying to convince himself that maybe the monster wouldn’t find him. A few minutes passed, and whatever was happening around him was like a distant buzz of static. Nothing made sense. He just tried to breathe, closed his eyes, thought about his friends, Terra and Cedrick and Tessa and Isabelle and Sena and his mum. He told himself jokes inside his head. What do you get when you cross a sheep with a kangaroo? What do you call a fish with no eyes? Okay, he was calming down, he could see again and he could vaguely understand his surroundings, maybe, though it still felt like viewing them underwater and through smoke at the same time. He peeked his head above the desk.

“Happy Halloween, everyone!” That was Rose’s voice. It sounded…happy? Of course it did, it was Rose.

Mr Jackson has his brow furrowed, but he spoke all weird and disjointed, like he was trying not to laugh. “That’s detention, over lunch, Miss Tokas.”

Rose shrugged. “Fair!”

Parker kind of hated Halloween because the pranks weren’t funny.

“Look, Parker, are you alright?” Mr Jackson asked. Parker could only muster shaking his head and then darting out of the room to sick bay.

He didn’t go home. He stayed in sick bay until lunch, then he went back out to eat with Cedrick.

“So I got your text, like, five minutes ago,” Cedrick started, “I’m really impressed by the effort, and you’re surely improving, but there’s still a few mistakes.” He sat down, Parker sat down beside him. “First of all, your use of dans is a little unnatural to say the least and—are you okay?”

Parker followed Cedrick’s line of sight to Parker’s own hand, which was shaking a little. So he still wasn’t feeling all that great, or at least, his body still needed time to recover.

He shrugged. “Rose played this movie in French, and…”

“Oh Jesus, her dumb Princess and the Frog jumpscare thing?” Cedrick groaned and leant forward, resting his head in his hands. “I didn’t think she’d be brazen enough to use it in class! I mean, really, who does she think she is?” He opened his mouth as if to keep going then looked at Parker and gave a kind of conciliatory smile. “Sorry. I should have thought, and told a teacher, or at least warned you.”

Cedrick bought him lunch, one of the few vegetarian options the school offered, some shitty pasta thing, except today they were marketing the sauce as “blood sauce” so they had to ask to be sure it was suitable. Over a mouthful of his own serving of weird “vampire pie”, whatever that meant, Cedrick asked, “So what are you dressing up as today?”

“It’s a surprise!” Parker said, getting his smile back, hands probably no longer shaking.

Afternoon classes were fine, nothing particularly memorable. Just teachers trying to engage the kids with random spooky stuff. Parker felt kind of on edge, constantly having ghosts on his mind, but it wasn’t too bad. He pulled through until club time.

“Alright, motherfuckers, who’s ready for the party of their lives?” Xaidan called, sliding into a chair beside Cedrick.

Nadia was sitting on one of the counters around the side of the room, right beside the sink for chemicals and stuff. “Yeah, don’t worry guys, it’s definitely not gonna suck.”

Parker could feel his pun senses tingling.

Sena had her eyebrows raised, but what else was new.

Terra sat down beside him, on the side closest to Rose, like she was shielding him from Rose with her body. “It’s gonna be spooky!” she said, but then turned to Parker and said, “Not too spooky though, don’t worry!”

Parker told Cedrick he was going to walk to the Saffron’s house alone, to which Cedrick laughed. Parker blushed and frowned a little.

“Ah, sorry,” Cedrick said, clasping his hands together. “That was a little assholey, just…no, I mean…”

Parker sighed. “Fair. We all know I’m gonna get lost.”

“I’ll come with you!” Cedrick blurted out. “That’s okay, right? I know how to get to Xaidan’s, so we can get there proper on time.” He smiled a little nervously.

“Uh, sure!”

“Great. Okay, let’s go.”

The walk to Parker’s flat was largely spent holding hands and telling dumb jokes. Cedrick explained the difference between dans and en, and they discussed which was scarier, Facilier’s death or the whole other mother thing in Coraline.

When they got to the flat, Parker’s mother was home. She gave Cedrick the same weird look she always gave him, but let him sit down on the sofa and have a cracker anyway while Parker went to get changed.

Parker didn’t like looking in the mirror, but he did quickly look himself over to make sure he hadn’t put on the outfit backwards or something. He tried not to look himself in the eyes—or the eye, thanks to the eye-patch—instead just smoothing down his clothes, making sure they didn’t show too much of his body shape and then deciding he was good to go.

“How do I look?”

Cedrick and Mum looked up, Cedrick from his phone and Mum from her laptop. They both smiled, looked at each other, then looked back at him.

Parker was dressed as a pirate captain. He had some cheaply made but admittedly clunky boots on his feet, and shitty black trousers made out of something that felt kind of like cheap satin. He had a black waistcoat of the same material over a stripey white and green shirt, and a red sash tied around his waist. Over his right eye was a black plastic eye-patch from some kids’ party set out of Poundland. The real pinnacle of the outfit was the hat on his head: a black pirate captain’s hat with a skull and crossbones in the middle. In each hand he held a shiny plastic toy cutlass. He was a tiny pirate, and he looked great.

“Parker, honey, you’re adorable!” Mum said, closing her laptop, shoving it aside and coming up to get a closer look. “Aw, give us a twirl?”

He laughed a little and spun in a quick circle. “Hey Mum, do you know any good pirate jokes?”

She frowned. “Sorry, I don’t think so, but—”

“Neither do AAAAYE!” Parker squeaked a little on the last word but he doubled over laughing. His mother laughed too, helping him stand up straight again and making sure he didn’t straight up topple to the floor.

“You look great,” Cedrick said. Parker rubbed at his eyes to focus them and saw his boyfriend standing up too.

Parker smiled so hard his eyes screwed shut. “Thanks!”

As soon as they were out the flat and on their way to the Saffron house, Cedrick turned to Parker and chortled. “Okay, I didn’t say it because your mum was there, but the temptation to be like, Nice booty…”

They both stopped a moment to laugh and pressed their foreheads together.

“Are you going to dress up, Citrus?” Parker asked.

“Hm? Me? Oh, no, not really my thing.”

Parker took off his pirate hat and placed it on Cedrick’s head, then tangled his finger in a strand of Cedrick’s hair. “You’re my first mate now,” he declared proudly.

Cedrick grinned at the floor. “No, I can’t take your hat, that’s yours, it looks great on you—”

“We’re pirates together now,” Parker insisted. “Here, take one of my swords.” He pushed the handle of one of the swords into one of Cedrick’s hands.

So Cedrick paused, and then he nodded. “Arr!” he said all of a sudden, making Parker jump a little. “Oh shit, sorry!” He put his hands on Parker’s shoulders in what was probably supposed to be a calming gesture. “Well, Cap’n Parker,” he said more quietly this time, “as yer chief navigator, I reckon we should go…North! Follow the waves, arr!”

Parker followed Cedrick and grabbed his hand. “You sound Scottish, not Pirate.”

“AVAST YE!” called a voice that didn’t come from anyone in the living room. Nadia and Sena looked at each other.

Xaidan frowned. “That sounded like…?”

And into the room paraded Cedrick in his normal boring clothes, except now he was wearing a pirate hat and holding a fucking sword.

“What,” said Sena.

“Arrr!” Cedrick said, and everyone was probably too stunned to laugh. “Ye’d better give up all yet booty, because Cap’n Parker’s here to steal all yer doubloons!”

“Arr!” Parker appeared from behind him.

Terra clasped her hands together in delight. “Parker, you’re so scary!”

“Not as scary as Cedrick’s accent,” said Sena. Nobody heard her.

“It’s funny,” Nat said. “I always imagined Sena would be the vampire, but you’re pulling it off pretty well.”

Nadia grinned, showing fake giant canines. “Watch this.” She turned to Sena. “I vaant to suck your blaaaahd!”

Sena pulled her witch’s hat down over her eyes. “I will kill you in real life.”

“With a hex?”

“Shut. Up.”

Rose crashed through the door dressed as Satan, with a big cardboard box-container-thing of something in each hand. “What is UP, fucks?!”

Terra rolled her eyes.

“Anyway, I brought alcohol, so let’s all get wasted as fuuuuck!”

“This is not that kind of party!” Terra’s voice went so high it almost sounded like a whistle.

Rose shrugged, put her boxes on the floor and took out an alcopop. “Who wants the first drink?”

Blue shuffled up, took the drink out her hand in one smooth move and went to the corner with it.

“Blue, no!” Nat said, voice cracking a little.

Rose laughed.

“There is no way anyone here will pass as a kid, why are we even bothering with this?”

“I agree with Mordov,” Sena said with no tone in her voice.

Xaidan and Cedrick both pointed at Parker.

“…Point taken,” Mordov admitted. “He looks about twelve.”

“I’m thirteen!” Terra said.

Mordov pressed his lips together in a kind of ‘welp’. “I mean, he still looks younger…sucks, I guess, but what can you do?”

They set off for the nearest house with a Jack-o-lantern, and with his hat back and the little pumpkin-face sweets bag hanging on the tip of his cutlass, the people were more than happy to shower him in sugar.

By the time they went back to the house, there was just about enough for everyone.

The “party” wasn’t exactly wild. It was sixteen kids sitting in a living room listening to a Disney Halloween CD (almost everyone sang along to ‘Be Prepared’), occasionally with Nadia’s mum poking her head through the door to give them cake and stuff.

A couple of times, a little black shape flitted by the window and Sena tensed up. When that happened, Nadia squeezed her hand and smiled and after a moment everything was normal again.

Sena had considerably more than what would be her share of the sweets and was eating them methodically, one thing after the other, and smiling a little as she made a little pile out of the used wrappers.

“How do you have that many sweets?” Cedrick asked, exasperated. “Look, we had a plan, we has a rule that we would share the sweets evenly, and—”

“Shut up and stop being a communist, Ceddykins,” Rose said through a yawn. “It’s just sugar. No big deal.”

Xaidan reached out as casually as she could muster to try and steal a bar of chocolate from Sena’s pile. Sena slapped her hand away and gave her a warning glare.

“Aw, c’mon Sena, play nice,” Nat said.

Sena laughed joylessly. “I’m not sharing.”

“You know,” Blue said, putting their hands together and leaning forward, “I could really do with some more sugar. And also some more alcohol.”

Nat threw a pack of Skittles at them, and it hit them in the back of the head. “That’s all you’re getting.”

Blue pouted. “That’s no fun.”

Nat shook his head, slipping several more sweets into Blue’s pile.

“Since you’re American, we don’t have to do anything dumb, right?” Rose stretched and took off her devil horns, without which her makeup looked very dumb indeed. “Like, dooking for apples or whatever it’s called?”

Nadia blinked. “What…the fuck is that.”

“Biting apples in a tub of water,” Isabelle explained.

“Did someone say biting?” Nadia said. She leant in close to Sena’s neck. “You know vat I vant to suck?”

“I have nooo idea,” Sena said, with her voice devoid of energy, like the sugar had just been drained out of her.

“Hey, here’s an idea,” Terra said. “Let’s watch a movie.”

They ended the night watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, and because he could just hide behind Terra or Cedrick when it got too much, it was just the right amount of spooky for Parker.

#story #spooky scary #tetrigeist

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hetbigbang · 5 years ago

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Summary Writing Tips

These summaries are what will help a fanworker determine if they want to work with your story! Please read through these do's and don'ts, to help sell your fic! It’s important to know that this is a summary written for a fanworker, not for a reader. You’ll want to include more visual information that will attract a fanworker, versus what you would write to attract a reader. Some of these “don’ts” are fine for attracting a reader, but aren’t as helpful for a fanworker! Please take your time when writing your summary and ask for help if you need it! Things not to do: Don't just give a quote from the story! A quote probably won't tell the fanworker enough about your story as a whole, just one specific point. It doesn't give the fanworker a clear picture about what they are claiming, so they may pass your story for another one that has more information. He woke to the sound of soft laughing, the trilling chuckle of his wife cutting through the ringing of his ears. Or: “May I?” Persephone asked and Hades shuddered, his thoughts interrupted. He was unused to anyone being here with him. It was late and he was weary, readying himself for bed and then… While a quote such as these might draw in a potential reader, it doesn’t give enough information to a fanworker for them to make a decision and know what they are working with. Don't turn in a wall of text! It's good to give potential fanworkers plenty of information, but a full, lengthy story summary is more likely to cause people to tune out. Strike a balance between giving enough information, but also keep it focused. We recommend no more than 3 reasonably sized paragraphs. Don't list every character that appears in your fic. You want to keep the focus on your main characters and/or pairings, and including all your background or minor characters/pairings could get a fanworker's hope up for that character/pairing being more prominent than they are. Things to do: Do make sure that your summary is edited! A summary that has typos and bad grammar is less likely to inspire a fanworker in your writing abilities. This goes back to taking your time with your summary and asking for help, if you need it! Do give a well-thought out summary. If you put time into your summary, it's more likely to show. Ask for help if you need to! A good summary gives a clear idea of what your story is about. If you have an outline for your story, consider working from it to develop your summary. When Lord Aizu agreed to allow Saitou and Tokio to marry, it was on the condition that a child of theirs be adopted to the Numazawa Clan. Twelve years and two children later, they still have not fulfilled their end of the bargain and Tokio is now desperate to have one last child that she can let go. A child created out of hatred and disdain… She drugs her husband monthly, when the moon is high, and tries to force him to impregnate her, before she grows too old to bear another child. However, Saitou has been through many battles in his life and questions his own fertility, having survived through fevers and fire. He could stop her from attacking him monthly, but only at the loss of one of their sons, something he, himself, cannot bear any more than Tokio can. Or: Hades has evaded marriage for eons, but he can ignore it no longer when Zeus decrees it is time for him to take a wife. Amongst Zeus’ numerous daughters, it is Persephone that has been selected to take the place of Hades’ wife. Hades and Persephone must navigate their arranged marriage, while also learning how to cope with their annual six month separation. Persephone is warm and open while Hades is closed off and cold, denying Persephone his touch as he hides his body and terrible scars of the past. Can he learn to open up to her before he pushes Persephone away for all eternity? Do give some visual information of places or time periods, if appropriate or applicable to your story! For instance, if your story involves taking a trip to Rome, a fanworker who loves the idea of drawing Roman architecture, may want to pick your story! A good way to do this is to include a second paragraph, with a few scenery notes. The story is set in Meiji Era Japan, mostly inside of a traditional Japanese house. Kimono and traditional Japanese hairstyles are featured heavily. Or: This story takes place primarily in the Underworld, from Ancient Greek Myth. Some scenes take place on Mount Olympus, as well as on Earth in a field of wildflowers. Do be clear about warnings! If your story contains things that need warnings, you can choose to take a little extra space by explaining what your fanworker might encounter. For example, if your story has dubcon in the final version, an explanation in your summary can help fanworkers decide whether or not they will be comfortable working with your story. Graphic noncon is heavily featured, with Tokio raping her husband frequently while drugging him and subduing him. Forced drug use and domestic violence again Saitou also occurs. Or: There is uncle/niece incest between Hades and Persephone. Past mentions of Hades having been tortured is featured, as well as detail scar descriptions. All sex is consensual. Put it all together and this is what your summary form should look like: Username: LuciferxDamien Title: Drowning with the Koi Word Count: Around 12k total, 8k written Genre: Drama, Angst Fandom: Rurouni Kenshin Characters/Pairings: Saitou/Tokio Warnings: Graphic noncon (spousal rape), domestic abuse, forced drug use Rating: NC-17 Summary: When Lord Aizu agreed to allow Saitou and Tokio to marry, it was on the condition that a child of theirs be adopted to the Numazawa Clan. Twelve years and two children later, they still have not fulfilled their end of the bargain and Tokio is now desperate to have one last child that she can let go. A child created out of hatred and disdain… She drugs her husband monthly, when the moon is high, and tries to force him to impregnate her, before she grows too old to bear another child. However, Saitou has been through many battles in his life and questions his own fertility, having survived through fevers and fire. He could stop her from attacking him monthly, but only at the loss of one of their sons, something he, himself, cannot bear any more than Tokio can. The story is set in Meiji Era Japan, mostly inside of a traditional Japanese house. Kimono and traditional Japanese hairstyles are featured heavily. Graphic noncon is heavily featured, with Tokio raping her husband frequently while drugging him and subduing him. Forced drug use and domestic violence again Saitou also occurs. Or: Username: LuciferxDamien Title: Untitled Word Count: 16k Genre: Drama, Romance, Angst Fandom: Ancient Greek Myth Characters/Pairings: Hades/Persephone, Zeus Warnings: Incest (uncle/niece), torture (past), graphic scarring described Rating: NC-17 Summary: Hades has evaded marriage for eons, but he can ignore it no longer when Zeus decrees it is time for him to take a wife. Amongst Zeus’ numerous daughters, it is Persephone that has been selected to take the place of Hades’ wife. Hades and Persephone must navigate their arranged marriage, while also learning how to cope with their annual six month separation. Persephone is warm and open while Hades is closed off and cold, denying Persephone his touch as he hides his body and terrible scars of the past. Can Hades learn to open up to her before he pushes Persephone away for all eternity? This story takes place primarily in the Underworld, from Ancient Greek Myth. Some scenes take place on Mount Olympus, as well as on Earth in a field of wildflowers. There is uncle/niece incest between Hades and Persephone. Past mentions of Hades having been tortured is featured, as well as detail scar descriptions. All sex is consensual. ~ ~ ~ Remember! This summary does not have to be the summary you use when posting your story. This summary should be designed to catch a fanworker’s eye! You are more than welcome to change and/or tweak things to catch a reader's eye. For example, you can remove visual information about time periods and locations, and the detailed information on warnings/triggers, if you so choose when writing your summary for a reader! from Het Big Bang https://ift.tt/2IadsOw via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Het Big Bang #hbb2015

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to-carry-it-with-me · 8 years ago

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About Japanese

I came into this job at what I would say to be a lower intermediate level of Japanese. I could read some and understand the basics, but couldn’t hold an extended conversation or skim written material at all. Of course, immersion has done wonders for my fluency level, as well as quite a bit of dedicated study. At work, most of the teachers don’t speak any English really. Some of them know enough to get basic information across. My OTEs are all really good at English, but my main OTE and I speak in equal measures of Japanese and English because I can handle it and she knows it. We often exchange post-its of words or phrases the other doesn’t know or is interested in, so I get a lot of natural language exposure that way. Plus, I always try to listen in on as much of the meetings and background conversations as I can (eavesdropping has taught me so many useful words). Occasionally I’ll pick up a bit of information about the day’s schedule or a student that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. The teachers who don’t speak English are getting less and less hesitant to talk to me in the hallways or come directly to me when they need to tell me something about work. For example, the third-year Japanese teacher is usually responsible for collecting everyone’s orders and money for the nice bento all the teachers order together on days like Sports Day and Culture Day and graduation. The first time last year she went directly to my OTE so she could translate. The second time, she approached me while my OTE was sitting right there (just in case). The most recent time, she just came to me and told me about it. Another teacher even asked me about it since she hadn’t heard the other teacher tell me. Similarly, the students are less and less afraid to ask me for help in class. My predecessor apparently didn’t speak much Japanese, so I’m sure they’re used to writing off the ALT for answering questions. The first years especially are starting to even specifically ask for me for help, and I suspect this is largely due to my OTE for the first years specifically telling them that I will probably understand their Japanese if they ask me a question, which she has taken to doing for the past couple months. (Okay, soapbox time) I know a lot of people say you should only use Japanese in the classroom in dire situations, but in middle school they’re taking their first ever real classes in English and they’re just learning basic grammar and vocabulary. It’s virtually impossible to explain grammar points to them entirely in English and using metalanguage words like “past tense” and “verb” and “causative” (which they often don’t understand even in Japanese) will just confuse them because they’re still grappling with the basics. Spouting off complicated English explanations to them is not only unhelpful, but is going to frustrate the kids. It’ll be way above their zone of proximal development and they’ll just stop listening. I also consider “grassroots cultural exchange” as part of my job (per the JET Program’s stated goals), and perpetuating the stereotype of the foreigner (and English teacher) that doesn’t speak any Japanese isn’t helping anyone. It’s fine to be a foreigner or English teacher that doesn’t speak any Japanese, but as one who can, I feel that I can and should help break the image that a lot of Japanese people have in their minds. If my students (and other Japanese people, as well) realize they can talk to me and have a conversation, a lot more cultural exchange can take place. I become a real and multifaceted person instead of just “a foreigner.” A handful of third years have told me either in graduation/end-of-the-year letters or in person that they want to do their best at English so they can be like me (who can communicate in both). I’m honestly so glad I’ve become a bit of inspiration for them to do their best and try to be able to use English to communicate with lots of people. Anyways, all of this is to say that my Japanese has been improving by leaps and bounds since I’ve started living here. It’s definitely the first time in my life I’ve been able to notice a considerable difference in my ability that developed without me really consciously realizing it. I just kind of suddenly realize now and then that there’s a huge difference between my proficiency when I arrived here back in July and now. I’ve largely stopped translating Japanese to English in my head, though I can’t be sure exactly when that stopped. I can understand the majority of everyday conversations I hear going on around me. I can usually convey what I want to say, though it may not be as clear as it would be in English. Funnily enough, I’m finding it harder and harder to pretend I don’t speak Japanese when I’m faced with a situation I’d rather avoid. The one that sticks out to me was before Christmas when a very slightly creepy ossan approached me as I was walking to the station after work one day, on the way to meet my friends for dinner. He asked me if I was a teacher around here, and I started answering in Japanese before I could stop myself. Eventually I had to tell him I was going to meet my friends and had to go, but I could’ve saved time and the encounter with a rando if I had just pretended not to understand. Later I did a little better. The NHK man got to my friend’s house just before I did to drop something off and she opened the door thinking it was me. She doesn’t have a TV, so she doesn’t pay the NHK, but usually it’s easier just to avoid them. She was in the middle of saying “I don’t have a TV” when I arrived. I greeted the man in Japanese, thinking he was maybe a postal man (sometimes they have to hand deliver sensitive information of missed packages), but when I realized who it really was I switched back to English. When the NHK men came to my apartment, I spoke only in English, but I did have to consciously fight the urge to just tell them in Japanese. For the past seven months I’ve been surrounded by Japanese and have trained myself to use it to do everyday tasks, so it’s becoming more and more natural to use it, which is, despite the encounters with ossans and NHK men, a good thing. Some of my most recent adventures involve me going places without other English-speaking friends, which has really opened my eyes to how far I’ve come. Once I was invited to one of the bars we go to, but since my other friends were tired, I was the only non-Japanese at the bar for the four or so hours I was there, and I spent the whole time talking with people. It was relatively easy because I had known about half the people there for several months, but I was still surprised that I was mostly fine on my own for so long. I just needed to look up a few words now and then. As I mentioned in a previous post, I climbed Mt. Rokko with three of my Japanese friends during Golden Week. I spent almost twelve hours with them and we spoke almost entirely in Japanese all day. Occasionally my English teacher friend would give me a break and speak in English or he would translate a word I didn’t know so I didn’t have to get out my phone to look it up, but other than that, it was all Japanese all day. At some point during dinner I realized how little I had used English all day and while I felt that I still wasn’t quite good enough to fully participate in every conversation, I’m much more capable than I was when I studied abroad, which is usually my point of comparison when I think about my Japanese level.

#Japanese #misc #thoughts

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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April Progress Update, and May Goals:

*bear with me this is gonna get long.

I’m going to first just look at April goals and see if I did them, then afterward summarize everything I did this month (cause it was a lot more than I planned ToT)

Chinese study plan from April:

1. Read anything

Well, I did read. However my goal to read hanshe to chapter 80 and Zhenhun to the end of the sundial arc never happened. I did read a lot though. I ended up focusing mainly on extensive reading.

Chinese chapters read: 62 (I counted graded readers/小王子 as 1 chapter for every two that I read, but this number is probably still inflated... compared to my normal 20-pleco page chapters I probably read 31-40 of those-kind-of-chapters length wise).

Chinese stories finished: 4 (Pleco Graded Reader Butterfly Lovers, Chinese Short Stories, Mandarin Companion Journey to the Center of the Earth, 小王子 - you can tell this is where my attention went this month).

Chinese Listening Reading Method chapters done: 14.5 (4.5 Silent Reading, 2 Chapters of A History of Humankind, 1 chapter hp, 1 chapter Alice in Wonderland, iffy but like 3 chapters 小王子, iffy but like 4 chapters of the Xiao Mao cat story - I should note that for Silent Reading, 小王子, Xiao Mao I only looked at the chinese mostly so more step 2, and for the others I did step 3 as recommended). Also I realize... I should probably count this with hours instead of chapters, because hours are where the original poster about LR mentioned when milestones are hit. However, being realistic, I do not do things in hour segments so I’m not sure any tracking will be as easy as this way...

A cool thing potentially about L R Method? I found some resources recently that will make this a lot easier (Bidiread is a site that can make parallel texts for you, which made silent reading MUCH easier since the audio doesn’t perfectly match so you NEED to see the chinese even if only doing step 3, to make sure you can keep track of where you are in the text when the audio skips paragraphs). I also found Francais Par Le Methode Nature as videos on youtube with audio and the text visible (is that not simply L R method step 2 but its all comprehensible, i love that book). And I found a few files on youtube of audiobooks with english audio and chinese/english parallel text on screen (a bit backwards in process but i’m curious to test it), one youtube channel who does chinese audio with parallel texts on screen (phenomenal!), and I remembered the site bilinguis exists which is excellent for French if you wanna try L R Method (it has a few french audios with the parallel texts). Also in the case of A History of Humankind - the audiobook for once is very closely synced to the actual chapter start/ends, so it was just easier to do L R Method with.

2. Listen to Chinese Spoonfed Audio, shadowing when I can

YES I did this! I was on 11 last month, now I’m on 15. (so 4 audio this month) Yes I realize that wasn’t a lot of improvement T-T. What can I say I am not very good at being disciplined. However I did learn something interesting this month ABOUT listening to these so I think I might do it more - I listened to some in the background while playing games, then later listened to them again (also why I only got through 4 - I was replaying audios maybe 2 times). And when I listened the second time I could understand nearly all, whereas obviously when playing my game I only caught parts of it. So I suppose what this showed me is partially listening and partially focusing still may have some benefit in helping to learn the info - and well obviously its easier to make time to play audio when u don’t need to focus 100% on it.

I also did some other misc listening to random stuff without any plan: 6? audio 1 of DeFrancis Beginner Chinese Reader, 1 audio of FSI Chinese, 2 condensed audios of Guardian (which was so cool?? also so cool i can follow along so well now??), 1 dracula chapter audio (don’t even ask i don’t know either), tian ya ke audio drama ep 1.

Chinese show episodes watched: 28 (You can see here is where my time went listening wise lol - Two Souls in One is GOOD u might wanna check it out, is all I’m saying, especially if the taiwan drama Bromance was ur thing, or the anime Ouran Host Club, or even Bureau of Transformer to a degree. I watched up to ep 25 and once its all aired to the finale I’m gonna finish it.

Optional going through my hanzi book: I burned out on this, but it was a good use of my time when I felt like writing. I only wrote/studied maybe 30 hanzi, and maybe 50 hanzi+radicals in my Radical-Specific hanzi book. If I continue, I think my goal will be to just continue the Radical-book to completion. Realistically, longer term, I need to go through the freaking Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Character’s book just to get the hanzi and their rough meaning to stick in my head (and learn the pronunciations through well context and vocab how I normally do). Right now I just learn through reading, but its an issue of sometimes I just end up associating one hanzi with the new word I learned but then as soon as I see it in a new word I don’t even remember having seen it before. If I paid a bit more attention to distinguishing I might notice when I’ve seen them before or they’re new, and have more starting info to relate to the character to attach the word info onto. (its a convoluted way of me saying if I have things to connect to each other I remember better even if it makes little sense to connect them - if I know car and pet, carpet’s easier to remember even though it has nothing to do with cars, cry in french ‘pleurer’ was easier to remember once my brain thought ‘plume of tears’ even though that makes no sense. i just remember things better than seeing pleurer and having no idea what to attach it to at all - even if i heard it means cry, if i don’t have a thing to associate it with i’ll forget easier. or melancholy - i had to associate it with melons, and cholly - reminds me of words for sickness so heavy-sick +sad is how i started finally remembering that word cause wow did i look it up over and over as a kid).

---

Japanese study plan from April:

1. continue through nukemarine’s memrise courses.

Okay I did do this!! Congrats! In March I had completed LLJ 3 - Kanji, 289/318 finished in LLJ 4 Tae Kim part 1. As of April, I have completed: LLJ 4 Part 1, LLJ 4 Part 2 51/365, LLJ 5 Core Vocabulary 420/1020. So yeah! Going quite well, in that I consistently did it - I realized for me the best time to do it is playing video games oddly enough, or watching youtube - just do it in between areas, or ep scenes/videos, as a short 5-10 minute break. Since I like taking breaks from things anyway. Like audio, its hard for me to find ways to get myself to do stuff like this (except worse cause I don’t vibe with flashcards).

My goal for May will probably be finish LLJ 4 Part 2, LLJ 5, and start LLJ 6? I can dream right...

Also, a cool note: I found audio-flashcard files that people made of the Japanese Core 2k vocabulary deck and sentences, with english-japanese audio. (If anyone wants a link just let me know). So now if I DO eventually get burned out on flashcards, I could switch to using those. They would work about as well as the Chinese Spoonfed Audio files I have (which work extremely well for me - audio flashcards I just listen to are so much more suited to how I study lol). However, I’d like to stick with Nukemarine’s decks as long as possible while I can focus - they cover grammar explicitly which helps me a lot, and the reading practice COMBINED with constant audio really helps me learn the readings of words. Which is something I need for japanese a LOT more than chinese.

2. continue reading Tae Kim’s grammar guide

Ahahahahaaa hahaaa... did not do it. Nope.

What I did do that was grammar related:

Watched Cure Dolly lessons 1-5 (and will probably watch more as I seem to click well with those explanations)

Read 24 pages of Japanese in 30 Hours while transcribing actual japanese into it (and will probably continue to read it, its so short I should just DO IT in a couple days, it also fulfilled my desire to write stuff)

JapaneseAudioLessons.com - read the wa vs ga explanation, reading the portable japanese grammar notes document right now (its 11 pages I’ll finish it today). I’ve said it before but i really LOVE this resource, and they have so much for free. I absolutely recommend if a beginner wants Pimsleur or Michael Thomas or some other paid resource etc, to just go to this site, download their full lesson grammar guide (its like 311 pages like a real textbook) and go through all their free audio lessons. You will cover a lot of ground (more than Pimsleur or Michael Thomas), and all for free. In addition, I’ve bought some of their kanji teaching books and they’re overall my favorite for remembering kanji specifically (yes more than Heisig’s RTK by far, and more than KKLC - although the Kodanshi book is a good reference to have around). I’m not kidding at all when I say just try this site’s free resources if you’re trying to use free stuff, its the closest I’ve found to an audio only teaching method, or an audio/textbook-like combo, that’s this much stuff and free. (For non free, I actually liked Genki if you do everything in it).

Other misc things done in japanese:

Watched Dracula the Musical in japanese with no subs. It was super hard, but also not so hard. It changed my life. 1000/10 would recommend watching it if you even remotely like dracula OR vampires - featuring a lesbian Dracula/Mina, and more importantly a story change about who kills Dracula, and Dracula and Mina’s agency and choice being the driving force of the ending. These story changes I LOVE and I now want them in more adaptations moving forward, its what I always craved of the ending of Dracula and never got - Dracula as a person (not monster), Mina as a person (not prey), and their choices influencing how the story ends and by whom (versus Van Helsing/the establishment symbol regaining control through annihilation of the ‘threat’ to that norm). Also it gave me a new interest in Japanese plays which is cool. I did not expect to love them this much! Also gave me a boost in japanese confidence, in that I no longer feel as “scared” to try immersing in japanese or in some kinds of content that seemed ‘harder’ - and that was a big hurdle I was too afraid to do, in the past when I studied.

Watched a few more lets plays (lets guess maybe 3-5 sections of 20 minutes?). Persona 2 innocent sin (cool to see me follow along despite not knowing the game), Final Fantasy IX (this one I saved, and could definitely pick up words from since I know some of the story and the lets player read everything - I should look up FFX), random stuff.

Tried to play some games in japanese! I’m going to go with this was about 3 hours. I tried crisis core’s opening to the first save point - it was playable (I can read most of the menus), and I can follow enough text to get the overall gist - however it was draining as so much is text only (I FORGOT how much reading is in this game). Great for reading practice I suppose. Also great in that it definitely reset my expectations about what is ‘doable’ for me - however I do think KH2 is probably still the easiest game i should start trying games with (since I have so many of the controls/menu memorized and can waste less time re-reading the tutorials), and since I know so many words by memory I’ll be able to focus more on grammar (whereas in CC I was glancing through kanji trying to keep up with the live action scenes). A bit too much reading for me to tackle again for a while, it was draining lol. Then I tried persona 3 for psp - first, i like the ps2/ps3 version better ToT. Second, also somehow I could read enough to survive - but the reading again took time, a lot isn’t voiced, and there are not frequent save points. So again I just played to the first save point. That one I may try again before CC though, because a lot more of the language is daily life stuff I could glance through and speed-read-guess lol, or could actually use if I learned it. Also occassionally p3 reads out loud which is nice. I suspect the Visual Novel I got will actually be best for practice (despite me not knowing the plot at all), because I’m guessing more of the lines will be voiced. All this reading would help me more if I could hear it voiced - and I may want to watch more Lets Plays, and Audiobooks on youtube, mainly for that fact: subtitles that i can read WITH audio so i can practice listening and reading together.

Tried reading a bit! First, some mangas I had (though I only read a page of each) - mainly it was just nice to see mangas are more accessible now. they’re about as readable to me rn as manhua were in chinese at 6-8 months in. I can just about follow the main gist, more if I use a dictionary for details. Also thanks to @yue-muffin telling me, learned I can look up words on iphone in the web browser just by highlighting words and clicking “look up.” Life changing. That in combination with me finding some japanese scripts of Final Fantasy games online (and I’ve always been curious what localizations changed), and this has been a little reading I found myself doing just because i felt like it. I didn’t read much - the equivalent of several dialogue boxes (the games i played made me read a LOT more lol). but I liked that i could see their kana when i looked them up, sound the sentences out to myself, contemplate them (so intensive read). Also if you have Speech tools enabled on your phone, you can swipe down with 2 fingers and it will read the page aloud - I used to do that a little with chinese on dual chinese-englist mtlnovel pages since it WILL read both, but Pleco reads chinese better so unless i’m only-listening i switched to pleco for that. But for these scripts it works great! (occasionally it will read all-kanji titles like chinese though lol - not once its into japanese sentences though). I thought it was really cool I could basically emulate what I do in Pleco for chinese, in a normal web browser for Japanese. (Also, for websites, Idiom app seems to work ok for reading Aloud as well - possibly better - but ios iphone “Look up” dictionaries are MUCH better than Idiom app’s).

In summary basically I surprisingly enjoyed reading and might keep trying to do it just because its interesting. However in general, first: I really want 2k words done in Nukemarine’s LLJ courses (LLJ 7 would put me at 1k common words, LLJ 12 would put me at 2k so...), and I’d really like a better grammar foundation (Cure Dolly, or japanese audio lessons grammar, Nukemarine LLJ also obviously fits that task with the grammar portions, really anything). While I want to play games, again I just really realize... how much easier my life will be with a better basis of knowledge first lol. Reading I can do in bite size if I want, but playing games is Draining in between saves right now lol. While i CAN do it right now, unless its a game i really can tune out with (like KH2 maybe) then its just too intensive right now for me to tolerate too much of.

Also, again, I think doing Nukemarine’s LLJ decks as breaks while playing games/watching stuff is working great, going to keep doing that. And listening to audio flashcard files while I have dead time (like level grinding). I have been listening to the Chinese Spoonfed audio, but other options could be: the english-japanese Core 2k audio files, the Japanese Audio Lessons files (which once years ago I’d listen to while excerising). For now I’ve focused on Chinese Spoonfed audio because I know I need to FINISH something before jumping to something else lol.

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French stuff I did in April:

Listened to 6 chapters of Francais Par Le Methode Nature (and read some of them - oh i missed this book its my fave way to learn and it finally has audio!!)

listened to some bits of audiobooks (i don’t even know why, i don’t know - dracula, frankenstein, carmilla, sherlock)

read a little of Le Petit Prince (idk 3 chapters? browsing my book after finishing in chinese and... ok my heart is still a bit ;-; ... i’m gonna need to recover from this story...)

read a bit of dracula (again... idk why... also it was kind of a L R Method step 2 attempt in that I listened to audio too, but really I mainly just... read)

L R Method: 2 Chapters of Alice in Wonderland (step 2, because I have not tried step 3 yet).

What is funny as hell to me is both how many words I look up when I contemplate intensive reading (again life changed by the fact i can just highlight words and click “word lookup” on my phone). But also how I already... know I can thoroughly read without doing it. Like... yes I can look up a word I fuzzy-know to get clarification, but even my phone auto-gives me french-french dictionary first and sometimes only (is it because my google is in french), i’ve been used to french definitions only for years.. and also like... i know when i read a whole paragraph i get whatever words were fuzzy before? just read some of dracula again today and its fine. its fine. again informational texts are easier for me - but dracula being a lot of letters ‘describing what happened’ suits me quite easily (and somehow manages to be less annoying to me than the english version). like... alice in wonderland was probably the harder for all the quick adjectives/verbs used in just one or two paragraphs when i was still re-remembering vocabulary i used to know lol. Like... in a dream world i’d love to test L R Method and see HOW MUCH it can teach a person. But like... while french would be the easiest to test it with? I kind of realize i’m also at a point in french where i have more benefit just continuing to read in french and listen in french (to fix my poor listening skills). referencing the english is not really... particularly necessary, it just usually slows me down. while i’m missing a LOT of words for fluent speaking/grammatically ok speaking - i don’t think listening reading method would really help me with that, since reading sure hasn’t. if any readng material might it’s francais par le methode nature just because it drills simple correct grammar construction, and reinforces it, and teaches grammar through context. but all my other reading materials... are more comprehension...

Anyway in SUMMARY wow i did a lot more than i expected this month!

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Next months goals!

Chinese May Goals:

***Read anything. Great plan, has been working great. Ideally I would like to: finish Xiao Mao book one, and then either continue another Xiao Mao novel or start one of the other stories rated 2+ ease. I am considering 许三观卖血记 because its about as easy as the little prince, I’ve read an excerpt and its historical fiction so generally practical. Or 流星·蝴蝶·剑 by Gu Long if I want to work on a base in wuxia words from an easier novel. Or 他们的故事 by 一根黄瓜丝儿 if I’m ready to return to it - although this one is longer (the other stories being more like 12-20 chapters) so I’d prefer to save this for later. For any of these - look words up as desired since I’ll read them in Pleco. Ideally as my ‘harder’ reading I would like to either continue hanshe (intensive reading), or continue guardian (extensive reading) - so its a matter of if I want to look words up.

***Continue listening to Chinese Spoonfed Audio (please can i Finish it please ;-;)

Optional: experiment with Listening Reading Method. With the finding of those videos on youtube, I’d like to make my life literally as easy and streamlined as possible and literally just TEST L R Method by doing it with a few of the videos I found. It literally cannot get easier than premade videos with audio.

Other optional: listen to misc audio (I would love the time to watch the tian ya ke audiodrama WITH its subtitles then listen without again), watch shows, read Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Characters (i doubt this will happen), do some of my Radical-hanzi book.

Japanese May Goals:

***Continue: Nukemarine’s LLJ courses - ideally finish LLJ 4 Part 2, LLJ 5, and start LLJ 6. (this truly can be basically my only study method if I can’t do more). THIS IS THE PRIORITY. The quicker I get ALL of this done, the more of a foundation I will have to do Anything else.

Hopefully: Continue some kind of grammar explanation beyond Nukemarine’s stuff - either Tae Kim (unlikely but i was at chapter 10 before), Cure Dolly (i’m on 6), Japanese Audio Lessons Grammar, Japanese in 30 Hours while writing japanese in (I’m on page 24). Again this is a higher priority as it will make anything else easier.

Optional: Reading in any form - so video game time, lets plays, audiobook youtube with captions, actual reading as desired (like scripts). Including this because I know I will eventually try again lol.

Optional: listening in any form - so another musical! maybe listen to japanese audio lessons, or the core 2k audio, or a lets play, etc. I find I’m probably less likely to listen to something but it might happen!

French May Goals*:

*aka if I feel like doing it because french has no real goals at the moment! -3-)/

***Continue watching Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature videos. (There’s only 33, they’re like 10 minutes long or less, its about basics, PLEASE). I remember this book took forever to read 1/3 of when i was an upper beginner, well now surely its less slow going? especially because read aloud its as fast as the speakers voice! so it is not time consuming and i’ve wanted to finish this book forever! i could at least finish it up to where the audio files match to!

Read???? Read??? Honestly I’ve just been wanting to read Dracula and Carmilla in French its a vibe I’ve been in. Its not high priority or anything but hey it might happen. If it does happen, ideally I’d like to listen to an audiobook too around the same time (maybe after, or have the page read, idk). Just because while reading refreshes my vocab, what I really want to build up is listening/pronunciation. To get to a point where I can listen and shadow would be nice.

Tied to above, try L R Method? Not a high priority, though it would be super easy to test! Just because I already started testing it with Alice in Wonderland... but that basically amounts to just reading practice with audio again, for me.

I found Merlin in french so THAT is a thing.

Honestly the only thing I really want to do ‘study’ wise in french is finish that freaking book, especially now that I can listen to audio with it. It’s a nice foundation and I’d really like a refresher/fill in any big gaps in my learning. Anything else about french written here is mostly a reminder to myself to LISTEN to audio when possible, and try and improve that skill a bit if I go and read.

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Real fast CORE SUMMARY:

Chinese: READ easier stories rated 2+ and keep getting through some, in combination with reading the harder hanshe and Guardian. Also listen to Chinese Spoonfed audio whenever u remember! Attempt some L-R method with the youtube videos you found. Immerse as desired.

Japanese: continue Nukemarine LLJ courses. Also do some grammar study somewhere, and immerse as desired.

French: listen/listen-read to Francais Par Le Methode Nature. Also read/listen as desired - ideally combining the activities.

*in all cases, where possible, combine listening-reading or try to practice both skills. (So reading in Pleco - play audio afterward to practice, play Guardian condensed audio in down time, with audiodramas follow subs when possible, when immersing with anything try L-R like strategies to add practice with both skills).

#rant #april progress #april goals #may study plan #study plan #may goals #may #what i learned from this is... i have no fucking structure guys #im a mess i just do Whatever #only thing close to ANY structure is that with chinese im fairly consistent about reading #someone help me come up with a cleaner study plan?#or is the fact just that this is Just how i study???#do i just need to bounce and do random stuff?

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