#it definitely slowed a little. but its still noticeably faster than whrn i was a beginner

[rigelmejo]

Ok so I read 2 chapters of tyk today, 1 yesterday, in Idiom app. Since I got the free version again, a decent number of idioms definitions are not good sjsjjd (pleco would be better but I'm too lazy to switch)

So like. I have been clicking words for definitions but also guessing a lot since about half the definitions are unusable. And just trying to read as fast as I can.

The upside? Retained my grammar and sentence phrasing kind of saying familiarity so only forgotten and unknown words are slowing me down. Also reading speed is way faster than last time I read over a year ago, along with comprehension much higher.

I looked up like 90 words? Out of I'm guessing like 1000ish words? So my comprehension is idk I'm gonna roughly guess 91% with my current rusty memory for the chinese I've studied. If I guessed the words that look familiar it's probably closer to 95% (but less certain in my interpretation) which is what my zhenhun comprehension was last time I measured it back in July 2021... so actually... assuming priest novels are similar difficulty (tho i do think tyk is easier so I probably lost a little skill level) I didn't lose too much of my reading skill over the Fall of not studying.

It is Painfully apparent I lost my listening skills though. Maybe I have a visual memory? Recognizing the hanzi enough to guess new words like variations on excited, nervous, hasty, jolted, shocked, stared, sized up, glared, confused, shook, stretched, picked up, took away etc are super easy cause I remember at least one of the hanzi in the words and likely did learn these words before since I can guess them while skimming so they Look familiar. But I looked a LOT up anyway when reading cause I forgot part of their pronunciation...

Just went to glance at the hanshe pingxie fic and yep... word recognition on sight still seems mostly retained, but I have to look up a lot of words to remember their specific pronunciation. Mm..

Anyway what all this means?

Well 1. It means if i wanted to go through tian ya ke or qi ye English then Chinese chapters, should be very doable. Even if I dont look up words (that just means I won't have the pronunciation support). So it basically depends on if i can tolerate not being certain about word pronunciations when reading ahh...

2. Probably also means i could go back to the zhenhun print novel again and pick up where i left off skill wise (except I'll not recognize all the pronunciations I used to). So... reading skill should come back if i just get into reading again a bit. Which is good news.

3. I probably need to actually purposefully build up listening skills again like I did last summer ahh ToT so L R method again or audiobook with subs. To connect sound to words again. Audio flashcards too obviously for just general listening comprehension improvement - but i think the biggest loss is I forgot the sound of some words I know, and to get that back i need to see audio matched to the words I know. I will probably wait to do that until when I've got more energy in a few months maybe.

Update: just played audio for hanshe while following along AND. That'll work if I wanna get my listening comprehension back! I could follow along fine, so that should work if I do that with anything I've read before - just listen to it again while reading it. (I listened in Idiom but in future I should probably listen in pleco cause it works better that way, but either works. Also any audiobook file I find with Chinese subs like the tian ya ke one should be fine). So yeah I do not need to put in super effort and look words up while doing that - just listening while following along will work enough. I presume also listening again later with or without text more will reinforce it, but overall probably Just hearing the words again and being forced to process them ASAP then move on will probably jog my memory Enough eventually.