#on the upside im not grinding flashcards anymore

[rigelmejo]

august study routines/goals

In practice, my study routine this month hasn’t gone quite as expected. Here’s the layout of it this month, in reality:

Studying flashcards with anki - goal is to keep increasing my vocabulary, in the context of sentences. Primarily: going through Spoonfed Chinese. Optional: going through HSK vocab deck (has example sentences and character meaning breakdowns which is nice), and going through Grammar vocab deck (I’m rarely touching this one). This one has been mostly review, with reinforcement of my listening skills, reading skills, word recognition skills, exposure to correct usage/grammar, and some new words. The farther I get, the more genuinely new words I’ll hit. I like the structure of this. I’m doing it instead of the memrise reviews mostly - I still do the memrise reviews occasionally, since they cover some frequent words not in HSK. Eventually this will surpass review and become mostly new material, so I plan to continue doing this for a few months.

Reading immersion - goal is to read through some graded readers, some novels, increasing in difficulty, counting chapters read. So far this goal is successfully being met. (I’ve read through Mandarin Companion Sherlock, started Mandarin Companion Journey to the Center of the Earth, and read 1 chapter of MoDu by Priest). Making this a specific goal is definitely helping push me to read more. I am noticing language skill related improvements that are at least partly because of me reading more. And... I did literally get through a chapter of a Priest novel, only looking a handful of words up to follow the gist main ideas. So I think increased reading is definitely helping me out. A possibly unintended side effect - I’ve noticed I’m somewhat getting a bigger active vocabulary of words I can spontaneously think of, although my usage of them in sentences is still often weird. As a branch off of this (and the audio immersion, and production of tones) I’m playing around with the app M Mandarin and it’s comics/lessons - they sort of count as reading immersion. But I don’t plan to count them unless I read maybe - 5 comics? Since they’re relatively short. 

Show watching immersion - goal is to simply improve reading comprehension/speed, watching shows with no english subs. So far, this goal is being met somewhat. I have watched maybe 5-6 episodes so far this month. I am noticing significant progress since December-January comprehension wise. I would like to do more, but realistically the reading immersion covers similar skills and the shows I WANT to watch lately are all dual subtitled (which I am NOT counting for this). 

Audio immersion - goal is to listen to audio often, with the intent to improve listening comprehension and get better at recognizing words I’ve studied/seen before. This is actually going pretty well. I’m not measuring it, just doing it when desired. I’m experimenting with ‘repetitive listening’ but I’ve listened nothing anywhere close to 50-100 times. I listened to Guardian Audiobook chapter 1 and noticed improvements in comprehension a bit each time I listen, and I listened to 2HA audiodrama episode 1 a few times with similar improvements noticed. I also have audio file chunks of the Spoonfed Chinese sentences (with english translations) - which I’m playing a few times, sort of to ‘audio-only’ review those sentences. This last part I’m finding very useful for cementing new words/grammar patterns into my mind so I can recognize them easier. Overall, this task is really fun and easy to incorporate, so I’ll probably keep adding it in general.

Production improvement - goal is to produce tones better. This was not an intended goal for the month, or even for a while into the future. I have some language partners now and I kind of need to talk more. My grammar is still YIKES and I am not planning to actively improve it as a goal for a while (when I do - I’ll focus on reading Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar, doing the Grammar anki deck, and writing more based on those example sentences). Talking wise - since I am talking more, I might as well improve my tones so I pronounce better. Not a goal I intended for the month, but I’m focusing on it. I have noticed that as an unintentional side effect, my active vocabulary is increasing - more words are more easy for me to spontaneously say and recognize, the drawback being of course that I am still using them in incorrect ways since I don’t know their proper contexts/grammar well enough.

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What I had planned to focus on, when August started, was just vocab increasing and immersion in reading/shows (focusing on reading chunks of text, and reading speed with subtitles). I did not intend to add audio listening practice, and tone pronunciation practice, but here I am. I do think that, thankfully, these two study goals are pretty easy to tack onto a plan and keep doing (audio practice is just whenever I want, and tone practice is simply me working harder to accurately repeat the sound of new words I learn/sentences I study). Meanwhile... I think I’d planned to do some grammar and hanzi study... those two goals are being moved to farther out in the future. 

A typical day’s study routine:

Do Spoonfed flashcards during down time in the day - may or may not finish. If I finish, and want to keep doing cards, then I do some HSK vocab cards, and if desired some Grammar cards.

Listen to some audiobook/audiodrama/spoonfed-audio-file while exercising or driving or doing work, 5 minutes -1 hr a day, widely varies.

If I have time that day, try to read a chapter of a story, OR watch a show in chinese subs only. If my time is limited, try to prioritize reading. In the end, I do whatever I’m in the mood for. 

When doing anki, try to pronounce some words/sentences as best I can like the audio. When reading, if the file has audio (pleco, talkify, M Mandarin, etc) then I attempt to pronounce it like the audio as best I can. Once in a while - when talking with a language partner, work on this with someone able to help me notice the mistakes.

Takes a minimum of 10-30 minutes active study (either all anki, some anki and some reading), and 5 min - 1 hr passive study (just listening to audio).  Can take longer, like 1-2 hours, if I do all anki possible, then read minimum of 1 chapter, then also watch a full episode (20-40 minutes anki, 20-40 minutes reading, 40 minutes - 1 hour episode). Again, passive study of audio listening is just whenever I can fit it into the day.