#well… the pinyin at least. different characters are used in Chinese lol

[melonfell]

quick Jiang Yanli sketch <3

[speakergame]

i saw the nonsense on google translate and it had xuè and xiě as pinyin for 血 and....neither of those are correct god bless. it's xuě...lol..

actually, update on the 血 fiasco: it gets worse. 血, among many other Chinese characters, has two "official" pronunciations, xuè and xiě. unfortunately, most Chinese people say xuě and then you get forum comments like "xuě is incorrect because it's not in the dictionary" or something equally nonsensical, as if the dictionary has ever been up to date. so i guess if Sebastian learned Chinese out of a book he'd say xuè or xiě, and if he learned Chinese through immersion he'd say xuě. that's just my opinion though

well, to make things even more complicated, Sebastian’s knowledge of Chinese is a peculiar case. he did learn Chinese through immersion, but his father didn’t. his dad grew up in a family that chose (like many American immigrant families) to not speak their native language at home, so James grew up only speaking English. he chose to teach himself Chinese as an adult and to teach it to his son. so chances are that James learned it through books, and Bas would use the same pronunciation his father did, so he’d most likely use xuè

at least, that’s how I understand it. I don’t speak Chinese myself, but I put this same question to a friend of mine after seeing how many different potential pronunciations I got online, and he told me xuè would have been most likely what he knows, but I can change it if y’all think xuě would be more appropriate! it’s a surprisingly complicated situation 😆

[rigelmejo]

notes to myself basically, on how i study languages (so far, there’s always gonna be better ways i don’t know of yet lol):

learn 500-1000 common words asap, read a grammar guide that provides overview asap - like the first 3 months. If a full grammar guide doesn’t exist that’s concise (hi japanese ;-;) find a basics grammar guide at least and read that (pimsleur, websites, genki, tae kim, youtube). Specifically within the common words, at least look at the ‘300 common word tumblr to say things’ language vocab list. That list is good for me starting some kind of active vocab/expressing ideas.

if its got a different writing system, look up the alphabet in 1st month (kana for japanese, cyrillic alphabet for russian etc, pinyin for chinese). listen to pronunciation guides, and write and/or mnemonics to learn those asap.

if its got characters (like chinese, japanese), learn 300-500 super common characters ASAP (first 5 months). 

After month 3, learn up to 2000 common words (hi srs flashcard programs like anki and memrise, common word lists, graded readers), and up to 2000 characters. Not all these need to be done with srs flashcards/focused study, but get TO recognizing this many as soon as u can. Goal is get to this by month 8-10. But depending on how much i can overall understand without doing this, i may not learn All of these words by then (but ideally i should).

By 500-1000 words (and 500+ characters if needed), so after 3-5 months, start trying to immerse in what I WANT to do - so reading, watching (maybe listening, maybe games). I don’t have to do it much, but do it a bit to remember what I learned and also motivate myself to study more.

Months 5-8 somewhere between 1000-2000 words, start trying to write/say basic things to myself or on apps with others. Probably will be a mess, don’t have to do it much. Do it enough to have motivation to study more - see where I’m lacking skills. I may need more grammar explanation, or more vocab, or notice a big issue in my pronunciation etc.

Around month 8-10, around 2000+ words studied (although it may be less or more depending on what I’m comfortable with), ramp up immersion a lot. As soon as its mildly tolerable, ramp it up a LOT. Look up words when immersing as often or not often as desired, goal is to always follow at least the bare minimum main idea (and more details if possible/if I wanna put in the effort to look more up). Now I can start learning new words primarily from this. 

Reading skills - during immersion do intensive reading to learn more vocabulary quicker, extensive reading to improve overall comprehension. Do SRS flashcards/focused graded readers/word-list prep for stuff I read as needed, to speed up how much vocab I learn (if I’m learning too slow for my preference lol). Ways to make extensive reading easier: read graded readers, read show subtitles in target language while watching show, textbooks built to increase info taught in context, read stuff I’ve read translations of first, read stuff I have prior context for (I saw the show/heard already with english transcript etc), Listening reading method, read extensively what I’ve read intensively before etc.

Listening skills - start extensive listening to audio (for overall comprehension improvement). Start intensive listening where I hear words and lookup definition and/or learn word pronunciation with explanations. So start listening to audio flashcards for building a base of learned words/phrases (chinese spoonfed audio files, japanese core 2k audio, japaneseaudiolessons.com, SRS flashcards if they have audio only ones too, Coffee Break French, audio for Francais par le methode nature etc). To make extensive listening easier: start with watching/listening to shows I’ve already seen subs for, shows in general (visual context helps), comprehensible input audio (like comprehensible input french youtube, Learn Korean in Korean youtube, Dreaming Spanish youtube etc), listen with a transcript then listen without, Listening reading method, listen to things I have prior context for like audiobook of something i read/audio drama of show i’ve seen. Do some shadowing (shadowing audio flashcard files is easy and reliable tbh). 

Production skills (I am not here yet) - in general I’ve found making myself write more, talk more, to myself (like journals and practice convos) and to others, tends to improve my active vocabulary. Especially when I try to communicate about topics i’m bad at (so making myself look up those words and write/say them to put them back into active vocab). At this point I’m guessing more explicit grammar drill practice might help, people correcting me, shadowing a lot. Maybe practicing translating to that language/from it, to practice building active vocab? I’m not sure what will help most here tbh as I’ve never gotten far in this area. (For chinese, studying pronunciation more in depth and doing more listening/shadowing, and pronunciation apps, helped a lot with pronunciation itself but not active production yet). 

---

i’m currently mostly just doing 8-9 for chinese right now - building reading skills, building listening skills. Varying what i do. For production skills i’m guessing there’s a ton of varied things i can do right now or later, i’m just not entirely sure what they’d be. i have not tried/troubleshooted those skills much before when studying. All i know for sure is the more i make myself use the language in Varied topics, the more i get an active vocabulary (aka writing journals, making self-convos, and doing language exchanges help in a basic way). No idea how to improve grammar though in ways that’d work well for me. so right now my skills lean heavier toward comprehension, less skill in any production. Studying chinese taught me a lot about how i learn listening skills though...which is valuable as i barely had practice learning HOW to study them when i studied french or japanese before.

troubleshooting wise - this is the rough trajectory i went through in chinese, that has worked okay for me. looking at it helps me see where i ‘slowed down’ my progress in other languages i studied.

for french - i did very LITTLE listening practice, and had few ideas of how to work on it at the time. Now I would probably do listen with transcript then without, and shadowing, to work on listening skills. And watching shows/videos with subtitles (if possible), then without subs. And very little speaking practice - same deal as listening, i did a little at some point realizing it was a weak area but not enough work on it. I also did very LITTLE production practice like language exchanges. i had few reasons to produce language, and so the few times i needed to i could mostly rely on super common words or look things up when writing. i know i’d need to do more to work on production. so i was very unbalanced - large reading comprehension, low pretty much every other skill.

for japanese... i did a lot in retrospect i wish i’d redone different. and i do it different now. i did not read/watch a grammar guide - and i still freaking need to (or at least get clear grammar exposure like nukemarine’s LLJ course’s tae kim portions). japanese has grammar i find very hard to figure-out through exposure so this holds me back a lot. and lack of immersion to both motivate me to study MORE and to practice reading/listening skills. ALSO lack of common words - i learned like 800 hanzi rough-meaning through RTK, and maybe 500 words in genki... and no wonder it wasn’t enough lol! i think nukemarine helped back years ago, because it forced me to study grammar and vocab, listening and reading, in a structured way (similar to how genki helped me in the very start before i quit using it). and japaneseaudiolessons.com helped because it made me practice listening and gave me comprehensible listening with definitions. that in combo with me really starting to immerse and TRY to read/listen at year 2+ is when i finally made some progress because i was doing things that work for me - finally. and now that i’m coming back to japanese, i’m starting to apply all those things again that were finally working. 

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anyone have any tips on how to improve production skills? Both active vocabulary, and how to both practice speaking/writing broadly AND how to fix grammar errors. 

For active vocab and general writing/speaking I know just talking more/writing more helps. But I can only tend to catch grammar errors if I run it through a translator first to compare how the translator phrases it to how I did (which can create a LOT of errors if the translator is Wrong), or if someone corrects my grammar error (which relies on other people - and preferably a tutor since i dont want to bother people who aren’t paid to correct - so what can i do on my OWN?). 

The big thing is with grammar, I can only think to either go through beginner courses Again from the start and do the writing drills and copy the patterns to internalize them? So I could correct my basic writing/speaking but not necessarily when I start speaking/writing creatively, unless I find textbooks/workbooks that eventually go into intermediate material (and of course finding textbooks/online exercises that provide correct answers so i can compare my attempts to the correct ones). Aside from either a tutor, or trying to find well made free online courses with exercises with answers provided, i’m not sure how to improve grammar production. If I write out sentences i read, would that internalize being able to ‘copy their grammar correctly’ when i write? if i shadow correctly said speeches/videos, would that help drill ‘correct grammar’ when speaking? (And be less boring then doing FSI speech drills). Basically I’m trying to find some ways (creative or not) to improve grammar in production. Improving active vocabulary seems pretty straightforward to me (make myself use it, look up words until they come natural to me - but if u got any other fun ways to improve active vocab i’d love to hear!). But I don’t know how to improve grammar when you are NOT in a class structure, have no teacher/tutor, and already have a base level of comprehension. As in like? I can read fine, but when writing I can’t tell if what I produce is grammatically correct or not - and again I can run it through a translator sometimes to try and ‘check’ but since translators make errors, my ‘corrected example’ isn’t always reliable to use as something to emulate for ‘correct form.’

[knuckle]

The way people will criticize fictional Chinese diaspora names not written in Hanyu Pinyin and then well-meaning people who don't use google will then give advice on how to mispronounce pinyin names lol - brief history fact: pinyin wasn't created as a romanization of Chinese for native English speakers - it was created as part of literacy efforts by and for Chinese people to associate sounds with characters. So how it might read naturally to you is not how it may actually sound. There are basic rules you can learn for Pinyin and Wade Giles is in many cases even worse but don't just assume that sounding it out is going to work. Not expecting anyone to know anything & Chinese is (obviously) very different than English - I myself am very much in the infant stages of learning Mandarin but at least watch a 10 minute pinyin vid on YT or something before advising people on pronunciation or assuming a nonstandard romanization made with ease for Eng speakers in mind is racist lol

[pateldevs]

don’t be shy; share those cho chang headcanons 👀 (thank you for blessing us with that cho chang gifset btw, i love her)

ok literally thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how much i love cho chang and she got done so dirty in the books AND the movies and i also have this elaborate backstory for her parents bc i love her so much aaaaa anyway there’s a lot so under the cut! ~~

i have fully adopted it into canon in my head lol but her chinese name is 張秋 (which means the pinyin i’m more familiar w would be ‘zhang qiu’ which i guess is close enough to cho), 張 meaning hunter/archer and 秋 meaning harvest/autumn

the fact that her anglicized surname is ‘chang’ and not ‘zhang’ makes me think her dad’s family is taiwanese

her mom’s family used to be involved in international affairs for the british ministry of magic office in hong kong (as it was still a colony) and that’s how her mom’s family came to the uk

her parents fully embodied the enemies-to-lovers trope when they were at hogwarts b/c her dad captained the ravenclaw quidditch team and her mom captained the gryffindor team and they were both seekers

hence cho totally grew up on quidditch and played around trying to catch an old snitch with her parents from a young age

she almost ended up in hufflepuff. look at the way she stuck by marietta in ootp?? she’s so fiercely loyal!! wtf!!!

the kinds of traits that ultimately put her in ravenclaw make her a good athlete and vice versa. look at how she plays quidditch: she relies on a number of strategies besides just outright skill, usually distraction/diversion and turning the opposing seeker’s skills against them

that said i fully think her father is muggle-born or half-blood and grew up fencing, so he teaches her how to fence, and so she’s also a great épée fencer

she’s not great with offensive spells - hence her trouble in when they’re in DA in ootp - but she’s excellent with defensive charms, predicting what her opponent’s going to do, moving fast. it’s what makes her one of flitwick’s favorite students.

charms is her best class. don’t ask me for justification here it just is.

flitwick obviously sees her potential and totally invites her to dueling club even though she’s quite young for it

she’s a harpist. don’t ask me where this came from i just think if she played an instrument it would be harp

she’s a younger sibling, she’s so sensitive like fr the eldest daughter in an asian family would just internalize their emotions (this one was developed jointly with my older sister lmao)

she and cedric didn’t start out as a couple. they started as friends when both of them were out on the quidditch pitch early one morning, just practicing flying.

she and cedric tell each other EVERYTHING. absolutely everything. like fr this girl was almost a hufflepuff ok don’t tell me they wouldn’t have the most emotionally invested relationship

cedric asks her to the yule ball and quickly says it’s a really lowkey thing, they’re just friends

they’re not just friends though, she thinks she’s starting to like him because when he looks at her she feels like she can do anything, and when he looks at her it’s her, not her sister, not anyone else.

she’s secretly glad that she has a reason to turn down harry when he asks her to the yule ball. marietta thinks she’s crazy - who would willingly turn down a chance to be harry potter’s date?? - but cho just can’t bear the thought of just being ‘harry potter’s date.’ with cedric, at least she has a chance to be herself.

when cedric dies she’s absolutely devastated:

she can’t stop thinking about how they snuck out of their houses to sit on top of the astronomy tower and look at the stars the night before the last task

she can’t stop thinking about how he confessed that he was scared but he knew he’s so close to winning, and how he joked that it would be impossible for her to not fall in love with him if he won

she can’t stop thinking about how she said don’t be scared, just pretend i’m there with you, i’ve got your back (because obviously they’ve been to dueling club together and he knows how good she is at defensive spells)

she can’t stop thinking about how he waved to her before he entered the maze at the start of the third task

she feels so insanely guilty that maybe she’s the reason he died, he said he wanted to do well to impress her that night on the astronomy tower, didn’t he?

she loses sleep over it, she has dreams about that last night all the time, she has dreams about seeing harry coming back with cedric’s body, she has these dreams where she’s watching him get killed and she can’t do anything to defend him

she wants to ask harry about it at the end of the year but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t think she can handle hearing about it, but somehow it’s worse hearing rumors from everyone else

she finds herself drawn to harry because he makes her feel closer to cedric, because the loss of cedric is something they both share and surely harry must know how it feels

honestly this is what really pisses me off about how she’s written in the books, is that her emotions are so one-dimensional that they become a caricature of asian women as meek and weepy. the most her emotions ever got developed was when hermione explained how cho must be feeling after she kissed harry

like, you’re allowed to have female characters whose arcs are largely tied to and/or driven by other characters, but you gotta actually go into those relationships yk? in the books she’s only ever someone’s girlfriend and she just cries all the time but we don’t actually talk about why

she’s not just crying all the time because she incapable of moving on (which is more or less what harry thinks). she’s crying because she didn’t just lose her boyfriend, she lost one of her best friends. she stops going to dueling club because she’s lost her partner. her flying starts suffering because she thinks about all those early morning 1v1 games she and cedric used to have.

(marietta only goes to DA meetings with her because she feels like it’s the ‘good friend’ thing to do. if going to DA helps her cope with cedric’s death then sure. she goes.)

i’ve already said she was almost a hufflepuff but i have to say it again, cho loves and cares so deeply. she’s a sucker for sentimentalism. she skips dumbledore’s funeral to stand up on the astronomy tower and think about the war that’s coming.

on the last day of her seventh year, she finds the room of requirement again and spends hours walking through it, remembering everything she learnt in DA

when the war really starts up after dumbledore’s death, her parents want to move away, they want her and her sister to have as non-magical a life as they can, so she does, but she keeps the DA galleon and her wand instead of snapping it like her sister. her parents have absolutely no idea that she goes off to the battle of hogwarts. 

when she fights she’s a team player. she partners up with katie bell for most of the final battle

at one point she and katie are separated and she comes face to face with a death eater. she almost kills him. she wants to so badly. she hates what the man stands for. but she thinks about two of the most important people in this war, harry and cedric, and she thinks, they never would. so she doesn’t.

^ she doesn’t think of harry and cedric because of her relationship with them. in fact it’s thinking about her relationship with cedric that makes her want to kill the death eater. but she thinks of harry and cedric, and what they would want and do, because they are the ones who had/have the most to lose in this war.

when are we going to get a series that delves into how visceral her emotions were?! how her grief tore her to pieces! how her trauma ate away at her! how disarming a death eater and pinning him to the ground and holding the tip of her wand to his throat made her feel like a totally different person, how close she came to ending his life! how, in the days after the battle, she feels disgusted by the idea that she even thought about using an unforgivable curse. how she learns to recover and rebuild and heal!

she plays seeker for the holyhead harpies for a while. she learns to love flying again. she learns to love the stars again. 

she doesn’t really start a family because she has little interest in being associated with others as ‘so-and-so’s wife’ or ‘so-and-so’s mother.’

she always visits cedric’s grave on june 24 every year.

eventually when flitwick retires she takes his place as charms professor and head of house because if anyone deserves a happy ending it’s cho chang!!

[bants-in-beijing]

到啦！

yaaas finally made it to the hostel and set up uni internet account on both phone and laptop 👊achievement unlocked👊 

So lots has happened in the past few days :O first moved into 中关新园 and caught up with a friend + her family in Beijing :D They helped me buy tons of stuff at local stores and organise registration at the uni etc.  (literally could not have done it alone omg like the bureaucracy involved with the process on its own is already a huge struggle but that alongside trying to sort everything out in a foreign language is just next to impossible). so massive thanks to them for being so patient and helping out 🙏 🙏~  

top tip: if u have to buy a clothes rack, make sure you have someone with you at the time so you don’t end up lugging it across campus, nearly leaving it behind in a corner store, and hauling it over a walkway bridge up to the 9th floor of ur hostel all alone :)  Pros tho, your arms will get super ripped (unsteady shaking wrists for the next hour may or may not be a minor side effect tho...)

I’m in a double room on the 9th floor of the hostel, so the view is pretty decent. On the other hand tho no idea where my roommate is???? the 服务员 said she went back home to Korea for new year but that she should b back for the start of their classes on Monday .... but like she isn’t here yet?? what’s even weirder tho is that stuff on her side of the room has been moved since i got here 0_0 my friends back in NZ and i have this inside joke that she’s probably a ghost or invisible, which given the situation seemed like a pretty plausible explanation at the time ahaha 😂 but then another friend said that the room mate might’ve arrived back already, grabbed some stuff from our room, and then gone away again to stay at a friend’s place for a few days or something instead, which does make slightly more sense than the invisible theory i s’pose lol. From the books and notes on her side of the room it looks like she’s korean but proficient in English and chinese. So yay that’s a plus! at least communication shouldn’t be too difficult when we finally do meet ahahah. 

Yesterday morning all the pre-uni students had a test to see which chinese classes we should be placed into 😱 NOTE: bring a 2B pencil to the placement test or face getting growled at by the supervisor. Mechanical pencils not okay either for some reason... 😒

NGL Personally i thought the test was pretty hard. the actual comprehension of the listening part wasn’t too bad, it was just really confusing because they had heaps of answers that were almost the same save for a few details, or multiple answers that COULD have been correct and it was just a matter of really getting the specific details to figure out which one fit best, which was something completely different to anything i’d ever done in NCEA before so yea saying it was a bit of a challenge would be an understatement lol. To put it in perspective i straight up guessed all the answer for the last few questions in the reading section and wrote an essay with every second character in pinyin for the writing part lmao 😓😬 somehow though despite all that still managed to make it into class 3! But don’t actually know how the classes are ranked in terms of numbering so could still be in the cabbage class after all lmao. Class lists came out in the afternoon on that same day, so it must have been a very quick marking process. Luckily a couple of friends i made are in the same class!!! :D One of those friends is the same age as me, arrived on the same day and likes the same song by this one chinese artist! plus a few other things the same as well~ it was just really nice to find someone with so many things in common this early on, especially after three days of practical isolation in the hostel lol. 

Got a chinese sim and data plan, set up a chinese bank account, had the medical exam, and bought text books for class. Still needa set up online + mobile banking though, purchase insurance and get a permanent residence permit. I was actually living off of 4g data on its own since friday because there was no way to connect to the internet without going to the computer department (which was shut over the weekend, of course... ). Also had to sort out a ton of stuff with my passport at the new sun centre and computer centre. Because during the actual application procedure months ago i used my old passport, so some stuff like my internet password and admission notice were using the old passport number while other things in the uni system were already using my new passport number. It got a bit messy to say the least... that’s just one thing to be aware of. You can get unlimited internet for 10 yuan a month which is very, very reasonable! originally it used to be 100yuan a month but apparently so many students complained about how expensive it was that they lowered the price. You need to pay for internet by going to this machine in the 计算中心， inserting your campus card and putting in the last six digits of your passport number (hence where many complications arise.. luckily there was another international student there at the time who helped me out and had the same old/new passport problem when she first came last semester. and as it turns out my new friend has that exact same problem too😂)  

ALSO make sure to put money on your campus card if you want to eat at the school canteens. They don’t take cash. But most stores on campus only take cash, not your campus card, so really you just need to have both handy. You can put money on your card at the 中关新园接待中心 or machines on campus (but i haven’t quite figured out how or where to do that yet lol). if there’s no money on your campus card tho it’s not that big of a deal caus you can always just buy dinner from a convenience store on campus or go to the restaurants at 中关新园 and pay using your hostel card (but that seems to be more expensive than campus canteens so probs wouldn’t recommend it...although i haven’t actually eaten there before sooo). A normal amount to put on campus cards is around 100yuan. Any more than that and you’ll probably get laughed at by the receptionist. Plus it just makes sense not to put too much on at any one time in case it gets stolen or lost. Photos to come!! 

sorry for the long post lmao too much to catch up on. 

[fraanzkafka]

tagged by @piascleavage, thank u lovely :3

tag: @i-wanna-jump-out-of-my-skin, @feelmyskin, @qhostfacers, @tchaikousky, and @baked-fingerling. if you wanna!

1. Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?

i can’t really remember? very little i think??? because i do remember reading books with pinyin transcriptions above chinese characters.

2. Where do you usually read? 

i recently find our sit-in kitchen has great lighting so i read there when my roommate’s not home. i used to read on my bed but now i can’t concentrate enough on it.

3. Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once?

several!!!! i end up mixing up all the characters and plots lol

4. What is/are your favourite book(s)?

ahhh i give different answers all the time: the body by stephen king, a hundred years of solitude by garcía márquez, the sea of fertility by yukio mishima, the volcano lover by susan sontag

5. Do you have a least favourite book?

i tend not to read the books i probably won’t like? but i do hate ernest hemingway’s novels. he’s brilliant at writing short stories but his novels are just... meh.

6. What is your favourite genre?

contemporary fiction. 

7. Is there a genre you won’t read?

i don’t really ya anymore.

8. What is the longest book you ever read?

the crimson petal and the white, i guess.

9. What book are you currently reading? 

butcher’s crossing by john williams. 

10. What was the last book you finished?

collected poems by paul auster.

11. What was the last book you bought?

regeneration by pat barker. 

12. Do you have a favourite book quote?

again, that odyssey quote donna tartt quoted: endure, my heart; a worse thing even than this didst thou once endure 

13. Do you prefer library books or buying books?

i love owning books but i can’t afford buying as many as i want so library books have to do at the moment.

14. Where do you buy your books?

amazon while i was back in china, and bookdepository when i’m in the netherlands.

15. How many books do you buy a month?

god probably only one or two?

16. How many books do you own?

enough for my mom to threat to disown me if i buy any more.

17. How do you feel about second hand books?

love ‘em!!!! !!

18. Do you prefer E-books or physical books?

physical books! but yeah, ebooks are great when i’m reading a big book.

19. Do you prefer paperback or hardback?

paperbacks. i don’t actually understand hardbacks tbh. 

20. Do you prefer to read trilogies/series or standalones?

standalones most definitely. i think i’ve only read two series in my entire life (harry potter and narnia). 

21. What is the weirdest thing you’ve used as a bookmark?

a piece of tissue. 

22. What is more important to you: characters or plot?

can i have both!? i’d choose plot over characters if i have to. i don’t know why i rarely love a character if they are not extremely lovable (not necessarily in a moral way), but well-written plots can win my heart in an instant. 

23. Do you ever judge a book by its cover?

yeahhh. i’m not proud of it but i refuse to buy a book until i find an edition with a pretty cover.

24. What’s the most beautiful book you own?

there was a new translated edition of robert musil’s the man without qualities came out a few years back and it’s in minty green and it’s heavy and thicc and i love it.

25. What is your favorite book to movie/tv adaptation?

i love the english patient!! and never let me go is wonderful as well. 

26. What is the best beverage to drink while reading a book?

teaaaaa. hot chocolate, too. 

27. Are you looking forward to any book release? If so, which one?

not usually but i’m waiting for colm tóibín’s new book house of names! i read three (or four?) books of his and i love them so i hope this one is as good as those.

28. Recommend me a book :3

levels of life by julian barnes. it’ll break your heart, but in a good way. 

[rigelmejo]

How much effort does the mass immersion approach require?

(one of my many lol) final thoughts on the mass immersion method:

*information on the mass immersion method can be found at massimmersionapproach.com and on various language study youtuber’s videos.

so, contrary to what it looks like from an outsider’s perspective, it appears to be plenty of hard work and study. from an outside glance, it looks a bit ridiculous, in the sense that the method looks like “just watch/read target language content and you will magically learn it over time like a child!” 

that is not the actual method.

the actual method, (to my understanding) boils down to:

Immerse often. Start on day 1. Immerse all in the target language (no language-you-already-comprehend subtitles or anything as a crutch). Immerse in anything you can manage to - shows, radio, podcasts, reading if you can bear it, etc. Look up new words every few to several minutes, when desired.

**Use mnemonics, repetition, SRS flashcards/review methods, or whatever you want to learn the kana (and romaji pronunciations) if studying Japanese. Or use these methods to at least get somewhat familiar with the radicals, if studying Chinese. (My personal additional suggestion: if studying chinese, use whatever methods to read through, listen, and become somewhat familiar with the pinyin system, tones, and radicals. You do not need to have these memorized, as immersion activities and vocab study will keep reinforcing these things, so just get a quick overview of what these things are.) Do this in the first few weeks/first month.  

**Use mnemonics, SRS flashcards/review methods, and possibly a reference book, to learn the 1000 most common characters if the language is Chinese or Japanese. Do this in the first few months, to first several months. 

LEARN the first 1000 most common words in a language. Do this in the first few months, to first several months. (My understanding is mia suggests doing this after the 1000 characters.)

READ through a grammar guide, early on. Do this in the first few to first several months. (mia suggests doing this while learning the 1000 most common words, if desired).

Once done with the two steps above, switch to learning more words are you run into them with sentence mining. Preferably, sentences where there is only one new concept or word you’re learning in the sentences. Preferably, make SRS flashcards for those sentences you’re studying.

While doing the step above, start using your immersion activities as the basis for your sentence mining. The words you have are looking up in immersion activities will be a source of your sentence mining. If desired, you can also look up word-frequency lists to get ideas for what to add to your sentence mining. If desired, you can utilize pre-made sentence mining decks like 10k core Anki deck for Japanese (although mia highly encourages making your own decks). My personal suggestions: Clozemaster app for sentence mining, using example sentences from Pleco as your sentences (when looking up new words in pleco), sentence examples from Baidu Translate app or Tatoeba, sentences from shows/novels you’re consuming. 

At any point, but definitely if you have learned 3,000ish words, start immersion using long texts - articles, novels, stories, etc. (In comparison to only using target-language-subtitles as your reading immersion.) Read regularly, read a lot. Look up new words every once in a while. Continue sentence mining as desired, as long as its helping you. 

** = steps which are specific to certain languages. Some languages will require similar steps to those. Other languages will not need anything like that done. 

There it is, the method. So, is it as easy as “immersing and magically learning a language effortlessly”? NO. NO IT SURE ISN’T.

Let’s go over how it’s definitely got its share of difficulty. Even though it’s not a standard textbook and structured course approach, that doesn’t mean it’s any easier. It still is going to take hard work, dedication, consistency, and effort. 

I would guess, the main reason this method looks “easy” from an outsider’s perspective - is because it tries to focus on primarily engaging the learner’s interests, and in building up comprehension skills as quickly as possible (so the learner can enjoy engaging in their interests). The immersion means a learner is regularly engaging in content in the language they specifically care about and want to understand - compared to standard textbook study that may include various topics some learners care nothing about. The immersion focus also means learners study how to comprehend more than they study how to produce the language themselves in a way with minimal-errors. So learners are more quickly rewarded with being able to listen to speakers, watch shows, read. Learners also will ultimately be able to communicate, although (and this is only my guess) their communication may have more errors earlier on. Communication is possible even with imperfect production. So a learner, once producing, can comprehend well enough to at least recognize their errors and comprehend when others tell them of errors they’re making. At this point, I am guessing, is when studying of more accurate production happens and errors are worked on. For learners who simply wish to communicate for enjoyment and engagement with others, this is fine and much quicker than many traditional classroom based courses. 

The downside being, traditional textbook/classroom study is going to more specifically be helping students learn what they need to pass tests of fluency level (such as job/school required exams, JLPT, HSK, CEFR, etc). Mass Immersion Approach learners may not be developing those same ‘perfecting production’ skills of certain levels, at the same time as traditional textbook/classroom learners. Since traditional classroom/textbook learners are studying in the same order as often widely used tests, they’ll be prepared according to those test levels to do the ‘expected things’ each test level requires. Whereas a mass immersion approach learner, may end up with some gaps that the traditional course would have covered, and so the mia learner will have to fill in those gaps later if planning to take a test. This is probably an issue that stems from mia learners getting to immerse in content they desire which will be specialized to THEM, versus traditional textbook/classroom learners being forced to study ALL topics considered relevant by commonly used tests of language proficiency level. Now... many mass immersion approach learners claim, that after a certain amount of time, their grammar/word use is MORE NATURAL/correct then many people who studied traditionally from a textbook/classroom. Perhaps they are right, and they do ‘naturally’ pick this up over time. But I would still guess there are differences in WHEN mia learners versus traditional learners can utilize certain words/structures to a sufficient level to pass exams they need to pass to get jobs/get into schools etc. These differences could matter, depending on the specific needs of the learner. I would imagine that if an mia learner say, needed to pass HSK 5 in a year for a job - they could use their mia approach, and also HSK 5 prep-materials as desired to help them fill in gaps/practice points they MUST do correctly within a year on that test. 

In summary - the mass immersion approach appears easy at a glance, not because it is easy, but because it has the learner always engaging in specialized content they ENJOY and always USING what they’re learning (either for comprehension, or eventually for producing with the goal of communication over perfection). Encouraging a learner’s passion to keep studying, will make them feel motivated and make them feel the subject is not unbearable. While still difficult, it is often going to be enjoyable at least.

So, how does the mass immersion approach require effort? Why is it difficult? Well, it’s not exactly “learning how children do” and it’s also not easy just because some of it is a little bit LIKE “learning how children do.” The learning like children angle, refers to how the learner should be picking up a lot of new words/grammar concepts in the context of real use of the language - real dialogues in shows/books, real writing instead of textbook examples, sentences mined from that content, and mass amounts of exposure so learners have a LOT of context to help them comprehend all these words/grammar concepts. In mia approach, learners are not learning from textbook examples that may or may not be natural, and may be limited in how many are even contained in a given book. Learners are learning from massive amounts of input, massive amounts of examples they’ll see and hear. In this way, yes, it is picking up a lot of things the way a child does.

But mia approach also involves learning these things much faster than a child would, by doing specific activities to maximize how to speed up the process. This part is why mass immersion approach is a lot more hard work than just “turn on shows and watch and you’ll magically learn.”

Lets go through the steps of the approach again, in regard to effort:

Immerse often - you are using none of a language you already understand to rely on. So no, watching anime with english subs doesn’t count. Immersing in totally target language content is exhausting! The less you comprehend, the more exhausting it is! So it is very difficult for beginners starting out on day 1, month 1, etc! Immersion also generally means the learners should be trying to comprehend whatever they can manage to comprehend, and that requires attention and focus for the duration of immersion. Which is also exhausting, and the MOST exhausting at the beginning stages. Does that sound easy? This is one of many reasons it is vital a learner picks immersion material they are interested in. Because they need to be paying attention to it, and enjoying it enough to keep immersing. They’ll fail the whole approach if they give up immersion because they can’t tolerate the ambiguity and focus required at the beginning stages! (As a personal note, this is likely why my personal study approach is not as similar to the mia approach as it could have been - I had low tolerance for ambiguity and the exhaustion of trying to comprehend anything as a beginner, so I only immersed once every couple weeks for short periods. Whereas a mia learner would need to be doing it every day, or every other day!) Try to immerse in target language only content, in any language you don’t know yet or have just begun studying. Tell me it’s easy... I really don’t think it is.

**Learning romaji/kana if studying Japanese, or pinyin/radicals if studying Chinese. This step is pretty much exactly the same as a traditional textbook/classroom approach. It’s the same amount of effort. So mia learners still have to put in that initial effort, that includes reading and listening to an explanation of these things, repetition (either drilling or SRS). It may even be more effort for mia learners, if they had no textbook or resources suggested to them - then this step is also when they have to look up those things on their own, and find ones they like, to study these things from.

**Learning the 1000 most common characters. WOW IS THIS ONE AN INTENSE AMOUNT OF EFFORT! This is a step that many traditional textbook/course methods stretch out over months or YEARS, and usually teach alongside vocabulary and grammar so learners can integrate the characters into things they already know and use the characters they’re learning right away. mia learners do not get the luxury of having these characters integrated into a web of thing they already know. mia learners have their immersion, so they at least get regular exposure to start SEEING the characters they’re learning. But the sheer effort it takes to grind through learning 1000 characters is immense. It takes a lot of people years. Even with diligent learners, it takes several months. With the most dedicated learners, with the most intense amounts of time they can spare, it takes them a few months. This step is where, I imagine a lot of learners attempting the mass immersion approach will just give up. So I guess, if you’re studying a language without this particular hurdle, congratulations you may have an easier time getting yourself to keep studying consistently using the mass immersion approach! (In my own personal studies, I could not bear to do this with japanese or chinese - so I have always delved into learning maybe 200-500 characters this way, then immediately moving on to learning common vocabulary at the same time. I personally prefer to have a web of connected information in my head, so knowing vocabulary that uses characters, helps me learn characters better than studying characters in isolation. I just learn my first 500ish characters first so that I have a rough idea in my head of some really common characters, so I’m used to seeing the radicals in different ways, and so I’m used to making mnemonics. I have NEVER been able to get myself to purposely work through the 1000 most common characters before studying other things too. My method has its own benefits and drawbacks. The biggest benefit for me was it allowed me to keep studying consistently instead of giving up, since giving up would have been the worst thing. The biggest drawback - it took me 10 months to learn around 1000 characters. Whereas dedicated mia learners may have achieved that in 3-6 months). So, yeah, this step is a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF EFFORT. Arguably a lot more frontloaded work than traditional textbook/classroom learners. The benefit of doing this is that, later down the road, mia learners will comprehend reading more easily with less effort, and have less of a struggle learning new words compared to traditional learners. And a lot of this just has to do with when the different approaches learn this bulk of characters. A mia learner will either give up at this stage (so then they wouldn’t improve in the language reading-wise to any degree), or they’ll get through it and then have the tools learned to be able to keep improving their reading skills and vocabulary indefinitely without too much struggle. In comparison, a traditional learner may find limited gains in reading ability with each course they work through - maybe first they can read short informational signs, then menus and shopping tags, then short emails and texts, then news articles, then simple stories, etc. But they will also find if they quit, they may struggle to be able to improve their reading level because they have a limited base of characters they know, so they struggle to learn more words/characters unless they purposely pick up active studying again. This would be most noticable if they took classes that start off with pinyin only, or take courses that only end up teaching say 800 characters after 2 semesters, etc. If this learner quits too early, having less characters under their belt may require more effort for them in the future. mia learners put in most of this effort upfront, in the first several months. It is... a slog. 

Learn the first 1000 most common words. First off, it will pay off immensely in improving your comprehension. This is a great thing to do no matter what language you’re learning, and no matter how you do it (whether you study like a maniac and learn them in 2 weeks or a month, or whether you take your time and learn them in a year). Now, if you’re an mia learner - it is a slog. In the mass immersion approach you are trying to learn them relatively quickly so that they’ll improve your comprehension for immersion. Whereas in a traditional learning approach you’re probably just learning them as they pop up slowly over time in your textbook/course over a year. An mia learner will benefit more in their other study activities, if they prioritize learning these 1000 words at a relatively quick pace. This is why mia learners are probably encouraged to use SRS flashcards for study, because its fast and efficient. They’re also encouraged to use mnemonics and associate the words with context to help the new vocabulary more easily stick in their memory. Alternatively, one could probably also learn these words through rote memorization, golden lists, exposure (probably the slowest way?). Now, learning new words is hard. We know its hard. There’s choices - mnemonics and memory tricks are faster, but require a learner to figure out how to do them and then dedicate time to doing them for each new word (versus traditional learners that in a class might skate by memorizing for tests by just looking at a word list then forgetting). SRS flashcards mean purposely dedicating study time to review, on a regular basis (also making the cards yourself if you can’t find/don’t like any pre-made resources). Some learners prefer physical flashcards and spaced repetition review of them - that means making the cards yourself. And, if you hate flashcards as ardently as I do, it means hell. (My personal study method involved picking up some of 1000 most common words from - reading word lists and reviewing them on occassion, since I think that’s less draining then flashcards; reading through some pages of high frequency dictionaries; reading the vocab lists in my textbooks and character reference books; looking up common words during immersion; and finally going through an SRS flashcard deck of the 1000 most common words to fill in the gaps and also to REVIEW in an efficient way so that they’d stick in my long term memory. I do think SRS review is a very efficient way to remember things long term, and I do recommend it if you’re trying to be efficient. If you are like me though, and hate flashcards - its up to you how much you want to use other approaches as an alternative or in addition). Learning these words is again, putting the bulk of the effort required on the beginner stage learner. A traditional learner may learn these words over a year, or years. A mia learner will probably want to learn these within the first year, hopefully within the first several months. Like the previous point about characters - there’s benefits and drawbacks to each approach. An mia learner is going to have more to study upfront, regularly, so they might want to give up from the workload. But the payoff is that the words they study will pop up regularly in their immersion, and they’ll be rewarded with greater comprehension for each word they study. This reward will happen a lot faster than for a less-intense paced traditional study plan. So more effort, more reward. The traditional learner, if their course isn’t too intensely-paced, will probably learn these words over a greater length of time - and so won’t get to read them or listen to them and comprehend as fast. But they’ll be less likely to give up because of intense effort required and burnout. In contrast, a traditional learner may be more apt to give up because its taking them longer to get to the level of comprehension they want. 

Read through a grammar guide early on. This is easier than traditional learning, in that an mia learner doesn’t have to do ANY grammar exercises or read to the point of memorizing/internalizing any grammar points. It is harder... because a learner needs to read over ALL of the main grammar points, in a matter of weeks or months. Many traditional learning courses will cover that material over a period of years, spending a week on one or a few points at a time. Reading through a grammar guide requires an mia learner to read one or a few points a day, and to read MANY grammar points in the few weeks-months that the learner spends going through the guide. While completing exercises is not required of mia learners, instead they are required to read through material in a short amount of time that is complex and requires attention and focus. Material that traditional learners are exposed to much slower and with more support as they get a plethora of examples on how it works and in depth details on the topic if they want/need it. Traditional learners also often get to skip reading a formal grammar guide at all, if they have teachers who through example teach them, or if they have textbooks that have a plethora of examples if they don’t want to read ‘why’ to do things in a formal way. An mia learner must read through this grammar guide knowing they’re not going to have any of it memorized, knowing its all basically a ‘summary overview’ for them. Knowing they’re going to be re-looking these points up in the coming months as they keep seeing them in context of immersion and struggling to comprehend them because they look familiar but the learner can’t remember the specifics of the grammar point. Also just... have you ever read technically informational texts like a grammar guide? They’re draining to read through. It takes effort and dedication to start reading a grammar guide (when you aren’t motivated by needing to pass a test in class), and consistency to complete it. (My personal studying experience: YES, YES, YES, I recommend doing this. It’s a slog but if you’re dedicated it will take 1 week to 1 month tops, and can be done alongside any other study activities you’re doing. I can’t emphasize enough how immensely reading a grammar guide in the first few months helped my own progress down the road for any language I’ve ever studied. It helps so much, because after you read through one, everything you run into that is ‘confusing’ you already have a summary in your mind for to build connections and more understanding to. And you can start noticing all grammar points at work immediately, and recognize their examples and proper use. Compared to a traditional study method, where you may only be aware of a few grammar points even Existing when you’re a beginner. YES, I highly encourage you no matter how you are studying a language, to do this sometime in the first year. You don’t have to memorize anything, just read through a grammar guide and try to treat it like a curious interest-read you’re doing. Try to understand the explanations you can, and try to just get some exposure to those explanations that don’t click yet then move on. It will pay off so much later on.)

Sentence mining. In my opinion, this is almost like making your own note-version of your own textbook. Writing your own study book is a lot of effort! Making all the sentence mining flashcards it will require as you keep studying and improving will eventually add up, and take a lot of time and effort to make. Then, as usual, also means dedication to regularly studying and reviewing. Studying and reviewing material is something you’re doing regardless of if it’s the mass immersion approach, or a traditional textbook/course approach. The big difference again, is mainly that mia learners are learning based on their specific interests/needs based on what they’re immersing with, and mia learners are making their own study materials instead of relying on a pre-made textbook. Making your own sentence mining materials is a huge undertaking over a long span of time, it’s not ‘easy’ (unless you are the very opposite of me, and absolutely LOVE flashcards and think they’re the funnest thing in existence - in which case, yay, the mass immersion approach is at least 50% your dream study method!). As someone who does hate flashcards, this sounds so horrible! Although the method itself makes a ton of sense - its studying vocabulary and grammar in the context of examples. So, if you learn better from examples instead of explanations, this method is very well suited to you. And if you need explanations - you just go find that grammar guide again and reread a section on the topic you want further explanation for. Alternatively, a traditional learner’s equivalent studies may be: continuing to work through a grammar book with examples, reading graded readers in progressing difficulty so they’re also basically exposed to sentences that introduce new vocab/grammar over time based on their level, eventually branching out into reading/watching native material at or just above their comprehension level - and possibly writing some sentences down for study or flashcards, on occassion. Sentence mining, in essence, is not easy unless you think flashcards and all the efforts that go into making your own study material, are so fun and delightful you happen to not notice the effort you have to put in. 

Immersion using long texts (also just immersion, generally, as your comprehension increases). This is learning by doing. See the very first thing I wrote in this list, about immersion the first time - immersion where you are aiming to comprehend without anything to rely on but your target language takes attention, focus, and effort. It will only get easier over time, if you keep practicing consistently. It only gets easier by doing it more. Every other step in the mass immersion approach, just seems to be ways of helping make THIS step more bearable and easier. The alternative would have been... to only do this step, immersion. Can you imagine doing that? Just consuming native content and looking up new words either intensively (every single time you ran into a new one), or occasionally (every few minutes)? Some people in this world must have learned a language this way. It certainly does not sound easy. Even harder... would be to truly learn it like a child, where you would do only the immersion step and barely look things up until you comprehend enough to understand a monolingual dictionary. That would be a mega-slog. Which pretty clearly shows why the mass immersion approach is not exactly the same as “learning language exactly how a child does.” The mass immersion approach relies on immersion to learn from context, but it also includes several other study activities to help a learner build a basis of vocabulary and grammar early on in that language (the character, grammar guide reading, and vocab grind in the first several months). Then activities for the learner to keep studying grammar and vocabulary based on their interests and what they’re immersing in, by doing sentence mining - which is like textbook study with examples catered to the specific learner. Only after that, once a learner should be comprehending at least the GIST of material, is the learner expected to be learning a big chunk of things from context of the immersion material - and even then, everything made into sentence mining sentences is getting the added support of srs flashcards that can be regularly reviewed to help speed up learning. Immersion, once a learner can comprehend the basic gist of things, is the act of practicing a skill to improve. Practicing, as with anything you aren’t good at, is difficult until it gets easier. A mia learner may find it less draining at this stage, because they have so many tools that allowed basic comprehension to be managable - so their attention and effort it hopefully only being used on a few new confusing parts of material per immersion content. Whereas a traditional learner, especially if they weren’t doing any listening/reading immersion throughout, is going to have to suddenly start doing this when they’re ready to ‘consume target language content.’ The traditional learner is going to find it brutal, because they haven’t been practicing this skill from day 1. So this... may be why it seems like sometimes mia learners seem to ‘learn’ faster. I can’t say for sure if they lag in other areas of learning a language - but in the area of basic comprehension of the gist of content, to the point where consuming immersion content is bearable, they win. Every study activity they do helps to make this task easier for them as quickly as possible. A traditional learner, depending on their own study methods and how their class/textbook taught, may not have developed these skills and may not have had as many study activities that specifically focused on building THESE skills. Being able to basically comprehend, is when people can start to do things with the language - watch, listen, read, and communicate (comprehensibly, if not perfectly). Maybe an mia learner, depending on how they studied, cannot do buisness emails or talk about college majors in chinese - but maybe an mia learner CAN read an article in chinese ABOUT business emails, about college majors, and quickly look up the unknown words that involved the details they don’t understand. Maybe they’d still have to practice to learn to do such things. But maybe the mia learner’s goal was being able to discuss video games instead, so they know a whole bunch of topics specifically in their area of interest (because of the sentence mining). Whereas the traditional learner maybe never practiced reading novels so is still slogging through, where a different learner practiced that from day 1 and is much better at doing it. In the end... at this level of language proficiency, I think either learner who used any study methods, at this point will have difficulty/ease depending on what practice they personally did and what vocab/grammar they personally studied up to this point. And also at this point, practice for anyone will generally be showing where their knowledge lags and needs to be improved. So... this part is hard, no matter how you studied a language. And this part is years, maybe your entire life.

Does the mass immersion approach take effort? Yes.

It is one of probably a plethora of independent study approaches that will work for learning a language. (Probably the most important thing, I think, is just whatever methods keep you studying consistently, since consistency over time is what will ensure improvement eventually no matter what else you’re doing.) The mass immersion approach seems to be very ‘front-loaded.’ As in, the bulk of the ‘hard work’ is in the first several months to first year.

It seems very make-or-break. Learners are expected to study and review a broad overview of the language within the first year (most common words, overview of all grammar, overview of writing system), and also expected to practice comprehending target language material from day 1 (which for any learner, is a process that starts out difficult and only gets easier with lots of practice, and as you learn the language). So learners will either give up during that initial year of studying tons of words, *characters, grammar points, while also constantly regularly immersing and attempting to practice comprehending what they can while their comprehension is at it’s absolute lowest beginner-levels. When trying to comprehend anything in immersion content is likely to be the most draining, intensive, that it is ever going to be. 

Then, if the learners get past that initial front-load of constantly studying and immersing, things ease up a little. They’ve made themselves go through all the ‘hardest’ parts of studying. Comprehension of immersion material becomes more bearable, now their study material will largely be words/sentences/grammar they choose to pick based on their own goals (so study material is creative and self directed). All new words/grammar will be surrounded by a lot of context the learner already understands. Any new grammar that a learner runs into, will be something a learner already has at least some other grammar basis to compare it to and build it from. The immersion portion of study will be incredibly enjoyable and rewarding. The new word/concept initial study will be relatively rewarding too - it will be based on content the learner cares about, and will be surrounded by context the learner understands and so easily can digest. The only real ‘slog’ will be reviewing new concepts/words every so often (like srs flashcards). Which is not too hard of a task, it’s just flashcards to jog your memory until you don’t need them. And beyond the structured sentence mining, any immersion will now be word/concept study review for you for any material you can comprehend. And you will eventually be able to learn some new words only from context in the immersion content and repeated exposure, so not everything will require any structured study at all. At the point when that becomes a relatively normal occurrence, SRS flashcards won’t even be necessary - they will just be an option to use if you want that particularly efficient review method. 

Now, this second part - any language learner will eventually get to this part. I and the level of difficulty at this part I think will probably be mostly the same. Any learner is going to have to get through the initial hurdle of understanding-almost-nothing and struggling to comprehend anything. mia learners go through it throughout those first few months. Traditional learners either will go through it from day 1 (if they start immersion immediately) until whenever their textbooks/courses give them the basis needed to reach the immersion-while-comprehending-the-gist stage (or until they self-study to learn those things early). Traditional learners who wait to do this until after all their courses/textbooks, will hit that initial difficulty - and may find it a bit more bearable since they likely will have way more stuff they comprehend than an mia learner did on day 1. And then that difficulty will soon wane until they’re also at immersion-while-comprehending-the-gist stage. 

Mass immersion approach seems like a good study method to consider looking into if you are a self-study learner, or if you’re learning from a textbook/course and are considering some other study activities to add onto what you’re already doing. Mass immersion approach seems geared on getting the learner to comprehend the basic gist of immersion content as quickly as possible, so that they can learn from the context within immersion material as quickly as possible. That means a lot of intense study in the beginning. That means that although there isn’t a lot of focus on doing exercises. But there’s still a lot of focus on studying/reviewing basic common vocabulary, getting an overview of all the grammar, and on ‘practicing’ the language in other ways such as attempting to comprehend immersion material every day from the very start. 

[rigelmejo]

Repetitive Listening - here’s a youtube video playlist I found about it a few days ago.

Short summary: listening to audio in a language you’re trying learn, to the point of more than you feel like you need to. To where you can remember a lot of what’s said, the words/phrases sound familiar/pop into your head, and where if you have questions you could maybe say the chunk you’re wondering about out loud and ask about it. So like when you like a song a lot, and play it a lot, to the point its sort of in your head sometimes and you can remember lyrics somewhat. The idea is that if you listen to it enough you will get better at recognizing sounds and words and word chunks, and even if you don’t understand everything this will at least make looking unknown things up easier - and it should make your pronunciation/speaking better, and improve your comprehension of words you do know/have studied.

The videos give 80-100 times suggestions, but I do think as long as its a point where you feel really comfortable, that’s probably enough. The videos suggest: pick voices you like listening to, since you’ll listen a lot, and since you may pick up pronunciation/your voice sound from them. They also suggest using 2 minute to 20 minute clips depending on your level of comprehension in the target language, your comfort, etc. 

So songs will easily be good material for this, along with youtube video audio, radio drama episodes, audiobook chapters, podcasts. 

---

Tested it out a bit (listened 5-10 times so far):

I’ve decided to test out this a bit with the Guardian Audiobook chapters avenuex made. I think the podcast Slow Chinese would be better for beginners, since its shorter at 2-4 minutes. 

I just figure I might as well use something I’m listening to anyway. Also, before I heard about ‘repetitive listening’ as a technique, I was noticing a Tangible difference in my comprehension of the audiobook chapter from the first time I listened to it to the second. So if nothing else, I figured it would definitely help boost my listening comprehension up to the point of being able to catch most/all words I’ve studied - instead of just some when listening.  

I do think its helping me a lot with picking out words/phrases - to the point where I am picking up most words I’ve studied with text/flashcards, and to the point where I can catch the unknown words/phrases enough to type the pinyin in pleco to look them up. Also, for me personally, because an audiobook is based on a more literary text, I’m getting more used to the flow of the narrative writing - hearing time transition words, adjectives, descriptive phrases that usually get used more in writing like ‘turned his head’ ‘scratched his neck’ ‘gave a smile’ ‘hung up the phone’ ‘put his hand in his pocket’ etc. I could sort of recognize those phrases anyway when reading, since they’re words I know just in ways I’m less familiar with (I’m more familiar with dialogue sentences like ‘i did/he did X’). But hearing these phrases again and again is helping me to ‘process’ more quickly what they mean instead of having to work so hard to parse it out.

I’ve still only listened maybe 5-10 times, so I can’t say for sure yet if 30 or 40 or more times would see even more noticeable improvements. I can definitely say, even just doing this repetitive listening a little bit, seems to help a lot with listening comprehension of words you already have some familiarity with (have seen in text, or studied, or know some hanzi of) and it seems to help with recognizing pronunciation. By that second part I mean that often learning materials will speak slower, evenly, with a bit less natural variation, and if you learn a decent amount from flashcards or dictionaries then you know how often the automatic text audio can sound robotic and ‘off’ compared to once you hear it in real context like a convo or show. 

Avenuex’s voice is really crisp and clear (and lovely I think) so she’s still really comprehensible for beginners, but her voice also says the tones so much more naturally than a lot of learner texts I hear (which exaggerate tone sound so you can hear it better/are more evenly paced) - her pace gets faster and slower depending on the suspense of the scene, and the flow of the sentence. I think its a nice example of how to break down word-chunks when saying a sentence too. She changes her voice a bit too for each character (and the bg music changes, which is all really cool and funner to listen to than a lot of audiobooks I’ve heard!). I can hear some of the more natural-sounding ways of things getting pronounced, but she still speaks clear enough that it doesn’t get as slurred as those same words/phrases sometimes get in dramas I watch (I started rewatching Guardian and wow the amount of times Zhao Yunlan slurs/is muffled because he’s talking with a sucker in his mouth lol, or in many dramas when its short lines of common words they’ll get slurred quicker a lot). 

When I studied japanese, our teacher had us shadow the audio scenes in Genki, and record ourselves trying to say the dialogue and we were graded based on how close we sounded to the original book’s audio. What I noticed, back when I had to do that, is that I had to pay attention enough that I started noticing where the natural word-breaks were. Basically, which words you sort of ‘say together’ more quickly almost like they’re one word, versus the areas you’re more likely to leave empty space for to slow down or breath or change the pace. I’m guessing a lot of languages have this kind of natural word-breaks flow. I might break some of these sentences down in english like “I-might break some-of-these-sentences-down in-english like.” There’s a few different natural sounding ways to do it, but there’s definitely clear WRONG ways. It would sound less natural to pause after every single word - and depending on the sentences, there are sometimes odd places to pause that will stand out to native speakers. 

Well for chinese, its easy for me to put probably more unnatural sounding word breaks, if I don’t consciously try to emulate a chinese sentence example’s word-phrase breaks. I do think repetitive listening is helping me to get more of a ‘feel’ of when to do it, the way when my teacher made us try to exactly emulate japanese audio I started to notice much more ‘when’ to choose to put breaks in my sentences and how to chunk saying the words together.

Listening to the audiobook chapter a lot is helping me sort of get used to picking out the word chunks, instead of just the individual words I know as ‘separate.’ I think in the long run, this will probably help with comprehending audio faster, and it may eventually help with me speaking with a more natural flow when I’m not thinking as consciously of it. Hopefully, I’ll have to find out on that second benefit over time lol!

There is other benefit I’ve noticed - and I’m not sure if its because of repetitive listening, or because I have been reading a lot more, and adapting sentence-example flashcards with Audio into my flashcard study. I’ve noticed when I’m typing its easier for me to gather my thoughts and word them in chinese. Before, when writing I would struggle first to think the right words, then on how to even phrase it in chinese/general grammar, then on word order. I’m still double checking my written sentence on word order (mostly on time placement, since I know it goes toward the beginning but I just tend to think of it when typing toward the end, so I insert it at the end). But for the actual words/how to phrase them I’ve been a bit quicker - its easier for me to go “na jiu hao”, “wo juede na ge,” “zai zheli” etc. Pretty basic stuff to word together, I know. But in the past it was just taking me longer to figure out how to phrase “that’s good,” “I think that” “Here...” even though I knew the words, just because I’d be double checking whether to use na/nage/naxie/naben (which still kind of confuses me but I can tell seeing/hearing it more is helping me get used to when to use which easier), and where to place zai/mian/cong. 

If anyone else has tried repetitive listening, or used this study method a lot, I would love to hear about your experiences with it. How it helped you, how you used it, how it fit into your study plans. Whatever you feel about it lol.

[rigelmejo]

i really do like making my life harder and idk if it’s just because i can’t focus... so i have to just keep switching things up... or because i’m a chronic need-to-overachieve and need-to-perfect what i’m doing so i find out Everything and then hopelessly try to get to learning All of it (knowing that is functionally impossible weeeeee!)

ok so i kind of. basically determined i’m learning at least some of the traditional characters regardless of whether that was my original intent or not. My main resources, and learning plan, is all geared toward simplified characters. But... I watch a lot of Taiwanese shows (and therefore see a lot of traditional character subs), I accidentally found myself reading a couple novels in their traditional character versions (because mtlnovel.com just uses traditional character for it’s raws, and i ordered some novels from hong kong knowing they were gonna be traditional). Also I... am a mega nerd when it comes to historical textbooks/learning books, and since half my textbooks are from 1900-1960 I have books in a variety of character-formats! I’ve got pre-simplified character books, books published after one wave of simplification but before the currently used modern simplified changes were made, I’ve got books written before the modern standard pinyin was invented (and some without any kind of recognizably-modern pinyin). And... do you think that stopped me from reading any of them? No, no it did not. Of course I still read them. Of course I just chugged along anyway. So now I’ve got a vague recognition of a lot of the real commonly used characters in their multiple formats through the past century. And oh... I also got two books on Ancient Chinese... because WHY NOT learn how to read ancient Chinese right??? 

Right...?

Anyway there was absolutely no reason necessary For me to be constantly exposing myself to multiple sets of the characters, full well KNOWING I’m confusing myself and making it more difficult then it needs to be. Full well knowing my life would have been significantly easier if I had just... waited until I felt relatively confident in recognizing the 2000 some most common simplified characters, BEFORE making the effort to recognize the traditional ones.

The ONLY thing going for me, in all this, is I’m a very visual learner and my memory is quite visual. When I needed to memorize a script once... I literally DREW a comic for the entire script. Once I drew it, I remembered it (which is a remembering method I don’t wanna do again it took a long time - i guess the benefit is you get a Comic along with a nicely acted scene lol!). Bascially though, what this means for me is - I am very good at recognizing the radicals, both simplified and traditional, and recognizing the components that build up to make characters. So it’s pretty easy for me to see a traditional and simplified character, and note to myself the parts that were modified - which for radicals like ‘speech/words’ simplified, is quite easy to blanket apply that simplification with the traditional character equivalents that just use the original unsimplified version of that radical. Same with ‘fly’ fei, and ji ‘several/how many’ radical, and the ‘silk’ radical - if you remember what the traditional and simplified version of that radical looks like, its easy to recognize both the traditional and simplified versions of characters with their only difference being that radical’s appearance, as the same thing. So in the end... the only traditional characters that become difficult, are the ones that actually CHANGED the radical they used in a character for the sake of simplicity. 

However, if a character is reasonably common, even if the traditional and simplified forms DO USE DIFFERENT radicals to create the character... you see them enough to realize it’s the same character. (’Zhe’ for ‘this’ is a major character that’s like this, and i’m not sure if ‘hui’ does BUT the traditional character for ‘hui’/to be able looks A Lot Different then it’s simplified counterpart). 

So, like, because I’m good with visual memory and breaking images down into parts, the differences aren’t really that confusing for me for most characters... once I realize which radicals are simplified/were changed. The main difficulty then, is in just having the capacity to remember them all - cause remembering even JUST one set of the characters is a very long-game task that’s gonna take years period. And even though I shouldn’t have... I doubled that task for myself. Just because. I’m reading both character types regularly so like... its something I need to recognize. (Which is how I get my brain to learn anything, honestly... i need to make my brain Need something for understanding, and then that Need seems to be the only thing that gets things to stick...)

---

And today I actually bothered to look up the differences in Taiwan pronunciation so... there’s an entirely separate whole spew of thoughts concerning all that...

Literally... on the standard Mandarin pronunciation alone... I already think it’s a considerable task to: first recognize basic tones decently. 

Second, realize that tones do change behavior in certain situations (and typed pinyin will Rarely reflect those spoken changes and just assumes you’ll know to do it - like how the 4th tone in ‘bu’ changes based on what follows it, how the 3rd tone changes regardless based on what follows it). I JUST read, today, a tip that I think is BRILLIANT and explains So Freaking Much and I wish I’d heard sooner. The tip was that, a 3rd tone sound ‘shortens’ when followed by certain other tones. So this is NOT about how the sound will go up into a ‘2nd tone’ when followed by another 3rd tone. No, instead the tip was: if a 3rd tone is followed by a 4th tone, it shortens and only sort of half rises after the dip. 

I am not wording it exactly but... that explanation makes So much sense in retrospect. Because like... just listening to words like ‘wo’ and ‘ni’ where you can clearly hear the sound dip then rise at length, then comparing them to 3rd tones in the beginning of words like ‘shouji’/cellphone. You don’t say shhh-o-oh jii. You say sh-ohjii. Excuse my very bad attempt at trying to explain it. But like... when you say shou/hand on it’s own, the sound is a bit more drawn out/dips a bit more obviously. But when you say it at the beginning of a word like ‘shouji’. If you look up the words on a site like BaiduTranslate, you can clearly hear the difference in pronunciation between the shou in “shou”/hand and “shouji”/cellphone. The third tone sounds a bit different. It still dips a little, but its less something - elongated?

Anyway a tip like that seems small. But it makes a difference when you’re literally just sounding words out based on pinyin. One pronunciation is going to sound more naturally paced. 

There’s a common advice that in learning/pronouncing most any language, written language is a tool to give some kind of framework to explain the pronunciation/word but it is not necessarily exact. Just like “know” and “now” are not pronounced quite the same, even though if you sounded them out and did not know them, you might end up pronouncing them the same. Or words like “cough” and “dough” - the ‘ough’ are pronounced MUCH differently in the correct pronunciations of the words. But if you’d never spoken or heard them before, and tried to sound them out, they may both come out sounding the same from your mouth. This kind of difference in pronunciation from spelling, is why it’s good to look up native pronunciations of words when learning new ones if at all possible. And why it’s good to listen to a lot of native content and speech - because real people’s pronunciations and the real words are not going to line up one-for-one with the written pronunciation guides we try our best to have as helpful guides.

Third, now recognize that, beyond the real pronunciation of tones actually not always matching up to ‘pinyin’ spelling, and best learned in context with each new word - that also entire syllables basic initials and finals will sound somewhat different depending on dialect. So what dialect are you even aiming to speak like? which ones do you want to understand? Is it important to you to recognize the more subtle was ‘ng’ versus ‘n’ finals sound depending on different dialects? Or z versus zh, etc? Like some areas adding ‘er’ to words and that ‘er’ being pronounced differently depending on which final its attached to? Are any dialects that have different pronunciations for certain words significant for you to learn (like Taiwan using ‘han’ instead of ‘he’ for with/and)? This whole bit is... a lot. And from what I’ve noticed... at least in my own studies... even if you’re aiming for just the standard-mandarin that’s usually beijing-like, that a lot of learning materials use, there’s huge variance in if the ‘er’ thing gets mentioned. Along with other little things... its like. Its like trying to figure out if you’re going to study british english versus american english. But then you decide and you’re like using midwestern american english as the base, but some learning materials include that Milwalkee maaalk for ‘milk’ paaallow for ‘pee-low’ pillow accent, and then like what if someone uses y’all or some light southern parts of accent cause they’re from the south/family is from the south or its like kentucky or tennessee and accents vary depending on what part of the state/cities ur in?