#where they really get me is the audiobooks - i relisten to all the audiobooks roughly every 2 months

[rigelmejo]

May Progress Update, and June Goals

6/1/2021  - I just want my goals to be “like last month” lol. But I realize its probably not gonna turn out that way.

My Chinese May goals were:

1. ***Read anything

I did this! Looking back though, a majority of what I read was actually the “hard” stuff on my list though lol. I read mostly Guardian, hanshe, and then I finished one of my easier extensive reading materials. I also read a random few chapters of a few things extensively, just testing things out (like Poyun, dmbj 1, svsss, dage, The Rebel, just a ton of random chapters).

Chinese chapters read (during May): 63 (unlike last month, this number isn’t inflated much - most were 5 page priest-level print reading or 15-20 pages in Pleco reading on the phone, with ~5 hanshe 10-pages-in-pleco chapters so even cut down to my usual reading-length-chapters comparison this month would be ~60 chapters read)

Chinese stories finished (this year): 5 - 笑猫日记之会唱歌的猫 is the only one finished this month, with 3 (intensely long 55-pages-in-pleco) chapters read of  猫城记, intro skimmed of 许三观卖血记, intro skimmed of 撒野.

2. ***Continue listening to Chinese Spoonfed Audio 

I also managed to do this one! 20 audio listened to so far! (I think I’d listened to up to 12 of the files in April). So I listened to 8 this month  - yes, not a huge amount. But as there’s 36 or 39 files, I’m over halfway there!

3. Optional: experiment with Listening Reading Method. 

This is what I mean when I say I sideline off my intended study plan sometimes! I ended up doing some form of Listening Reading Method a TON this month. 

Guardian: 12 chapters*40 minutes each (roughly)=480 minutes= 8 hours Alice in Wonderland, other L R Method random chapters: 2 chapters (one 30 minutes, the other 80 minutes) =110 minutes= ~1.8 hours Silent Reading: 6 chapters, approximately 1.5 hours. SVSSS: 1 chapter, 10 minutes = ~0.2 hours  (I only did step 2 with this - chinese audio with chinese text, I am debating if I want to bother with step 3 as I can follow the story fine)

~11.5 hours spent doing Listening Reading this month (steps 1-2). Also including random audio I’ve listened to throughout the month, mostly repeated listens of L-R’d chapters but also other things, in a previous post I calculated to be: 22.8 total hours listening to L-R material. Then add more hours of listening to random things in the background, and its up to ~30ish hours total listening this month. This is by far the most dedicated listening I’ve done in a month.

With just what I’ve done so far of increasing my listening, and doing L-R more, I’ve seen good improvements. So I want to keep trying. I checked a few novels and there’s a lot I should be able to do this with (especially since with using Pleco for the translation for step 3, I do not specifically require either a translation or a parallel text). I also have tried some variants of using listening/reading to study japanese and French this month which I’ll talk more about a little below - and those variants were fun and pretty effective too!

4. Other optional: listen to misc audio, watch shows, read Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Characters, do some of my Radical-hanzi book.

Hilarious to me? Maybe so? I actually ended up doing a surprising amount of this I guess? Kudos to me - I think I did my whole study plan I made for once? Although honestly I barely did any reading-only until like May 20th.

I listened to almost 10 hours of misc audio at LEAST (see above) - any chance to listen to some chinese and I did (although with 30ish days in a month I probably can find ways to do more). I watched pieces of shows - half of 2 episodes in Viki Learn Mode (Granting You a Dreamlike Life, Guardian), and some random Reaction Videos in chinese so ~5 ish episodes as far as lengths of stuff watched. I read 28 pages of Alan Hoenig’s Chinese Characters book this month (not a lot of pages but its something - also I put it on my phone which definitely increased my ease to open and read it randomly). I think I did a couple pages of my hanzi book (but I decided to put that back on the shelf and stop prioritizing it).

Chinese stuff done in May that wasn’t on the study plan:

Practiced some pronunciation/shadowing with my apps (maybe 2 hours total but its something). Also hearing more from others really makes me think I want to try more shadowing particularly of audiobooks and/or certain characters in dramas, to specifically get better at my own speaking when in sentences.

had my first convo in chinese where I was understood, without prep time to help my active vocab or correct myself (so that was super exciting). Also texted a bit in chinese this month but not really much just real basic stuff.

while I said I only ‘watched’ around 5 eps worth of content, I did a lot of ‘listening’ this May. Just in the sense of like - when I did watch shows with english subs (which I did a bit) I made an effort to specifically grasp what I was hearing (actually trying to listen only, then replay and glance at eng and chinese subs to figure out any unknonw words). Because of that I only watched a few show episodes this month (and its why I switched to Viki learn mode so I could just click to replay audio/get definitions). And in viki, although I only watched about 1/2 of each of the 2 eps, I relistened to each piece of dialogue until I both understood all words in the line when seeing the chinese subs AND could listen to the line without looking and understand all the words (so ‘intensive’ show listening). So those ‘20′ minutes of each ep took me more like 1 hour each. Since I kept replaying and replaying each scene. I read someone on Reddit did this ‘intensive’ show listening activity and it improved their listening/speaking a LOT, so I tried doing it a bit. If you’re using Viki Learn Mode or Learn Languages with Netflix extension I do recommend trying it, since its very easy with those tools. But doing it on youtube like I did at first, with shows just replaying scenes? It would’ve been easier for me to just take off my glasses to not see the chinese subs and try to listen lol. 

My Japanese goals this May were:

1. ***Continue: Nukemarine’s LLJ courses

AHAHAH! Ok so last month I marked this as the PRIORITY (and I was right)! Guess what I did absolutely none of this month? (Or at least, if I did, it was 400 crammed reviews of previously studied flashcards then not actually doing any new content lol). I... just was not in the mood to do srs flashcard study.

2. Hopefully: Continue some kind of grammar explanation 

I also marked this as priority. Past me was wise. Past me, I do not listen to well all the time. This was a mixed back - genuinely, I think my thoughts back in April remain true: finishing either Tae Kim (unlikely but i was at chapter 10 before), Cure Dolly (i’m on 6), Japanese Audio Lessons Grammar, Japanese in 30 Hours while writing japanese in (I’m on page 24) - will result in a good foundation and is a priority.

What did I actually do?

I read more Japanese in 30 Hours (I’m now at page 60 and 1/3 through it). I will probably finish it in June. I also read a smattering of random stuff, and “Reading Japanese” a book I have to learn reading skills specifically (not grammar). My guiding principle ended up being: just read/study whatever you want, follow your interest, its better than doing nothing. For May, that worked out pretty ok to be honest and I’ll probably continue that principle in June.

3. Optional: Reading in any form and Optional: listening in any form

Strangely I did a surprisingly high amount of this for someone who didn’t plan to?

I found the site Wasabi Japanese - and experimented with their Read Aloud lessons (Yue-muffin linked to a bunch of graded japanese resources here which included Wasabi Japanese). My opinion: I LOVE their lessons, I love the structure, I love that they have a free grammar guide course to go through (which I’d like to read after Japanese in 30 Hours). Their lessons go from N4-N3, which is a good spot for me to learn, and the way they teach is a bit like Listening-Reading Method and a bit like Re-Reading Technique (video by PolyMathy) which I’ve linked to before. 

Their lessons have really nice instructions, which amount to: 1. Listen to the audio several times or even dozens, trying to grasp what all the sounds are/understand what you can. 2. Read transcript with audio to fully match audio to actual words and look up any unknown words. 3. Re-listen with and without transcript until you feel you’re hearing all the words okay. 4. Shadow the audio a few times with/without transcript. 

As you can see, its a lot like L-R Method and Re-Reading Technique, with a lot of emphasis on listening and shadowing. I did it and I feel even just with one lesson I could tell my listening skill was improving a significant amount. When I have more time I want to dedicate to japanese, I’d definitely like to go through all of Wasabi Japanese lessons - I think they’re really cool. I also used their lesson-structure, and applied it to listening to a few eps of the podcast “Slow Chinese” which I think was very effective. So I really think their site is worth checking out at LEAST to read their article How to Proceed with the Read Aloud Method, so you can apply it to your own study materials more if you want. I’m definitely considering applying this study method to Nukemarine’s memrise courses, stuff I might listen to in the future etc.

As for other small japanese stuff I did - just a lot of ‘random manga chapters read, random small lessons done’ sort of stuff. Here’s what I wrote a week ago:  I read 3-4 manga chapters, 50 pages of a 160 page grammar book, listened to a short story several times and studied it, read a short story chapter (very short though), read 3 very small graded readers, read a page of parasite eve. In addition to that, I know I watched a few bits of lets plays and just in general tried to read a bit of japanese here and there.

All in all I probably only did 5-10 hours of japanese study this month, so not much. The bulk of it was probably reading Japanese in 30 Hours. But I did find stuff I like learning from, which is always nice. And japanese isn’t the priority right now. 

French goals from May:

***Continue watching Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature videos. 

I did this - 6 chapters out of 50 total. I do think it helps, I actually studied them doing the Re-Reading Technique linked above - since the guy used Lingva Latina to demonstrate so I figured it would be a perfect to do with a similarly structured French book. Also just listening to 10 chapter’s audio while out walking. Just kind of refreshing my memory.

Read???? Read???

Idk I read a few random pages, French not a priority rn. I do plan to read Carmilla in June though.

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Next Month’s Goals!

I want to stick to a pretty similar plan tbh, this past month’s worked well. I don’t know how much will get done though, I’ve got a lot happening lately.

Chinese June Goals:

1. Read! - this goal I’ve been able to consistently do, so I’m gonna keep it. Would like to do some extensive reading with easier novels (猫城记, 许三观卖血记, 撒野), and some intensive reading with stuff like hanshe still. However whatever I read, is good to me.

2. Continue listening to Chinese Spoonfed Audio - if I just keep doing this I’ll be happy. Would like to get to a point where I’m just playing it in the background when I work, so I can both finish it and get some repetition-review from hearing more chinese (and some increased comprehensible listening practice each day). But we’ll see - I had success the past couple months playing it in the bg while I played video games. Its just as audiobooks/audio dramas/condensed show audio get easier to comprehend, they’re obviously more interesting to listen to in the background lol.

3. Listening Reading Method - this went real well in May, and I want to keep doing it (and its fine if I only do step 2 sometimes tbh). Would like to keep doing Guardian specifically (but any novel done will be good). I would love to have Listen-Read all of Guardian by the end of August (and in a dream world also have read the entire print novel!). If I can do that, then it means by year 2 I will have read and listened to the novel that originally pushed me to study chinese. Which would just be really really cool to me ;-; It will also mean that by 2 years in I will have finished reading a book by priest (and again the book that got me into the author ToT), so I can start reading future books by priest with hopefully a LOT more vocabulary I know specifically tailored to making those books easier to read. 

When I started learning, I had guessed it would take 4 years to even struggle through priest chapters slowly with a dictionary - since I was guessing chinese would take me around as long as japanese to hit milestones (and 2.5 years of japanese was when I just barely started grasping simple manga with a dictionary). So already everything I do with listening and reading in chinese blows my mind a bit, just because I never thought I would even get Here, let alone here in this amount of time. Its not perfect by any means, but its much better than I’d assumed it was gonna take (which probably says a lot about how much more per day I studied and how much more effectively I studied chinese compared to japanese, if I had to guess WHY it took so much less time). So yeah, reading Guardian is a really big goal of mine. And yes - jumping on that, I’d also love to rewatch the show at the 2 year mark without english subtitles. And I don’t want to rewatch until I’ve read the novel because I tend to mix up details lol if I do both at the same time ToT

Practical goal for June: L-R Method Guardian to the end of the sundial arc, and read print novel to end of sundial arc. IDEAL goal for June: also L-R Method Guardian to the end of the 2nd arc, and read print novel to the end of the 2nd arc - and ideally that puts me finishing the first print volume in June. God mode goal for June: L-R Method ALL of Guardian (reading print novel can happen slower cause no way that’s happening in 1 month lol - I say that and now watch it happen cause I said it wouldn’t lol). 

I’ve calculated it before so here it is again: Guardian audiobook is about 35 hours, so 70 hours to finish L-R Method steps 2-3. Add in time to read the english translation (step 1) lets add 8 more hours (probably would take me 2-5 hours to finish the english but I’m being generous). I’ve done 12 chapters already which is 8 hours. So I’ve got 70 hours left to do. If I did 2-3 hours of L-R a day (or on average), I could finish the novel in June. Like 1 hour Mon-Fri (20 days = ~20 hours), and 5 hours each weekend day (10 days = ~50 hours). That would have me finishing around July. However... that’s unrealistic lol. Now if for half the days per month (15) I could do 4-5 hours a week (the other days doing nothing), I could get done by the end of June. So like... realistically either I get super into Guardian and do a lot in a couple weeks (in which case its totally possible to finish just like I managed to watch ~60 eps of Love and Redemption, ~40 hours, in like 4 days because I was so into that show). I’m starting to get why the writer of L-R Method tended to do this in a focused burst for 8-10 hours a day for a couple weeks - much easier to make the time, if you’re just super into it for a short period of time. Its much harder to make a few hours to do this for multiple months (also why I think a lot of ppl did HP when testing this method, since the 1st audiobook is like 9 hours total so its only 18 hours to L-R the whole book). So I guess... either I get super into Guardian, or I might only get through the 1st-2nd arc by end of June. We’ll see.

Also... what a cool experiment it would be... to see where my listening and reading skills would be at after the whole book. And that’s without the shadowing/translation steps 4 and 5 which I’d like to try eventually lol.

4. Optional - do anything in chinese, shows, manhua, misc audio. My new feelings are: if I feel like doing something, I might as well do it as its better than nothing. 

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Japanese June Goals:

Finish reading Japanese in 30 Hours - or any other thing that strikes your interest. My new feeling for japanese study is just doing anything I feel like is better than nothing lol. (But grammar guide is still priority)

Continue Nukemarine’s Courses - if I can get into srs flashcards, if not don’t worry just keep remembering its ultimately a priority. (vocab priority)

Optional - whatever I want in japanese, shows, manga, lets plays, video games, reading scripts, wasabi japanese lessons, my Reading Japanese book etc. If I feel like doing something go ahead and do it tbh. (Long term I’ll want audio study to replace Chinese Spoonfed Audio though, like Core 2k audio files or Japaneseaudiolessons files, to study listening skills).

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French June Goals*:

*all optional

Keep listening/reading Le Français par Le Method Nature. I just. want to finish that book... and its good review...

Read/listen to whatever, if I feel like. Hi Carmilla...