global_jd

Progress Report, June 2011

Haven't written much here, but have been studying and practicing every day, working hard.

Usual day starts with situps by 7am, then Cantonese/Malay tapes while making coffee laying out clothes, then an hour spent working through New Practical Chinese Reader 4 page by page, saying everything multiple times, going to the dictionary whenever I need to check a tone, alternate meanings, compounds. Working through a page of a Cantonese Slang Dictionary while on the throne. Some online work while watching (and rewinding) CCTV News. A commute to the office listening to Mandarin (often NPCR5 now).

On the way home I listen to a ballgame or audio history of China, then usually practice Bach Inventions and other tunes for an hour or so. Before sleeping I've been going through the 700-page "1000 Basic Chinese Characters", reviewing 15 pages and advancing 5 pages each night, usually a half-hour.

Sundays I've been working on the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, the proficiency test. Not sure yet if I'll be fast enough to take Level 4 in October.

Each day is pretty much like the last. There are few milestones at this stage... I'm just pushing through to achieve my goals. About a half-year now of daily focused work.

Someday I'd like to play musette tunes on The Bund. Or maybe tangos for a Beijing dance hall. Or perhaps learn Chinese accordion playing in Qingdao or Tianjin. Or maybe something in Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, even Guangzhou or Kunming.

Right now, I'm just preparing....

Progress report, March 2011

Consistent work... Mandarin, Cantonese, some Malay.

Usual day starts with situps, listening to mixed-language tapes while making coffee etc, then at least twenty minutes working page-by-page through New Practical Chinese Reader 3, listening to CCTV news while doing morning scans, speaking aloud two pages in Cantonese Slang Dictionary, listening to NPCR2 or other materials on the commute to office, listening to Chinese history on the walk back, some more mixed-language while unpacking, varied materials in the evening.

More detail on some of these. NPCR3 work is "if there's any doubt, look it up in the dictionary, speak every related compound, write it down". I've worked in this book in the past, but this pass am nailing every ambiguity, finder deeper context on each term. About 120 pages in since Christmas; 80 more to go. Then do the same review for NPCR4. In autumn I hope to start fresh work in NPCR5. Volumes 3 & 4 are for second-year college students in intensive study.

The new Oxford Chinese Dictionary is my best friend. The depth of examples, read aloud, really helps me learn or wire a new word, reduce ambiguity of understanding.

Greatly enjoying "From Yao to Mao, 5000 Years of Chinese History", listening to each segment a few times. Almost at the end, then plan on a full re-hearing to embed it. After that it's "Fall and Rise of China". TheGreatCourses.com had both on sale, and both are working very well for me.

Flashcards... not much progress. Right now I get a session or two a week.

Overall I'm hearing much more on the newscasts, and can often glean information from onscreen captions. Vernacular conversation still goes by too fast for me to fully process, but I can often recognize word-by-word. As baseball season gets underway I'll be able to fit in more radio-listening.

Cantonese goal is daily exposure. No real study per se, just ongoing familiarity on basic tourist stuff.

 

Progress Report, Dec 2010

Came back from China early December... spent most of the month trying to figure my next study goals, daily practice.

Top desires: Improve the usability of my Mandarin, and finally develop habits in Cantonesee.

Before leaving I had worked through New Practical Chinese Reader 4, and was looking forward to volume five. But at the end of NPCR4 it said I had learned 1200 characters, and I didn't feel that I had.

So what I'm doing is going back to NPCR3 and working through it, page by page, looking up every definition that gives me doubt, reading each phrase aloud until it sounds natural and can support variations... checking every tone, checking every stroke order... working through the dictionary entries, comparing similar words, reading everything aloud until I can repeat it. Very very slow work... has taken me a week of vacation time to go through the first chapter, two to four hours a day. But I'm learning lots, lots, lots.

Before I had read the textbooks trying to learn how the language works... emphasizing reading, listening, getting the gist. Now I'm trying to use the language, emphasizing speech production and writing it out. Before I knew of various characters... now I'm trying to really know them.

I look forward to getting to volume five... someday. ;)

For Cantonese, I'm using recordings from The Third Ear during housework... repeating it a couple of times a week during vacation, but likely only on Sundays during the regular year.  I like this series because it allows for adequate spoken repeats. After I get through many repetitions of their second and third CDs I'll go back to some Cantonese cassettes, reading while listening, trying to anticipate with speech. Also recording the local Hong Kong news hour and listening to it daily while working on the computer... background material, with occasional intense attention to the characters in captioning.

I'm not learning new characters right now... more about really locking in the ones I've already studied. But I still want to continue in this area. Haven't really been using my pocket flashcards, or electronic flashcards as I had each evening. Still need to figure out the new regime here.

For travel, my PRC visa is good through October, but I miss Taiwan, Singapore too. Starting to research a trip from Beijing, to Tianjin, Qingdao and Shandong, Mt. Tai and the Grand Canal, the rivers and lakes down to Shanghai... "Outlaws of the Marsh" territory. Not sure yet of details.

Main goals: Improve my Mandarin so that I have a solid beginner's level and can progress to intermediate... learn enough Cantonese that I can start to use it next time I'm in Hong Kong. Those are my top priorities.

Progress report, Aug 23 2010

Main emphasis: Studying Mandarin. During the summer I've been getting a little book study nearly every day, and the regularity has increased progress greatly.

Main study is New Practical Chinese Reader 4... almost at the end of that volume, and I have NPCR5 propped up on a shelf as motivation. I study with a bunch of dictionaries nearby: Laurence Matthews' "Chinese Character Fast Finder" [Tuttle] to quickly locate pronunciation and general meaning... "Learner's Chinese/English Dictionary" [Nanyang Siang Pau, Shanghai] for additional meanings and compounds... Oxford's "Concise C/E E/C Dictionary" for deeper background... Wang Guo'an's "Handbook for 1000 Basic Chinese Characters" to get a sense of character/compound priority and stroke-order... Rich Harbaugh's "Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary" to see how characters inter-relate and get some mnemonics... "Chinese Multi-Reading Characters Without Tears [Beijing University Press?] for certain tricky characters.

Beyond that, I've been using Anki Flashcards for drills before sleeping... regularly watch Chinese-language news and dramas... listen to NPCR4 audio each day while walking the commute... pick up isolated articles, blogs and tweets during the day. Many modalities, each with regularity.

Result: I can't quite get the gist from many conversations (dramas are easier; newscasts are stylized; tweets are colloquial), but I can see that I know many of the characters in many situations, and just need to be faster at recognizing, more flexible in putting them together. Distinct progress along the path to the goal.

Still listening to Cantonese each week, but haven't made any progress in understanding.

Fortunate occurrence at work: Now producing weekly summaries of news reports and blogposts on China, particularly with gaming, video, and mobile use. Lets me learn more. Greatly appreciated.

For cane use I'm more "walking in three", using the cane for occasional support rather than every-step support. Very, very helpful for defining personal space on the sidewalk... I'm always aware of others and strive to make their passage easier, but those who try to walk through me would have to walk through wood first, so it makes things a bit calmer. I'm not doing much with juggling rope, though... still an interest, just not much practice or improvement.

Still researching a trip to Yunnan in late autumn. The more I learn, the more I like. 

That's it... steady work, noticeable improvement... still a long way to go.

Progress Report, 06/18/10

Been studying Mandarin more than I've been blogging about it. Every day I get a few hours audio exposure, while commuting each day, and often in the background while working at computer. Still carry flashcards everywhere in back pocket and can always get a few minutes' character-identification. In the early week I can often get an hour or two to read, but now more often travel/culture/history than language study.

Two new techniques:

• Have moved book-study in New Practical Chinese Reader 4 from a few big sessions 2-3x a week to a shorter session each morning. Usually only 20-30 minutes, but the consistency is giving results. Hope to be through this book by the end of the summer.
• Have also started using Anki flashcards at the end of each evening, on an Android 1.6 Archos 5" Internet Tablet. This system lets you grade a card as "Hard", "Good", "Easy", then uses spaced repetition to burn it in efficiently. Has a strong coding community; also a strong content community. There are many sets for the HSK test and more.

Also still buttressing this with McGraw-Hill's Streetwise Mandarin and CCTV's Travel In Chinese, along with news shows, Chinese movies and soap operas and variety shows, other books at odd moments, etc.

On study days I've often been reading about Yunnan, the botanically-diverse, culturally-diverse area of southwest China bordering Tibet, Myanmar, Vietnam... the Ancient Tea-Horse Road brought tea out to Tibet and India. I hope to visit there this autumn.

Progress has been significant. The winter was tough, but I've found a new intensive study schedule. I'm catching more on the TV shows I watch; can read more in blogposts. Still a lot that I miss, but I'm catching more than before.

Summary: Keep working. ;-)

Progress Report, March 22 2010

Main goal has been increased understanding of spoken and written Mandarin, with a side-helping of Cantonese.

The winter has been tough -- I lost my best study-spot and have been scouting out new places, but that has been difficult in the rain and the cold. My daily commute audio has been the four CDs of New Practical Chinese Reader 3 (review), and McGraw-Hill's "Streetwise Mandarin". The book to the latter is 6"x9", easy to carry. This winter I've also carried around Anthony Yu's 500-page abridgement of "Journey to the West", books on Yunnan culture/history, and every now and then a smaller language book. I've been getting well over 20 hours of exposure a week, but book-study time has dropped from ten hours to one.

Things are starting to improve. For awhile it was hard to convert CDs to MP3s, but now I have new PC and pocket audio. Daylight Savings Time has also made it easier to read in late afternoon. This week I started reviewing the first six chapters of New Practical Chinese Reader 4, and I anticipate plowing through this to the end, somewhere in autumn. It feels great to work with textbook, dictionary and character finder again, marking up each book as I go.

Over the winter I've lost the sense of advancement in Mandarin study, but have definitely felt like I've been filling in the cracks in my knowledge, establishing things better. Sounds seasonal, but a dormant winter breaking into springtime exuberance.

One other resource I've been using often during the winter has been CCTV-9's "Travel In Chinese" series. This is the English-language channel for China state television, and the programs are fifteen-minute conversations with discussion of language points. I've seen their previous series "Communicate in Chinese" (introductory) and "Sports Chinese" (for Olympics 2008), but "Travel in Chinese" is one I've sat down and repeatedly studied. Partly it's fun because they visit in Beijing, Xi'an, Kunming and Lijiang, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and other wonderful places. I record two/three copies of each lesson, and only erase them after I feel significant progress. After this winter's work I'm confident recommending these resources to anyone seeking to improve their language skills.

Other exposure includes movies, TV news, flash cards, and dictionaries in the bathroom, by the desk and by the bed. I'm not making much speech at all (and therefore not learning as quickly as I might), but I'm understanding many snippets I happen to hear in San Francisco (mostly Chinatown, downtown, and Golden Gate Park).


Cane has been going great... a big subject I can't cover here tonight. This winter I started working with lighter canes, which prompted me to rethink everything. I'm also walking most often in a reverse grip now, with the hook pointing forward, and the main shaft coming out the bottom of the hand.

A light cane trades mass for speed, and makes it easy to explore types of motion which would be difficult to discover in a heavy stick. The reverse grip also prompts the bulk of the stick to stay behind my body center... natural postures are much more defensive. (For example, in a forward grip the cane tip has to rise in front of you to shift the hand from the hook to the shaft... could be seen as an offensive, escalating movement. But in a reverse grip you can shift to the shaft just by juggling the cane upwards eight inches, so that in the neutral de-escalation posture of "hey sorry no offense meant" the cane hook is at face level, the cane tip is at fist level, and the cane isn't pointing at anyone. Looks milder, but covers more, and chambers a wicked undercut.)

Juggling rope has been difficult during winter, because of the extra layers of clothing. Looking forward to resumption.

I've been working through the winter, without much to show for it. Now I'm ready to start making visible progress again.

Progress Report, 100103

Weird month... cold, rain, holidays... could have been worse, but I wasn't as directed as I might have hoped.

Language study is primarily Mandarin, secondarily Cantonese. Not much book study this month, but daily audio/video exposure, some flashcards and reading. Looking forward to reviewing New Practical Chinese Reader IV and then proceeding with new chapters in it. Hard part is still finding a comfortable study spot... will be researching SOMA bars in January.

Over the holiday's I've been reading Anthony Yu's 500-page abridged translation of Xiyouji, "Journey to the West". I had read the 230-page version from Timothy Richard after coming back from the PRC in autumn. Getting a lot out of it... remarkable how it describes an individual's progression of consciousness, as well as being an adventure story. But still wishing to read a glossed version, Chinese and English... lots of the poems are more compelling in Chinese than in English.

Skill arts? Not much rope, but starting to understand use of a light cane. I had picked up an aged Malacca hook, and finally started to become comfortable with the Malacca cane... it is light and flexible, not heavy and powerful like oak, hickory, or ash. I'm attracted to carrying a tool which cannot be used as a club. Learning stuff from Wushu Broadsword techniques... very fast, full-body movement, using speed rather than mass. I've also been using a carbon-graphite cane, which is even lighter than the Malacca, but intensely rigid.

Travel? Not sure. I'm very, very interested in China, and particularly in Hong Kong as a bridge. I've never been to Hainan, and am curious about Xiamen and Piano Island. Yunnan's culture is also of interest. There's an Adobe event in Beijing towards March which I need to investigate. But then again Taiwan has the best Chinese food, and Singapore is the best food town, although Korea has the best cuisine, and a bowl of oden at Ueno Lake on a winter night still seems the Best Meal Of All Time....

I've had a bunch of blogposts bottled up during the holiday, never got to write them... mostly things on cane-handling, maybe how ropes work. Hard to describe these things in words though. I've also wanted to research more the eight-trigram system, as well as the five-element system.

Working forward, but no milestones.

Progress report, 120609

This time of transition seems like it will persist for awhile. I'm focused on finding new ways to improve my skills in hearing and reading Mandarin and Cantonese.

It's hard for me to book-study at a desk... keeping wanting to get up and do things. Best technique is for me to get outside and sit for an hour or two. Favored places are out of traffic and wind, where I can smoke a pipe, look off into space as I mentally process a new item. We're coming into the rainy season in San Francisco, and that removes some of the predictability of an outdoors schedule. I'll be going into Golden Gate Park after writing this, and have a few good places picked out. Still need to find some comfortable bars South of Market where I can go after a short day at the office. Because of all this, I don't think I'll be on a predictable book-study schedule for a few months.

My iPod Nano hasn't wanted to start up since I got back from the PRC in November. Ended up using an old iRiver U10 that I had in a gadget box. The buttons are a little more fiddly, and I haven't figured out its playlist format yet. I'm glad to be getting out of the Apple walled-garden... my last iPod/Mac combo had about 80 gigs of accordion music (with both drives now inaccessible), and the most recent Nano/Mac combo rotated in scads of language-learning CDs. Once I digitize something I don't want to be locked into one brand of device.

I walk/commute about two hours a day, 20-25 miles a week, with partial-attention given to courseware, repeating and anticipating aloud when traffic permits. At my home desk there's often a Mandarin or Cantonese movie or show on. I always carry a leather wallet of flashcards, and there's usually at least one book in my bag. Wherever I can sneak in a few moments of attention, I do.

Progress seems slow without those steady benchmarks of chapter after chapter. I'm consciously retrenching in my study materials, trying to consolidate areas I explored over the last year... it's not the most encouraging feeling to say "oh yeah! I forgot that", but that's the goal... work that existing material, get a better foundation.

For manipulation I'm enjoying the cane each day, and juggling more types of rope at home... have also picked up some materials on manipulation of playing cards, a longtime hobby.

The ropes I work with usually have a small weight at each end... favorite is a small silk bag with a few spoonfuls of sand or a dozen coins or so. The most common lengths are armpit-height, full height, and height-and-a-half (like a 9' jumprope). It's very difficult to describe the curves and momentum shifts of rope-juggling in words. A tethered projectile will want to proceed indefinitely in its direction of movement, and the whirling system accumulates forces put upon it. A lot of the interesting stuff is in letting the rope wrap around the body before using the muscles of the trunk to unwrap it in a new direction, unleashing all the stored kinetic energy of the rope's wrap and the body's twist. The rope can be slid between the hands to shorten and lengthen the circles, which can also have surprising interactions with direction and velocity. The more I learn, the more I realize there is to learn.

No firm travel plans, although I'm interested in Yunnan and the southwest, and am still very curious about Xiamen, Piano Island, and the coast. The place I think most about is Hong Kong.

Progress report, 111809

Time of transition, not quite sure of the next section of path.

For language study, I want to focus on Mandarin and Cantonese over the next few months. I need to review the past year's Mandarin study... a step back, to solidify things. It's hard to practice speech production solo, but I want to more consistently and rapidly recognize the characters I know, and better understand different styles of spoken speech. I also need to figure out a strategy for daily Cantonese exposure.

Complicating the weekly workflow is that the iPod Nano I've been using the three years seems to have failed, and I'm debating whether I should use my existing iTunes library with a new device, or escape the Apple system to a different portable language-learning device. But that means I should research current options, rethink before deciding. And much of my better Cantonese material is on cassette tape. Will take awhile to figure out.

In the meantime I'm reading and listening to a variety of materials, with daily exposure. But within two weeks I hope to have the next season's syllabus prepared.

Progress report, 101209

Long time since an update. Steady studying during this period, though.

Since autumn I've been book-studying in New Practical Chinese Reader for 3-4 days each week... significant progress. First few months were in reviewing NPCR 3, which I had sorta organically absorbed rather than systematically assimilated. Since then I've been taking chapters in order from NPCR 4... first few chapters took 3-4 weeks each, but now that my study procedure is better I can do a chapter every two weeks.

I've also been using McGraw-Hill's "Streetwise Mandarin" the last two months. It's more conversational than NPCR, focusing more on colloquial and idiomatic speech. The book is smaller than NPCR, and I don't need to carry dictionaries, so it's easy to use on the 2-3 other days of study each week. It's also fun to mix the two audio courses together... get about a dozen hours a week while walking.

I'm at an odd stage, much listening and reading, but little speaking and writing. I doublethink myself a lot while speaking... I used to stutter when I just entered gradeschool, and it feels like it may be a similar symptom... brain goes too fast, tongue isn't relaxed.

Also been wondering about how I can "understand" something without language. If I'm watching a TV show I fall behind when trying to mentally translate to English, but if I just listen I can get a better sense of the conversation... I think. ;-)  Instead of going Chinese-to-English I think I'm starting to go direct to Chinese-to-understanding. But to check that theory I have to translate the whole thing to English, and that's where I fall behind again. Whatever, I'm consciously attempting to do less mental translation now. The test, I guess, will be how well I do in simple daily conversation the next few weeks.

The cane has been great... sort of like learning to play a musical instrument. It's very comfortable to walk three-footed, and it's great to always have a tool handy to stretch out the shoulders and back. It's an extension tool for the hand, too, once the habits and grip-changes are learned to keep it graceful and out-of-the-way. My upper body and posture are better than ever before.

I've been working a raw Red Oak cane and another in White Ash... rasping and filing an ergonomic handle, chiseling finger and thumb grooves, sanding and oiling over and over again. Wherever a bone in the hand meets a convexity, it becomes a concavity... take away each little point of pressure. Other people do make good canes, but I really like forming one to my own needs. In a year or two, once they gain lots of character, I'll seal them up with Tung Oil, harden and waterproof them.

For rope play I've been converging on a jo-length rope, high as the armpit, with a small weight on each end. I started with two 3' poi, and a "rope dart" of twelve feet with a heavy knot on one end, and merged the skills in a nine-foot jumprope-sized double-weighted rope. But the shorter jo-length rope is handier to manipulate, wrap around the body... and easier to use in an apartment. ;-)  I made one set with some small silken bags from SF Chinatown with a few ounces of sand, and have a travel set that packs up next-to-nothing and which can be weighted with a few coins or some soil or salt on arrival. The two-handed poi weaves require more care with the shorter length, but this ends up making cane twirls more graceful, as I better learn the natural momentum of objects.

Working steadily, working hard... some days I go back and look at some of the materials I used a year or two before, and that's when I can see the progress being made.