#michi

YT Rec for Mandarin!

I feel bad that I haven't been able to deliver on some post I've promised because life has been hectic lately, so I wanted to share a learning resource in the meantime~

Mandarin Melon (and her second channel for shorts!)

I really love her videos and find that they're a great resource for how to speak in a casual, natural manner. The video I linked below is great for learning common phrases—not simple phrases! It's not about how to say "Hello", but how to say phrases that are common in conversation like "Thanks anyway!" or "Fingers crossed!"

Also, I really love her video production. Her editing is really eye-catching without being distracting and improves so much from video to video!

audio study methods

Still working on that 'lazy' study plan post, since I am just not satisfied with any chinese grammar guide summaries online enough to recommend them as a small grammar intro. If anyone knows of any good 'grammar overview summary' articles or sites for chinese grammar, please let me know. (I like AllSetLearning's Chinese Grammar Wiki but it is huge and in depth and not something I'd recommend a learner 'just read through' on month 4 of learning, and the grammar guide summary site I used as a beginner that was very easy to read through in a few hours... no longer exists)

So in the meantime. Not a grammar study tip, but a general 'lazy' option for language learners who (like me) can't focus on stuff like anki, or just don't want to. I go more in depth about using audio lessons and audio flashcards on other posts, and on the lazy study plan post i'm drafting, but the short of it is: you can listen and learn while doing your normal daily activities. That's what makes the study method so convenient. You don't have to squeeze in any extra time, or change your daily life schedule to make time for chinese, to use audio lessons and audio flashcards.

You simply find some times during the day when you'd either normally listen to audio in the background (like if you listen to music when commuting or shopping, or if you listen to podcasts when working, or if you listen to youtube while exercising or browsing social media). As usual, the more time the better as you'll make faster progress if you study 1-2 hours a day or more. But anything is better than nothing. So lets say you commute to work 30 minutes in morning and evening, there's your hour of studying audio. Or you go for a walk at lunch for 15 minutes, and browse tumblr for an hour scrolling (that's 1 hour and 15 minutes of study). It's very easy to fit 30 minutes of audio study into a day, and it's fairly easy to fit even 2-4 hours of audio study if you're so inclined. I usually do 30 minutes - 2 hours of audio study some days, since when I walk I decide if I feel like listening to a youtube essay or chinese or japanese stuff, when driving I decide which I feel like listening to, and I want to listen to something in english 2/3 of the time.

How do you use audio study material? Well, the easy way is you just press play on it, let it play in the background while you do other stuff, and that's it. If you tend to avoid studying new stuff (like me), then I recommend PRIORITIZING listening to NEW AUDIO every time, until you get into the habit of listening to NEW stuff to learn. Then you can re-listen to stuff sometimes, as review, especially when you're doing activities you have less attention on audio during. So for example: you'd listen to new audio on the commute or when walking (when you can mostly focus on what you're hearing), and then re-listen to audio as review while working or scrolling tumblr and reading english (activities where you pay more attention to other things besides audio).

What can you listen to?

There's audio lessons - which would be something like ChinesePod101 (Immersive Language Chinese in the Hoopla library app), Coffee Break Chinese, youtube videos where teachers talk in english and explain chinese as they teach it. These are good for study material, because you comprehend what you're learning due to the english explanations of every word and grammar point you hear. These are good for beginners, because you will understand everything you're listening to, and learn new words and grammar, thanks to the explanations. The drawback with audio lessons is they require the most focus.

There's learner podcasts like TeaTime Chinese and Slow Chinese, these are more often ENTIRELY in chinese. So these are better for practicing comprehension of stuff you've studied elsewhere, rather than for learning new things. You can learn new words and grammar from these, but if that is your goal then re-listen to learner podcasts a decent amount (5-20 times or more until you can't guess/figure out any more word meanings).

There's audio flashcards (which I love). These are sentence audio in english, then repeated in chinese. The order may vary, the chinese may be repeated more than once. These are good for beginners and upward, because you get a translation of every single thing you hear in chinese. You can pick up new words and grammar from audio flashcards. Audio flashcards require less focus than audio lessons, because you can learn from sentences while you pay attention and then if your attention drifts you can just focus again to the next sentence you hear and continue learning. The drawback is there are no explanations for which word specifically translates to what, some translations are not literal, and there's no explanation of why the grammar is the way it is. Audio flashcards require the listener to try and guess what means what by exposure to chinese sentences and their translations. So it's harder than audio lessons in terms of explanations, but easier than learner podcasts. Audio flashcards are the best substitute for traditional flashcards or SRS apps like anki, if you're trying to improve your vocabulary by hundreds of words ASAP. Audio flashcards are dense with new vocabulary (usually 1 new word or grammar point per sentence you can learn), so you'll learn more words than you would with an audio lesson that is paced slower with more english explanations or a learner podcast which would ideally be mostly words you know and only 20% or less new words.

There's Spoonfed Chinese Anki audio files (which I recommend since these start out very basic and increase in difficulty while also repeating words a lot so you can review, they're shared on reddit if you search, or ask me), if you search 'chinese english sentences' on youtube or bilibili (i've done this with chinese japanese sentences on bilibili) you'll find videos like this where you hear audio english then audio chinese. Old glossika cd files are basically this structure as well, which you can find the audio files of for free online or free in libraries (I'm using the new glossika app for japanese but I'm hesitant to recommend the modern app courses as there's significant errors in japanese so I'm not sure how good/bad the chinese one is). If you're a beginner, then the audio flashcard material you pick won't matter much as you need to learn a few thousand common words first which will be in most materials you find. But if you're an upper beginner, you may wish to prioritize finding audio flashcards with MORE unique words, more sentences, or may want to transition to using learner podcasts more for new vocabulary. If you aren't running into at least one new word for every 5 sentences you hear in audio flashcards (and ideally one new word for Every sentence), then that audio flashcard is way too easy for you and you know enough words to move onto new study material.

Audiobooks and audio dramas - use these like learner podcasts, listen to ones you can comprehend the main idea of, and then re-listen until you can't guess/figure out any more new words. If you're not very good at listening comprehension (like me lol), then you may want to listen to a given audiobook/audio drama file 3-5 times before deciding if you can comprehend the main idea (and use the material). When my listening skills are rusty, or just in general since my listening skills are bad, it can take me a few times of listening to recognize words I 'already know' and then a few more times of listening for my brain to put the words i recognize together into 'comprehending' what was communicated. So if you can read better than you can listen, you may want to listen 3-5+ times to a new audio file before deciding if you can follow the main idea or if it's too hard. And if you can READ the audio drama transcript, chapter text, but cannot understand the audio file? Then it probably IS at a good level for you to listen to, you just need a lot more practice hearing and recognizing the words you can read. So re-listen.

All of these listening study methods are good for:

Adding more study time into your day, since you can do them while doing other things.

Learning new words and grammar, when you don't have the time (or don't want) to spend time dedicated mainly to focusing on your study material.

Learning new words and grammar, if you don't use flashcards or SRS like anki but want the benefit of learning lots 'faster' than you would if you only picked up words during active study time (active study time being when you ONLY are focusing on study activities: like reading chinese, watching cdramas, chatting/texting people, and looking up words)

It’s a bright and beautiful sunny day a cool breeze and the sun shining down warmly on your face. You go for a drive. Bikini/beachwear on,you grab a cooler some drinks maybe some lunch. You park the car and you open your door and head for the trunk you grab your stuff and maybe you brought a dog. So you harsh your dog and start walking. You head for the sandy hill you go through the little bit of trees and past the picnic tables, the bbq grills and the bathrooms. You getting closer and closer to the hill. Now for the real exercise you make sure you have everything in the right position and start your climb. Once you reach the top there’s no going back. Fighting the sand and using all your leg muscles you reach the top. From here it gets easier you start towards the beach but before you can go to the water you have to find a place for your stuff. Usually you have little hills that are nice and private as most people usually choose to be closer to the water. You get situated and head towards the water. You feel the wind blowing in your face and you can see the waves crashing and the seagulls flying above. You dip your feet in the water. It’s ice cold but it feels amazing. After about two seconds the water gets warmer and you go even further out and the water starts hitting your face and getting you soaked. But you feel like a kid. You splash in the water and run your fingers through the water. You watch as wave after wave approaches you and you looks in the water to see the sand at the bottom. You look to see if you can spot any little animals. Whether it’s jellyfish,sand dollars and even crab,sometimes little fishies. It depends on the season. With ever step you take you feel the salt from the water touch your legs. Seaweed shells and other things picked up from the water brush up against your legs too. You stand in the water and stare at the bright blue sky with few clouds and the sun hitting your face. You feel at peace here. As beach lovers do.

#reminders #that i needed to hear

Spoiler: it absolutely does workout for you, and even better than you anticipated.

🎓 Learn Chinese Online | Learn Mandarin | Chinese Vocabularies

Summary of my last post, just my personal suggestions (you can do whatever you want and do things differently), worded shorter:

Learn pinyin or zhuyin, learn how they're pronounced and how to type them. If you're following a textbook or class, just learn pinyin or zhuyin as the materials go over it. If you're learning on your own then do this for a while: the first time you learn new words, look at the hanzi, the pinyin or zhuyin, and listen to the pronunciation of the word. If you're learning with an anki deck then a lot of user made decks will already include this stuff. If you're using Pleco app then you can hear the pronunciation, see the hanzi, and pinyin, in any word entry. Google Translate will also provide sound, hanzi, pinyin.

Learn hanzi. By this I mean: learn to recognize the hanzi of new words, as you learn new words. When reading materials, practice reading the hanzi. Some learner materials will have pinyin text above/below the hanzi, some websites can display pinyin above/below hanzi you paste into the site. These pinyin aids are fine, and potentially necessary if you can't listen to audio as you read, since the pinyin will allow you to sound out the words aloud if you don't remember all the hanzi or if there's a new hanzi in the reading material. (For listening to audio as you read - if you have audio already then just listen along, or use Pleco 'dictate' text feature in the Clipboard Reader area, or Pleco 'speaker' feature to hear just the pronunciation of individual new words, or Microsoft Edge 'Read Aloud' or any other TTS). But you'll want to learn hanzi well enough to recognize them without pinyin aids or audio aids eventually, so you can read whatever you want. So practice reading hanzi on their own too. (Pinyin, audio, and TTS are tools you can use to aid reading, but you will need to develop reading skill of just hanzi if your goals include reading).

Peace of mind 🌊 !.

antique perfume bottles. some are transparent

The world is a little happier with you in it.

#LearningLithuanian #sstellestudiess

Hi! my name is Vance, and welcome to my blog. here you’ll find me obsessing about japanese, laughing affectionately at german, gushing over lithuanian, and simping for icelandic among others. languages and linguistics are my passion, and I want to share them with others! aside from languages, I also like to color, write stories, and play pokemon. it’s nice to have you here ^_^

Languages I Speak: English (C2), Spanish (C2), Japanese (N2), German (B2), Lithuanian (A2) Languages of Interest: Latvian, Icelandic, Polish, Old Prussian, Romanian, ASL 

Resources

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Jei nebūtų mirties, gyvenimas mums neatrodytų toks gražus | If it weren’t for death, life wouldn’t seem as beautiful