After a year and a half of living in China I got a Mandarin tutor for an hour six days a week. I’m making much more progress, faster, than I did in my previous half assed way of learning.
Congrats man. I also highly suggest you use Anki if you aren’t already. It reminds me of the words & phrases I learned months ago & keeps them fresh in my memory. Not that it is my sole motivation, but you can really impress native speakers when you pull out some obscure saying someone mentioned in passing a long while back.
I am using Anki though sub-optimally. Until recently I was just using one of the shared decks, New Practical Chinese Reader. Now I’m catching up with myself inputting the phrases and vocabulary from the book I’m using, “Chinese for Foreigners”. Making cards is a massive PITA but worth it for things you actually care about learning. How long did it take you to do a textbook’s worth of cards when in university?
I’ve actually built & abandoned several decks. When I was studying in university I was focusing more on the specific usage of certain words in context, so my cards were ridiculously complex. It was good for studying for the exams, but exhausting to keep up with. Now my cards are pure vocabulary. I don’t go through lists & add all the words. I wait for the word to come up in daily life, then add it. In the past I studied a lot of words I never used, now I mostly study words I’m encountering regularly. I do think this depends on where you are though. I can usually follow a conversation but just one or two words will be new to me. If you’re still in the early beginning phase, you need to collect all of those super common words first.
After a year and a half of living in China I got a Mandarin tutor for an hour six days a week. I’m making much more progress, faster, than I did in my previous half assed way of learning.
Congrats man. I also highly suggest you use Anki if you aren’t already. It reminds me of the words & phrases I learned months ago & keeps them fresh in my memory. Not that it is my sole motivation, but you can really impress native speakers when you pull out some obscure saying someone mentioned in passing a long while back.
I am using Anki though sub-optimally. Until recently I was just using one of the shared decks, New Practical Chinese Reader. Now I’m catching up with myself inputting the phrases and vocabulary from the book I’m using, “Chinese for Foreigners”. Making cards is a massive PITA but worth it for things you actually care about learning. How long did it take you to do a textbook’s worth of cards when in university?
I’ve actually built & abandoned several decks. When I was studying in university I was focusing more on the specific usage of certain words in context, so my cards were ridiculously complex. It was good for studying for the exams, but exhausting to keep up with. Now my cards are pure vocabulary. I don’t go through lists & add all the words. I wait for the word to come up in daily life, then add it. In the past I studied a lot of words I never used, now I mostly study words I’m encountering regularly. I do think this depends on where you are though. I can usually follow a conversation but just one or two words will be new to me. If you’re still in the early beginning phase, you need to collect all of those super common words first.