My language learning has continued along a mostly similar path to the strategies described in my last post. However, I do feel that I have learned more about making small but impactful adjustments that can improve my development and introduce me to more ideas. We have now created a system for reading practice, where I provide myself the Pinyin text above or next to the characters in the text (although this does generally draw my eye to the Pinyin first, it helps me relate the characters more easily), and I translate the words I read into English line-by-line. It has been difficult to find worksheets, but I am continuing to seek out practice opportunities, and I have found several sites created by colleges for beginning users that give me a good benchmark for the topics I should work on. I have also realized just how difficult pronunciation can be. I am generally able to make myself understood, but often, I mistake the sounds of the characters other speakers are using and easily misinterpret a sentence. This can be challenging especially when I am still reliant on a great deal of context to understand the complete meaning of different messages, so I have begun watching a greater variety of materials – which introduces me to more individual pronunciations and helps me understand the difference between unique pronunciations and dialectical differences – and am working to use audio materials more. I find my strategy of spending the first half of the week on review and reinforcement and the second on more active practice and application; however, I think I will now be able to follow a less structured schedule as I have found more ideas for practice strategies. I was also slightly surprised – I decided to pick up Duolingo again to see how my progress compared to my earlier work over the summer, and found it fairly helpful because of its reinforcement of learning through repetition and learning in each category of reading, writing, and listening. I try to move through the sections a little more quickly, and I don’t spend a great deal of time each day working with Duolingo, but I realized that the comprehensive daily practice was useful and I am hoping to implement similar ideas in my future practice.
I have also realized that, although my introduction to basic grammar seems to have covered enough to allow me to understand at least the outline of most phrases and sentences I encounter, it may be helpful to find more grammar-centered worksheets to learn topics one-at-a-time, and add them to my broader practice. I have already begun to do this somewhat with my writing, but I would like to make my sentence structure more complex, and I’ve realized that I sometimes have issues with word order or discussing time. I do seem to be following my vocabulary goals, and since I intend to keep practicing over the summer, I hope to be close to or on par with my study abroad program’s expectations for the second level of Chinese language-learning.
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