Week 20 Chinese Study Review and Thoughts

Total time: 39 hours and 31 minutes

Reading:

Thrawn Trilogy Book 1

Watching:

Still watching the Star Wars the Clone Wars TV series on iQiyi.

Listening:

大人的Small Talk, 故事fm

Started Journey to the West on Audible.

While I enjoy listening to podcasts (like reading) I still find stories are better for language learners, at least until you are at a very high level. There is lots of overlapping vocabulary and if it's a good story you're more compelled to keep listening. While podcasts are definitely compelling, they are only going to run an hour or so while an audiobook like this is 11.5 hours.

Anki and Sentence Mining:

Finished sentence mining from this video and can now watch pretty comfortably. Picked up a lot of vocabulary related to finance and investment. I plan on continuing mining from videos like this and will try to mine from similar topics. This will allow me to review all the new vocabulary and learn more. Several more videos like this and I should  "master" the domain of finance and be able to comfortably consume media about this topic without needing to study it.

Pronunciation:

Glossika

Thoughts:

I am now a big believer in supplementing your native material immersion with comprehensible input. I think at any stage in learning this should be a major part of your language study. I have been using comprehensible input in the form of textbook texts and audio for 2 weeks. Before that I had been using ChinesePOD for comprehensible input for 2 weeks. I think this month has completely transformed my listening ability. Since I already read so much, I haven't noticed a substantial change in my reading, but I'm sure it's helping as well.

My reading time is a little up from last, but I'm still missing the days where I was averaging 3.5 hours a day on reading. I think the amount of time I spend doing Anki and studying HSK material is what's cutting into my reading time. It is very intensive and taxing, but it's also very effective. When I was averaging 3.5 hours a day on reading, I wasn't doing any Anki. It's important to consider all the variables and not beat yourself up for not attaining some goal or target.

HSK:

I have decided to give up of my goal to reach HSK 6 in July and instead I'm planning on testing before the year ends. Since I'm going to be studying intensively for a year in Taiwan, I don't feel as much pressure to get it done. I also want to enjoy this last time with my friends and family before I'm gone for 12+ months.

While I am specifically studying HSK 6 material, i'm not trying to rush or set a due date for finishing the study material. If I feel comfortable in July, I'll do it then. If not, I'll keep studying and wait a couple months.