Started Pimsleur

I finished my tone drilling, after being satisfied that I could produce any of the tones in isolation. It was a little boring, but allowed me to start Pimsleur with a bit of confidence. Because I couldn't find a transcript of Pimsleur in pinyin for a while, I tried to use it in the recommended way, meaning no lists. I proved to myself once again that I have very poor aural memory. In the end, I found these these transcripts, but the first lesson took me 5 tries spread over 4 days to complete. Now I have a very stable method for using Pimsleur. I study the new vocabulary words the day before, usually fixing them in my memory with mnemonics. I normally use the linkword method(note - I use the method shown on that website, I don't buy their material). On the first day of a lesson, I write down at least one sentence for each new word, sometimes more if the grammar is confusing. On the 2nd and 3rd days I review the vocab and sentences twice during the day, and do the lesson. I always reach the 80%+ level by the 3rd day. Sometimes I reach it on the 2nd day, but I force a 3rd day because I'm going for maximum comfort. I continue to review a lessons vocabulary twice per day after the 3rd day. Every day I review the current lesson's vocab, and the previous 2 lessons vocab. When I complete all 30 lessons, I'll dump all the words and sentences into supermemo.

Time to Start!

(Note - much of this language log was written after the fact) Just got back from Japan. I finally have time to start studying Mandarin on the side. My friend is getting married in China in August of 2007, so no time to lose as they say on Monty Python. I'd like to be conversational by then if possible. Or at least be able to get around comfortably without a lot of translation help. Since my main goal is verbal communication, I won't even attempt hanzi right now. What's more, I've been warned not to learn Hanzi until I'm reading Japanese at an advanced fluency level, since that is my goal. Apparently it has caused a lot of confusion for others. So those are my 2 excuses not to mess with hanzi yet. My main thrust is still Japanese, split 4hrs J/1 hr M. I'll start out with some tone drills, and learn how to pronounce all the syllables in isolation. Sinosplice has an awesome explanation of how to produce the sounds, and mandarin chinese phonetics is apparently the only free syllable table with standard pronunciation. Pinyin Practice is great for testing and sharpening my listening skills. The mandarin chinese phonetics site is great for chorusing. I have my media player set on repeat, tag the tone I want, and chorus. Biofeedback enables my voice to match the recording exactly, after only a few repeats. This has to be a good thing, although it's hard on my throat. And the research done in sinosplice is essential. For example, knowing that my tongue needs to be close to touching my lower teeth when pronouncing xue takes much of the guesswork out of matching the recording. I don't want to make xue sound like shue. I plan to spend 30-60 min per day for 2 or 3 weeks on pronunciation. That should be a good enough base to prepare me for Pimsleur.