Working with a Tutor

Phase 1 is going quite well. 2 days seems to be just right for Pimsleur. Mandarin 3 seems to be the easiest level so far, even though speech is faster. They still don't talk at normal speeds all the time, but there's a higher percentage. 

Phase 2 hit a major snag. I couldn't find a tutor. There were a few candidates, but they either wanted to meet at a distant location, or wanted a lot of money. One guy asked me for $100 per hour. Ta1 feng1 le.  

So on the advice of my Friend Joe, I invested in a headset, and installed Skype. I knew from the beginning that a language partner wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I placed an ad on craigslist for a Skype Mandarin teacher. I got several responses. Amazingly, the cheapest was also the most appealing. The price is $10 per hour. $5 per hour for the offline work I'm having her do - writing up the days vocab list, and recording a sentence for each word. We're using Greg Thomson's excellent article Language Learning in the real world for Non Beginners for a rough syllabus. The goal is to learn 20 to 30 words per day, and get comfortable with speech.  

Phase 3. Yep, this is a new phase. I've decided to take an intensive 1 week Mandarin course in China immediately before meeting up with my friend in Beijing. In order to see more of the country, I want a course that's not in Bejing, preferably an hour or so away by plane. I'm looking into homestays, since this seems to be a better immersion than just staying at a hotel.

Bike wreck changes my focus

I wrecked my bicycle today; head on collision with another cyclist. We were on the bike path, heading towards each other in the same lane, closing in on the center of a big dip in the trail. I was on my right, he was on his left. I yelled at him, thinking he'd make the simple adjustment. It wasn't till we were very close that I realized he was holding his line. So I made a last second maneuver to my left that would have barely cleared him, only to be blocked by his jack-knifing bike. Rank amateur. And me too, for not braking harder earlier. I broke both my shoulder blades. The doctor said he'd never seen that before. I guess I rolled on my back. I also broke a rib, a bone in my hand, and got some really cool handlebar shaped bruises.  

While I was going through the whole emergency room BS, I realized something. It really sucks to be totally isolated sometimes. So I went over the reasons I'm in that predicament. A long time ago I had some goals that seemed important. And I would have met those goals, except when I got close, I set higher goals. I've been doing that for years now, pushing myself to extremes in ways that I won't get into here. The point is that I'm living far from my home and friends to achieve goals that I just don't need to achieve. Time for a change. I'm going to teach ESL oversees, which will allow me to pursue my dreams of studying languages while being immersed.  

So priorities have shifted a little. The crash was a setback to my studies, but not too bad. My immediate goal is still to get good enough at Mandarin to enjoy my friend's wedding in August. What has changed is the amount of time I'll devote to Mandarin after that trip. Things will be a little hectic for a while. So I want to crank it up a notch before the trip, get to a higher level, which will make it easier to recall later.  

Phase 1 of my new plan: I actually did the math, and realized that I won't finish Pimsleur in time doing 1 lesson every 3 days. So I'll reduce it to 2 days. I'll finish around the end of July at that pace. It shouldn't be a big deal, because I'm consistently 80%+ after 2 lessons these days.  

Phase 2 of my new plan: I need to get a tutor to get comfortable speaking the language, and learn a lot of new vocabulary. It will be very painful at first, due to my knowing only 350 words or so, but I have to go through this sometime. Better sooner than later.

Finished Pimsleur Volume 1

I finshed Pimsleur volume 1. Because I use the buy back program, I was a little slow at ordering vol 2. I had about a week off. Actually, it worked out just fine, because it gave me time to feed everything into supermemo. Experience has shown me not to put too much into supermemo at once, so I did about 100 per day. I had about 500 entries (vocabulary + sentences). Now my supermemo reviews are very short, since I already know the material well. Why do them at all? Experience has shown me that I will lose what I don't use. I won't drop supermemo until I reach my goals in Mandarin. It's a superb long term review tool.

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.