Learning Chinese – One Year In

 

When I started memorizing my Spanish phrasebook, I picked an arbitrary number of phrases to learn each day – 10.  This seemed achievable to me, with the added benefit of being able to quickly calculate and track my progress.

This seemed to work well for me for the first three months, then I took a month or so off, then learnt 50-100 words per day for two weeks, before spending a week and a half revising my deck without learning any new words.

The problem with learning a lot of words or phrases quickly with Anki is that the number of cards to review also adds up very quickly, and before you know it you have to revise two or three hundred cards per day, with occasional spikes of five hundred cards in one day.  I call this problem The Wrath of Anki, and I’ve posted about it before here and here.

In his book Fast, Easy Way to Learn a Language Bill Handley states that in his opinion it is more effective to learn lots of words quickly and poorly rather a small amount of words slowly but surely.

I thought I’d try the Quickly and Poorly method with Chinese.  So I’d learn 100 new phrases in one session, then revise and revise until I had the number of cards I had to review down to a manageable level, then learn 100 more.

Belated 1st anniversary post

I started this post on 18 June, a year to the day since I started this blog.  The period since then has been incredibly busy for me, so only now am I able to finish it.

In the year 18 June 2014 to 18 June 2015…

• I started this blog.
• I conducted an experiment to see if it is possible to learn a language (Spanish) by memorising a phrasebook. (It is!)
• I sat a Spanish exam.
• I completed 18 units of the FSI Spanish Programmatic Course, and committed them to memory using Anki.
• I started memorising a Chinese phrasebook.
• I listened to all 12 eps of the Serial podcast.
• I stopped adding cards to my Spanish Anki deck in February.  By June, it was only taking me five minutes or so per day to review my flashcards.
• As of today, I’ve almost memorised my entire Chinese phrasebook.  It is taking longer than Spanish – I’ll explain why in another post.

All the best, wherever you may be,

Ziggy

DELE exam results

I’ve tried to adopt a scientific approach to my experiment to see if it’s possible to learn a language by memorising a phrasebook, so I took a standardised test to evaluate my results.

And the results are in!

You don’t have to watch Dynasty

This is the first in a series of posts outlining the most important things I learned about language learning as I successfully memorised a phrasebook.

I’d fallen behind in my studies during my attempt to learn Spanish by memorising a phrasebook and I was about to give up.  Then I had my eureka moment.  I finally realised what I had to do to learn Spanish.

Mission Complete!

I sat the A2 DELE exam on Saturday which was the final stage of my experiment to see if I could learn a language by memorising a phrasebook.  This is the phrasebook I used.

Hard Data

I just realised I have been learning Spanish for exactly five months today.

I started on 18 June, 2014.  You can read my first post here.

One of the things I like about Anki is that it is good at collecting data.

I’ve been learning for 22 weeks (154 days)

I’ve learnt 1628 phrases/words, which works out at 11 phrases/words per day.

I studied 127 days out of 154 (82%)

On average, I studied for 32.1 minutes per day

If I had studied every day, it would have been 26 minutes per day.

I sit my exam on Saturday!

Sounds Fishy

So I’ve been memorising words and phrases and words from my phrasebook.  Some, like Ese vestido te estas muy bien (You look great in that dress) are obviously going to be very useful.

I did it!

I’m happy to say that today I learnt the last of 1500 phrases in my phrasebook.

I can think and speak in Spanish, but I’m still not fluent.  I still have to mentally search for the right word, so I speak quite slowly.

I have ten days until my DELE exam.  There are four tests – listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Can’t talk, must study.

Wish me luck!

¡Lo hice!

Estoy contento decir que hoy he aprendido los ultimos frases en mi libro de mil quinientos frases.

Puedo pensar y hablar en español, pero mi español todavia no es fluente. Necesito ya buscar por las palabras por tanto hablo lentamente.

Hay diez dias hasta mi examen. Voy a revisar y preparar. Hay pruebas de comprension auditiva, comprension de lectura, de interacción y expressión oral, y de interacción y expression escrito.

No puedo hablar todo el dia, debo estudiar.

¡Deséame suerte!

California Dreamin’ – lyrics in Spanish / letras en español

English

I’ve been using Anki to memorise 50 words of Spanish vocabulary per day for the last week or so.  I now feel confident enough to attempt translating some song lyrics.  Here is California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the Papas in Spanish.  If you’re a native English speaker, you probably know the words already.  If you don’t, there’s a link to the song at the bottom of this post.

Español

Español no es mi primer idioma. Si he dado un error, ¿podria me corregir?

Yo he usado Anki memorizar 50 palabras de vocabulario español por dia por la semana que pasada. Aqui esta mi tentativa a traducir algunas letras de canciones. Presento California Dreamin’ por the Mamas and the Papas (Los Mamás y Los Papás).

Hay un enlace a la canción a la abajo de esta entrada.

California Dreamin’ (Los Suenos de California)

Todas las hojas son estan marrónes
Y el cielo es esta gris
He caminado
En uno dia invierna
Yo sería segura y tibio
Si estaba en LA
Los suenos de California
En este dia de invierno.

He entrado en una iglesia
Que he pasado en el camino
He doblado en rodilla  Me arrodillé
Y finjo orar
El predicador gusta el frio
Sabe que voy a quedarme
Los suenos de California
En este dia de invierno

Todas las hojas son marrónes
Y el cielo es gris
He caminado
En uno dia invierna

Si yo no lo diga a ella
Pude salir hoy
Los suenos de California
En este dia de invierno.