Updates on studying chinese

If you have been following me at all, lately most of my free time outside of work has been dedicated to studying Chinese (and reading web novel translations of course). Here is a progress update.

A little bit about my background:

I'm Chinese-American (born in the US) and my parents immigrated from China. My spoken Chinese is okay and I can understand most kitchen talk that flies around, but most of my time my parents will talk to me in English. My speaking is rather poor since my vocabulary is at the level of an elementary schooler, but apparently I have no accent.

Until the end of middle school, I attended "Chinese school" run by local Chinese immigrant parents every Sunday. So in theory, I learned how to read and write, but at the time I was not invested in studying so I forgot pretty much everything except the basics (e.g. 大，小，一，二，三……).

In college I became interested in Japanese light novels (because of anime) and started translating Chinese translations of Japanese light novels. However, since my reading was poor, I depended a lot on pinyin generators to annotate everything with phonetic pronunciations.

More recently, I've become motivated to try to develop my reading ability so I don't need to use a dictionary or pinyin. As a result, I've stopped translating and prioritized studying.​

My current studying approach:

SKRITTER:

I am using skritter (which is a spaced-repetition flashcard app, except it also quizzes you on how to write words with the correct stroke order) in combination with a wacom tablet to learn how to write characters. I also use it on my phone or my parent's tablets too.

I like skritter because I think of it as a modern adaptation of the old-fashioned "practice writing something 100 times" philosophy that my dad used to advocate when I was younger. In the past, when I was learning a new character (or cram studying for a Chinese school exam), I would copy it on a sheet of paper at least 10 times... up to a 100 times in order to learn it.

I think Skritter is an improvement on this kind of approach because:

• It forces you to learn the correct stroke orders.
• You start to gradually correct your handwriting so it looks more like the example.
• It's a spaced repetition software (SRS)
  • So instead of writing a character 100 times in a row, it's randomly shuffled up.
  • Words that you're good at, it won't show as often.
  • 听写 every day, all day (quizzes where the word is read and you have to write it).

The downsides of skritter:

• Best for learning individual characters and words. Won't help you with grammar.
• The tone quizzes are annoying (particularly the neutral 5th tone). I actually disabled the tones because in my opinion most native speakers don't care about pinyin and the app is biased towards a beijing accent, and I already have confidence in my 口语.
• Hasn't occurred to me personally, but I heard its easy to get swamped with words if you don't do it every day or press pause. You kind of have to be dedicated about the studying.
• Costs around $15 a month.

It's not free, and I'm paying money for it, but oddly enough I feel more motivated to study because I'm spending money... funny how my head works.​

TEXTBOOKS:

I wanted to study along with a textbook because Skritter is no good for grammar, and in order to be able to read Chinese (particularly more formal Chinese), you can't only learn vocabulary and expect to be fluent.

I ended up picking the Boya Chinese series because Skritter has vocabulary lists to go along with the entire Boya series.

Since I'm a cheapskate, I obtained pdfs of the first few textbooks in the series using some questionable methods, and I've been working my way through the lessons and adding them on Skritter as I get to them. The lessons themselves are okay, and the textbooks are geared to college students which I like (the previous lesson I just did was focused on drunk people lol).​

READING:

I bought Mandarin Companion's 秘密花园 (Secret Garden) graded reader, and I'm really glad I did. It's much closer to my level than most things I've been able to find in the past, and the story hasn't been boring like other elementary school nursery-rhyme-type things I've been looking at in the past.

Grader readers are great, and so far I like this series better than some other series I've tried using in the past.
​

MISCELLANEOUS:

Whenever I hit a word that I'm not all the familiar with using (e.g. 疯), the first thing I do is usually youtube it and see what comes up. My reason for doing this is that I kind of want to solidify the usage of an unfamiliar word in my head more on a casual level. Skritter is really good at getting me to remember vocabulary, but its useless if I'm not comfortable using it.

Occasionally, I also try out watching some videos in Chinese. I thought this playlist was pretty amusing.

I also tried watching some Chinese 动画片 (anime) like King's Avatar, but my Chinese isn't good enough for that...
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My current progress:

Vocabulary Lists I'm working on:

• Boya Elementary Starter 1 (Currently on Lesson 22)
• HSK 3

Completed Vocabulary Lists:

• Skritter Chinese 101
• HSK 1
• HSK 2

In the beginning, I knew most of the vocabulary, so it went by really fast. However, more recently there's a lot more words I don't know so my pace is really slowing down. To avoid swamping myself, I've been pausing the lists I've been working on so it doesn't keep continuing to add words while I'm still working on a bite-sized chunk.

As for my current status.... given that I can write something like 650 characters (I can probably recognize maybe 800-1000?), that places me somewhere in between a 1st and 2nd grader in China. XD Supposedly I need 2000-3000 characters to read a newspaper, so I'm maybe a third of the way there?!

I'm confident I can make my way through HSK 3, but once I hit HSK 4 I think things will start getting much more difficult.

That's all for my status update today!​