Goals for 2012, both the long-term and short-term

Tweet With 2012 well underway I suppose it is time to solidify a few of my goals for the year and make them public. For those of you who don't know, I am currently doing a degree in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University in Taiwan. The program is very demanding on my time, which means I really need to spend my time outside of studying for my degree very wisely.

Many of my personal goals for Chinese this year are associated with teaching Chinese, so here are my teaching goals for the year.

1. Find one more student to teach at least once a week, bring my total teaching hours to 6 hours a week outside of school.
2. Review three grammar points a week from Jianhua Bai's Chinese Grammar Made Easy: 對外漢語語言點教學150例 and be able to comfortably teach all these grammar points to my students.
3. Finish "studying" 今日台灣, writing one complete lesson plan a month that incorporates a minimum of three teaching methods, two large activities, and a comprehensive way to assess student performance (one lesson completed so far). 
4. Publish one academic article (or academic review) in the field of CALL research. My research study and first draft should be completed before September 1st.
5. Start an online Mandarin corner (still a bit fuzzy on how I want to proceed with this goal).

In addition to my goals as a teacher, my overall goal in Chinese is to pass the TOP 流利級 before the end of the year. However I need to have a plan for how to achieve that goal, so here are my goals broken down by the four aspects of language study.

• Writing: This section is realistically broken into two large sections for me, those being: written Chinese (Chinese characters), and improving my Chinese writing as a whole. I'm a massive user of Skritter and this year I would like to break the 5000 individual Character mark. I plan on doing this by spending a minimum of 20 minutes a day on Skritter and a maximum of one hour on any given day. I'm currently at 3000 characters so I think that this goal should be very achievable. As for improving my Chinese writing this section is divided into literary Chinese and everyday Chinese. My literary Chinese goals are taken care of by school, with weekly reports and summaries of readings. As for everyday Chinese I started the year by telling myself that I would spend 15 minutes a day writing a Chinese journal that I post on my other blog, and also on ChinesePod, but after one month I only completed 15 posts. I've realized that writing about what I did that day is not interesting to me (at all) and I need to focus my efforts. Therefore, much like iLearnMandarn my goal instead is to complete one focused journal entry a week, either following things I'm learning in school, articles I'm reading, or telling a story in as much detail as possible. Given the amount of writing I do for school I'm going to limit this goal to one hour a week of solid writing, and then as many hours as it takes to edit and review my writing as necessary. 

• Reading: Again school keeps me quite busy on this front. Using last semester as an indicator, on average, I read around 200 pages of academic writing a week. But I need something more in my life, something that feels a little more real and authentic. My long term goals are to read 20 articles pertaining to Computer Assisted Chinese Language Learning (for personal pleasure and not for homework), I've read one so far this year so only 19 to go. My current short-term goals are as follows:

1. Finish 《安德的遊戲》by March 1st. I'm simply reading for pleasure, so I'm not checking a dictionary, and simply reading for general meaning and gaining understanding through context. As of right now I have 300 pages to go, which means I have to read 10 pages a day... very doable. 
2. Finish 《大小雞婆》by March 1st. I have 55 pages left in this book, but my process in a little different. For this book I read a single chapter a day (around 5 pages) and look up every word that I don't understand (after an initial reading). This vocabulary is then added to a Skritter study deck with the purpose of committing everything to long-term retention. Once I've completed the entire study deck on Skritter I will re-read the book dictionary free at an undetermined time before year's end. 
3. Complete 《讀報學華語（一）》by September 1st. Averaging two lessons a month.

•  Listening: Listening is my strongest skill in Chinese, and my understanding of formal Chinese (in an academic setting) is actually better than my daily listening skills. Therefore, this year is about increasing my input of daily spoken Chinese. I'll be supplementing this process with 5 ChinesePod lessons a week (2 Intermediate, 1 Upper-Intermediate, 1 Advanced and 1 Media). I plan on fully studying the Upper-Intermediate and Advanced lessons, and using the Intermediate and Media lessons simply for listening practices. With all lessons I will be adding them into my Skritter study sessions (but not making them a focus). Whenever I have completed a particular lesson I will use that as a reminder to go back and review the audio once more to test how much I understand. When time permits I also watch the news and watch movies, but being a student this is often the last thing I'm able to do during any given week.

• Speaking: To be honest I don't have any particular goals for increasing my speaking. I feel that the amount of interaction I have on any given day with my friends (most of which are Taiwanese) and my classmates is enough to further develop my Chinese speaking skills. When I am away from my computer, I very rarely speak English and I have no intention of changing that in the near future. 

Those are my goals for now. As an attempt to keep myself on task I'll be updating and checking in once a month.

Enjoy the journey

Tweet Sometimes starting the journey of second language acquisition can be the hardest part. In those first few months of studying Chinese, many find characters and tones incredibly complex. A quick Google search reveals that you need to learn around 4000 individual characters to read (and understand) a newspaper cover to cover. At that point the route to fluency seems almost impossible. Even a basic conversation with someone who has a slightly different accent than you are used to can be frustrating.

Part of this might be that we set our goals too high. A while back a blog popped up with the goal of "being fluent in a year." After a few months of daily posts, and the occasional rant on the impossibility of the goal, the blog was gone. The user gave up. The bar was set to high. While it is important to set long-term goals, I think the short-term goals are what is ultimately going to keep us going.

What if the aforementioned blog had a goal of learning 1000 characters, getting through a textbook, or even finishing a novel?  Those are things that are measurable, and certainly achievable. By reaching short-term goals, we still get that warm and fuzzy feeling of success. We should be proud of learning a new grammar pattern, a new set of characters, or understanding what a waiter said to their boss at our favorite Chinese restaurants, not discouraged that we didn't learn more.

Take pride in the little things, and meeting the short term goals. Those are the things that are going to keep us coming back for more. As cliché as it might be, learning a language really should be about the journey and not the destination.

Self-study with online materials

Tweet It's no surprise that digital technology has revolutionized our access to information. In the area of language acquisition this means that we have more ways to study than ever. Researchers in the field of educational technology (Beatty 2004, Blin 2004, et al.) find technology as a great way for students to find information that fits their own individual learning styles and abilities. Unlike even the best student centered classroom activities, digital technology (for education) creates "student-initiated, self-managed interactive learning by students at their own pace" (Kubler 2011).

Digital technology is the ever "patient" provider of content. No matter how many times we replay a Youtube video, or hit next on a flashcard program, we will always be the first to call it quits at the end of the day. Now, more than ever, we can access information that is relevant to our needs, and (hopefully) increase our language output. While this instant access to information may be a wonderful thing, it is important that we find out ways to effectively use the digital technology (in this case online materials) as a study tool.

So how do we go about self-study with online materials? To begin to answer this question I've adapted some information from Cornelius Kubler's article titled "Promises and Perils of Educational Technology in Foreign Language Curriculum and Materials Development" with a typical ChinesePod lesson (covering dialogue, vocabulary, expansion, and exercise).

Step 1: Get in the zone.
Regardless of what kind of online material or digital technology you are using, it is important to dedicate focus and concentration on the task at hand. As recently mentioned on Lingomi's blog multitasking isn't the way to go about studying (especially listening skills). While the Internet is rampant with Podcasts and mobile learning apps, there is a lot of research out there to suggest that multitasking while trying to study is a serious impairment on our ability to learn. Therefore, even before you are ready to study the latest lesson, get yourself mentally prepared. Turn off Facebook, step away from Twitter, and find a quite place to focus on whatever it is you are trying to learn.

Step 2: Listen to (or read) the new material (more than once).
Listen to the dialogue for a ChinesePod lesson two or three times. Don't be concerned if there are things you don't understand. The goal of this step is to familiarize ourselves to the general context and new linguistic material. Don't look-up new words, or pause the dialogue if you are getting lost. Instead find out what information you can gather from the dialogue.
(For a typical ChinesePod lesson this step should take about 5 minutes).

Step 3: Drill the lesson.
Now it is time to read the dialogue (closely). Check the words that you didn't understand during step two, but be sure to check them in context. Read the sentences over and over, repeating them out loud until until you can repeat them back in a fast manner. The more you practice saying sentences or vocabulary words, the more natural they will come out when you are actually trying to use them in a real situation. Listening (or saying) a word or sentence once simply isn't enough.
(This could take about 20 minutes... even more if you are focusing on how to write the Characters, but you need to take the time if you actually want to learn, and be able to use the materials)

Step 4: Study the notes (or listen to the entire lesson).
Now that the vocabulary and sentence patterns are familiar, it is time to actually listen to the entire ChinesePod lesson. If you have done step two and three, you should find that the words in Chinese are no longer foreign to you, and you will be able to benefit from the English explanation of a particular word or grammar pattern and its usage. Think of this as the lecture portion of a class. You don't get much out of a lecture if you haven't done the homework beforehand.
(For a typical ChinesePod lesson this section will take 15 minutes)

Step 5: Expand on the material.
Now that you have heard the new material multiple times it is time to check out any expansion material that has been provided. In the case of ChinesePod this means looking at the key grammar patterns or vocabulary words from the lesson. Read through each of the expansion sentences (out loud), thinking about the meaning. Try and make your own sentences (which you can post in the discussion section) to see if you real understand the material. Ideally, you should memorize any vocabulary or grammar pattern that you find necessary. As Kubler states: memorization "is a very important step," which "firmly establishes in your brain the sounds and structures of the language for you to drawn on later in your own speech."
(Expansion materials and working on new sentences could take around 15 minutes)

Step 6: Test you mastery.
In the case of ChinesePod this means doing the exercises. Now that you have the vocabulary memorized, you've listened to the dialogue, and you understand the grammar patterns, this should be a breeze, after you have crushed the test, mark the lesson as studied... and really mean it!
(A set of exercise drills should take 5 minutes)

What I am suggesting in this post, is taking the time to turn online materials into your own sort of virtual classroom. If you follow all six steps, you'll have spent an hour fully learning the materials that you set out to study. This might not be something that you can do everyday, and you certainly can't do it on the bus or while you're working, but if you are conscious and active in your learning approach you will ultimately get more out of it. 

Confucius, in The Analects, is quoted as saying "工欲善其事，必先利其器 (Gōng yù shàn qí shì, bì xiān lì qí qì 'If a craftsman wants to do a good job, he must fist sharpen his tools.' It is important to have the right tools and to "sharpen" them, but we also need to know that these tools only help us do a job, we are still the ones who need to go out and do it.

Study More Chinese: A website with a fresh look at daily study drills.

Tweet Recently I found a community project that is focused on providing free (and fun) ways to learn Chinese. The name is simple-- Study More Chinese. The project is filled with videos, blogs, photos and an open forum. Unlike the pay as you go sites on the net, this site depends on user content to grow and develop, if you find something that you think is interesting, then post it up and share with others. I came across the site on Twitter when Brandon, the creator of Study More Chinese posted a video titled: "Best Chinese Girlfriend Ever at the QingDao China Beer Festival" 

The video is filled with some great vocabulary and got me curious enough to join the site. And I have to admit, that guy has one heck of a girlfriend! One of the things I really enjoy about Brandon's project is the "Daily Chinese Sentence". As he states on the group page: 

A new twist on the passive  'daily word' / 'daily sentence'.  Join this group to receive new Chinese words each day by email & then respond by using them in a new sentence.

It certainly is a twist. Rather than having your inbox filled with random vocabulary words that you will passively observe, this site asks the users to actually join the conversation. It is certainly a fresh take on all those Chinese word of the day messages that are floating around cyberspace. As a group member you can see how others make those two vocabulary words their own. 

If any of you feeling like trying your hand at the Daily Chinese Sentences, then swing over to Study More Chinese and become a part of the community. Part of learning a language means being active in your study, and find things that interest you. This site is a great way to take that to the next level, by allowing you to share your interests with others too.  

Finding inspiration.

Tweet As I prepare to take the Test Of Proficiency, Taiwan's national stadardized test for Chinese language proficiency, I am trying to fit a bit more Chinese studying into my day. At times this can seem like such a daughting task. Work, school, family, and everything else seems to get in the way. However it is important to find time (even if it is a little bit of time every day) to keep up with language study. Sometimes we have rely on those around us for inspiration.

My own recent burst of inspiration has come from Kat over at One Year Chinese. If the blog name doesn't give you enough info, perhaps the About section will:

"Let’s see if I can be fluent in Chinese in a year! Define fluent? Speak with a native Chinese speaker for 10 minutes and convince him I’m a native speaker, too! (Or at least cover that whole 10 minutes without speaking English, without consulting any dictionary, and with no awkward silence lasting for more than 30 seconds!)."


It has been fun to track her progress through her blog and twitterfeed.  After reading about her project I have started to hit the books a bit more as well. While I do get a good dose of Chinese in my film class (中國電影課) and my job with the Chinese Language Tearchers Association (中文教師學會) it still feels good to work on something of my own choosing. My study method of choice has been Anki, a SRS flashcard program. I downloaded the TOP Practice Set with around 8,000 Characters. I have put in 21.25 hours so far . Here are my current results:

A big thanks to Kat and other bloggers who have allowed me to find some inspiration to keep going every day and spend a bit of time hitting the books. I am already seeing improvement. I hope it will get me ready for the TOP on Monday. I also finished using the application Shi Zi: A Primer of Chinese Characters last week but I'm holding off on a review until I can speak to the developer. Look for a proper review within the next few days.

App Review: Chinese Word Search Lite

Tweet First up for iLearn Mandarin is an app that I downloaded for my iPhone when it first came out in 2009: Chinese Word Search Lite by iWalkingfish.com.

This app takes Chinese character recognition and really tries to make it fun in the form of a good old fashion word search. The word searches are organized by themes with a lot of good selections. You can choose: random; basic 200; basic 500; conversation; food and drinks; brand names; the Three Kingdoms; Countries etc. I have tried most of the themes and recommend that you stick to basic 200, basic 500 and conversation if you are just starting out. The other themes introduce some rather specific vocabulary that you can always look up in a dictionary at a later date (especially if you are still trying to get down the basics).

What I like most about Chinese Word Search Lite is the ability to control the challenges based on your Chinese ability. This can be done in a variety of ways. First you can select how big the word search is. The larger the world search the more Chinese characters will appear. However, the best way to control the difficulty will come from the prompt settings. Users have the ability to turn Pinyin, Chinese, and English on and off. If you are looking for a real challenge, make the Word Search as large as it will go and then only turn on the English prompt.

 For those language learners who are just starting out, I would recommend keeping all the prompts on. It will allow you to visual the Chinese, Pinyin and English meanings at the same time, without having the other characters distort your comprehension. Once you think you have the image of the character down let the searching begin!

The strength of this app is ultimately how easy it is to use. A single word search only takes a few minutes each time, and with the variety of themes you can spend hours encountering new material. The downside to the Lite version is both the lack of Traditional Chinese characters and the inability to hear a native speaker pronounce the words as you find them. But, based on my research those two things are available in the standard version.

I know that this app will be a standard for me when I am looking to kill some time while studying Chinese. I would recommend it to all levels of Chinese learner. The app is very stable as well, so you don't have to worry about it crashing right as you find those characters. Happy word searching!

Launching iLearn Mandarin

Tweet Hey everyone.

Welcome to iLearn Mandarin! This blog will be a sort of application review for people, like me, who are interested in learning Mandarin Chinese outside of the classroom. I have about 30 applications on my iPhone right now that are geared toward Chinese learners. I would like to provide a space (other than the iTunes store) that gives other users a feel for the various educational apps online. Expect my first real post to go up sometime this weekend.

Updates to follow soon, but I wanted to get things moving. And what better way to motivate myself than by having a deadline. Look for the first official iLearn Mandarin review in the next few days.