CrisHanzi study log

[CrisHanzi]

21.08.24
Where I am at:
Sound 56, component: 93, character 89, word: 90
Settings:
Average 60 reviews per day.
Lessons batch set at 5
Lesson limit 20 items per day
Word limit 13
Review limit none
Unlock characters when dependent items are learned
Unlock words when characters are learned

Schedule:
Note: I am used to spending a few hours a day doing languages, the new thing here is integrating two new apps, HHero with high priority and LingQ as supporting tool.

My day starts at 6:00am
By 8:am Main reviews completed. If any issues with any items I review them straight away, or flag them for later review. I try to clear any review issues before I start the lesson batch.
by 9:00am lesson batch is completed.
I address any recalling issues or flag them for later studying.
During the rest of the day I come back a few times to HHero to do short review sessions.

Writing:
I also dedicate some time to writing the characters applying stroke orientation as per other resources, like Pleco and Duo.

Speaking:
I use Duo and LingQ. They are part of my daily routine.
I spend at least 1hr per day with Duo learning korean, Japanese and or practising other languages, including Chinese.
I started using LingQ lately. For reading, speaking and comprehension, in a conversational type of setup, I like their chinese beginners course. I try to get to LingQ at least15m everyday.

Other
Occasionally I use Anki, but I have never been a fan of it, too boring and labour intensive for output.

Media immersion
During any spare time, I hook into YouTube shows with bilingual subs, trying to tune into known spoken and written characters in their native context. Trying to get used to the feel of the chinese language.

Nothing is set in concrete, we do have a life too and things may get on the way, but so far, I have been able to manage them to my satisfaction (including my birthday celebs yesterday, feeling the pinch today though ). It is working OK and I feel that my chinese took a huge leap, without neglating my other focus languages: korean, turkish and japanese.

[kevin]

@CrisHanzi

Occasionally I use Anki, but I have never been a fan of it, too boring and labour intensive for output.

Yeah, I really don’t like Anki at all. I find it extremely confusing and counter-intuitive, despite being a software engineer that is used to dealing with software complexity.

Honestly, one of the biggest roadblocks for me in ever learning another language besides Chinese is the fact that most existing resources, decks, tutorials and so on for something like Japanese are all centered around Anki. If there was something as great as Pleco for Japanese I would be more tempted to fall into the pitfall of learning another language.

I’m curious how LingQ works or how it helps you. I’ve heard of it but never used it myself.

[CrisHanzi]

I tried LingQ for Turkish before, but it was a mess, all over the place, so it did not workfor me then. Take note that it could have been just me, not understanding their software. This time around though, I am pleasantly surprise with chinese. They seem to have plenty of courses to choose from, I am quite happy with the one I am using. Easy vocabulary, conversational setup, good accountability exercises testing your speech, listening and writing. But, it is not a teaching course, it is an immersion option, a more controlled one, which is what is needed at this stage I am in. (as a complementing tool for HHero. Any new characters I encounter in lingQ, I search for them here, prioritizing them, to apply the assimilation process needed to learn them)

[kaysik]

Interesting you’re enjoying LingQ for Mandarin - the internet seems to be mostly negative on it (things like incorrect pinyin, or words not being split correctly). Have you tried DuChinese (or The Chairman’s Bao) at all? I look into LingQ every 6 months and even gone through their mini-free trial lesson like 3 times now and I want to like it but I’m already pretty deep into DuChinese instead for my reading study/practice and I’m never sure if it’s worth it.

[CrisHanzi]

Interesting, thanks for your feedback. I will check DuChinese, but can you practice speaking there too?

[CrisHanzi]

I just had a quick check of the site and I do not see anything about speaking the language, in which case, at least at the level I am now, I am staying with lingQ. Is not like I am using them asa primary source for chinese, whatever unknown words I see in lingQ I will bring them over here to master their reading. and while repeating words loud in LingQ, I also have GTranslate to check me out, so far so good …

[kaysik]

@CrisHanzi

can you practice speaking there too?

Yeah DuChinese is mostly setup around reading. It does have full audio for all it’s stories so you can use it for listening practice as well (and I do!) but not speaking.

[CrisHanzi]

Thanks for feedback For the time being I willI continue with current setup, but I will keep DuChinese in mind for the future.

[CrisHanzi]

I have decided to do weekly updates here, posting my progress, highlights and pitfalls, if any.
That was the original intent, but this is getting too long, so I am posting it two days short of a week.
My Progress: sound 58, c 111, ch 112, w 130 = 411. (up from 328 on the 21 aug)
SRS: N77, A268,J66,E0,M0
I am noticing my first homophones: five and noon, coffee and fly, possess and friend …
I think I might start using them as a pronunciation help, for characters that take a while to stick. Ex: it is easy enough to remember the pronounciation of number five, but for the character ‘noon’ it took a bit longer. In future, I could use the fact that it is a homophone of ‘five’ as an extra aid for remembering.
Ps: I wonder if HH could add a sorting feature by homophones or homographs … Although, good luck trying to manage that. Maybe by allowing users to select a character and HH displays the list of known homophones so far. It would be a handy feature to find suitable characters when needed. (I think this may be part of another discussion topic …
Today I came across new character for ‘friend’, where Yosi is carrying a folding stool underneath his armpit in the bakery basement [you3]. In my notes for this new character I added that Yosi often visits this place, but to possess deodorants. I also ammended the Possess character notes to mention that at some other times, Yosi is in this same place and location to be with a friend.
This use of homophones helped me considerably shorten my quiz time after lessons.
Time will tell, if it helps with long term recalls as well.
So far my daily routine includes time for speaking, writing, phrase build and reading. Very basic, but I am enjoying the process and I feel I am making progress in Chinese.
Added to that is youtube immersion. I am watching a few different series in chinese, with occasional recognition of sounds, characters … trying to get use to native speaking.
Attention span alert: Grrrrrr … I fell into the trap of more than one character word!!! So many times, that it is not a joke anymore!! If I strugle to recall the first character in a word, spending a few extra seconds digging into my memory bank, I get so exicted when I finally solve it, that I rush to move forward forgetting that there are more charaters in that word!!! Did I tell you my grey matter needs work out??? Anyone else has done this?
I am going to keep a tally of the number of times I do that and report here. Hoping this accountability will soon stop this upward trend!! So far today ASA= 5​:face_with_raised_eyebrow:. Although, I am planning to fit a couple more extra study sessions before the end of today, I believe this number will not increase. (or so my optimistic self tells me).

[phil]

@CrisHanzi

wonder if HH could add a sorting feature by homophones or homographs

I can see the value/merit in this. It can be on the item page under another header, like “Similar Pronunciation” I am curious if people commonly mix up ones that have differing tone but same sound and would want to see those too, e.g. again and friend with tones 4 and 3 respectively.

[CrisHanzi]

Today is a very special occasion, so it warrants this extra post :

1st MONTH aniversary with Hanzi Hero and chinese learning!!!

Here are the stats:
July 27: s7,c2,ch1,w0 = 10
Aug 27: s59,c113,ch115,w140 =427

Considering I did not know any chinese beforehand, a 400 item improvement in a month, may not seem a big deal for many, but it is a proud moment for me.

My goal: the bulk of my vocabulary should be at a minimum journeyman level. In other words when looking at a word or character I should have a near instant recall of their meaning and pronunciation, with minimun mnemonics assistance by that stage. I am not interested in learning so many items per month, or reaching any particular hsk level by a certain time. It will happen when it happens. I want to master what I learn, and feel confident that what I learn sticks. I feel like I can achieve that without having to set a time for it.

My current journeyman stage is only housing 20% of my total learnt items, but is moving forward at a comfortable rate. What is important though is that almost instant recall applies to 100% of that 20% portion.

Confidence and trust in the system: 100%
Fun index: very high
Consistency: 100%

PS: The homophone recall system I mentioned before, is working wonders too …

Happy and successful learnings to us all.

[CrisHanzi]

Yes, that would be handy too. Words and characters with same spelling, no taking tone into account …

[CrisHanzi]

September 11 review.
(OK, these are not weekly reviews as I stated in earlier posts, not even monthly or any other fixed term reviews. Let’s make it, spur of the moment reviews, whenever ‘I feel there is a need for sharing info’, type of reviews . So here is today’s review).

Stats:
Sound: 61
Component: 143
Characters: 162
Word: 215
Total 581
Novice: 30
Apprentice: 268
Journeman:283
HSK1: 51%

Consuming: ‘Me Always You’ - YouTube multi sub
( Romantic comedy, I watched the turkish version of it, so I am familiar with the plot, light-hearted, good laughs too)

Supporting tools:
Duolingo: basic practice pronunciation, basic reading, listening

LingQ: basic reading and listening

Digital Notes:
As I consume media, I use screen capture to take snips of images and audio of interest for later review and to expand my comprehension of native language in action (training the ear).
I also use notes to journal in Chinese, but at this stage, I do not do this often enough. Need to dedicate more time to journalling.

Chineglish:
During the course of the day I am making an effort to think chinese as I get expose to known items. This is driven by the thought process: With my current vocab, how will I say this in chinese? It is still early stages, trying to make a habit of it. (Ie: wo3 like mi3fan4 for 'I like cooked rice), not looking a chinese grammar here, I am just substituting English words in a sentence with known chinese words that I can easily recall. I use this process in journaling too. Eventually, as my understanding of chinese improves, I will transition these to the real chinese version.
Why not use Hhero sample sentences? Because this is an spontaneous vocab recall process, testing my retention capacity, it is not meant to be a grammar quiz. Eventually it will transition from chinenglish to truer chinese, but all in due time.
I do apply Hhero sample sentences whenever I can easily recall them too

HHero study process:
Do daily reviews:
Take note of problem areas. Update mnemonics if needed to make things stick.

Do daily lessons:
Study mnemonics for items. What stands out, do I feel it? Is there enough in the story to trigger memory for characters, pronunciation and tones? I try to target these at Lesson time, but it is an ongoing process being updated as needed, during lessons or reviews.

Reviews, reviews and more reviews:
I do these many times during the day, with a variety of interval times, on the hour, or two or more or less. One thing for sure, I do not stop untill they ‘stick’.

I am dedicating most of my spare time to Hhero, allocating an hour or two to the other languages, mainly Japanese, Korean, turkish.

My interest and enjoyment of hhero process is still very high.
Iam very happy with the adaptive pace of learning they offer. During these last few weeks I tapered down the number of lessons, characters and words, to allocate more time to reviewing learnt items. I do not see this process as a race, but as an acquiring process with exponential gains ahead.
I can move these values up and down as needed, depending on my study load and available time.

I am still very happy with my assimilation rate and I am having a lot of fun with it all.

[CrisHanzi]

Tue Oct 1st,2024

I am in a current 10 days progress halt. My current setup includes 0 new items since Sep 22nd (when I reached 62%HSK1), so I am just doing daily reviews. This does not mean I am slacking off HH, not at all. I am dedicating this time lapse, to reinforced items learned and analyse the efficacy of my study methods.
I decided to reinforce Hh with a pictorial type spreadsheet. At the moment is just for characters, in future I may include those words whose meaning scape my logical interpretation of its characters. I am having fun with it, and I am hoping that those colourful characters and action symbols, will carve their way into my memory a lot deeper and quicker than normal. Time will tell.

Everything is pretty much self explanatory, with one colum for protagonists, next to it buildings, then locations (grass is outdoors, sofa and lamp indoors, bathtub for bathroom, basement room and building rooftops are also there somewhere). There is also the meaning column right next to the hanzi … I am enjoying my extra reviews this way … maybe a future version of HH includes something like this?
I am activating new items in my settings today, marking the start of a new month.

Here is an extract of my pictorial interpretation of some of the HH mnemonics, using Google sheets:

[CrisHanzi]

Wow! For a moment there I thought I was not going to reach my HSK1 level before the end of the year!!! but I completed Hsk1 and I am very happy about it. My progress seemed very slow compare to many in this forum, but I am doing this as a hobby and sharing my time with many other languages, including japanese, korean, turkish …
Since I started about 5 or so months ago I managed to stay on top of lessons and reviews every week, but for the last couple of months things started to pile up.
I love the vacation mode option that helped me come out of the review lessons overgrown pile.
For the next month I just want to do review lessons and practice inmession to cement what I have learnt so far. ( I have rushed through the last few characters, so my recalling is not so good for some of them., too many similar components to deal with ).
Anyway, I am still totally enjoying HH and looking forward every single day to spend time here.
Happy festive season and HH success to everyone ! .
Looking forward to meeting you all here again in the new year. Cheers!

[kevin]

Great to see your progress!

I re-read your thread and realized that one of your suggestions earlier in the year:

Ps: I wonder if HH could add a sorting feature by homophones or homographs … Although, good luck trying to manage that. Maybe by allowing users to select a character and HH displays the list of known homophones so far

We later added, though we forgot to mention it here. I think it was buried in one of our announcements, but in case you missed it, you can see all characters that share the same pronunciation on the item page.

Cheers!