Study HSK 1 With Me 1 by cuardai

How to start learning a language

           Learning a language (or 3) is very tough. When you first start out you are very motivated and feel like you can put in a thousand hours a day if you can. Soon however, you begin to get less and less motivated and it is at that time that people start to get dejected and give up. This is especially true when you are studying on your own and not in a class setting or if you don't have someone to practice with. So what can you do to stop yourself from getting to this point in your studies? I've done a bit of research and watched a lot of YouTube videos so you don't have too. 😁

*Set Goals:

1. Think about WHY you want to study this language. Write out your reasons and then summarize them onto one page and put it somewhere you can look at it when you need motivation or a reminder of why you are doing this. 
2. Have one overall goal that you want to work towards. This could be anything from taking a test like TOPIK or the HSK to writing a letter in your target language to someone you admire like an idol, actor, writer, political or even a friend.
3. Start breaking that main goal into smaller goals, and put down realistic time limits on these smaller goals. To achieve this you need to do a little research into your target language and take into account how much you can realistically spend working on your studies each day. For example, when I first started learning Korean I found out that you can learn their alphabet in two hours so I set myself the goal of learning it in one week. I could only spend half an hour per day studying uninterrupted so I paced myself: 4 days to learn the alphabet and 3 days for review/mastery. And if I for some reason couldn't study on one of the four days I had time to make it up. 

These are my goals for learning Korean.

*Be gentle with yourself: 

          It is important to realize that there will be times when life gets in the way or you'll be just not motivated enough to do anything. During those times be gentle with yourself. Realize that what was not finished this month can be finished next month and if motivation was your problem look back at your goals and why you wanted to do this in the first place. 

*Don't compare yourself to others: 

          One of the biggest mistakes we make is to compare our progress to others. Some people learn faster while others take their time neither one if better than the other. You could be better at grammar and vocabulary while they are better at speaking or vice versa. If you catch yourself comparing yourself with others just tell yourself to stop. It does no one any favors. 

I hope this helps you a little with your language learning journey.

CHINESE: HSK New Requirements

    One of my goals is to go for the HSK, which is an official, standard Chinese proficiency test. I was going to take HSK 2 this winter but then I learned that there will be a new version of the HSK going into effect in July 2021.

     The new version has a more specific classification system and it is considered more rigorous than the previous one. There are now 9 levels instead of the 6 levels in the previous system. The Elementary level (Bands 1-3), the Intermediate Level (Bands 4-6) and the Advanced Level (Bands 7-9). When all is said and done by the end of Band 9 the learner will have learned 11,092 vocabulary words, 572 grammar concepts and how to write Chinese Characters not just recognize them.

    The testing for bands 1-6 will be adjusted over the next 3-5 years but the test for bands 7-9 will be introduced in March 2022. The materials for bands 7-9 will be introduced in December 2021. For more information on the new HSK Testing System please see this website: The New HSK (2021): An Overview and What’s Changed. 

    So what does this mean for me? I don't know yet. I'm gong to talk to my Chinese teacher when I have my next class so that we can develop a plan that is more suited to what is required because I not only want to take the tests but I also want to be sure that when I take the next level tests I am prepared for the changes.

The Following is a table I have assembled from information I could find on the Internet.

 

IRISH: Rebooting! Duolingo Review

     Around 2012/2013 I started to study Irish.  I started out with an online yahoo group then I continued on my own using books and online resources. After a while I kind of stopped studying it actively. From time to time though I go back and see how much I remember. Well, this month I decided to go back and actively study it again. I still have not decided which of my resources I am going to start studying with but at least one of them will be Progress in Irish, otherwise known as the little green book. However, I wanted to see how much I actually remember from Irish so I added it to my Duolingo line up. So far I have not met a word or verb that I didn't know. 

This brings me to the second half of this post and that is a review of Duolingo as a language learning app.

    I use it everyday but I don't use it as a source for serious grammar or structure study but rather as a way to learn vocabulary words. Duolingo has weird sentences that make no sense at all even though they are grammatically correct. For example, in Korean there are sentences like "A man is not food.",  "Animals are not things.", and "A man eats that in the bathroom." So far I have not encountered anything like that in Chinese but I remember from my previous tries with Irish that the further you go into the levels there will come a time when you will find strange sentences too.

    Another thing that Duolingo helps with is that if you don't have time to study for some reason at least you will be able to get five to ten minutes of vocabulary study each day. 

    So basically use Duolingo for vocabulary study and so that you at least do SOME sort of language study each day but don't think of it as the only source for studying any language you want to study.

 

CHINESE: Free resource online

HSK 1 Resource

YouTube: Free

A Course from Peking University

    One of the best ways for me to supplement my Chinese studies while mainly using my HSK books is to look online for resources that help me explain the concepts in the book and add some interesting facts to it. This is how I ended up finding this channel on YouTube. They have HSK 1-6 level courses. I am currently going through the HSK 1 videos.

    In the HSK 1 playlist there are 6 weeks worth of lessons and each week has 5 lessons. I just finished going through the first week of lessons. Each lesson is a mix of vocabulary words, dialogue, grammar and exercises to cement what you have learned in the lessons. 

    I don't take detailed notes, however I do note down things that I feel are important or that catch my interest. Here is an example these are my notes from all five lessons of week 1:

HSK 1: Week 1 all lessons.

    Two facts that I didn't know before I took these lessons and are not mentioned in the HSK books at least as far as I've gone so far are as follows: 

(1) When you say a phone number you don't use (yī) but instead you use (yāo). The reason is that (yī and qī) can sound the same when spoken and to keep things from getting confusing they use (yāo). For those who don't know (yī and yāo) are the number 1 and (qī) is the number 7. 

(2) When you are making plurals using (men), you can only use this method with people, never objects or animals. Examples are 我们 (We)， 他们 (They for mix of men and women or just men)， 她们 (They for women), 同学们 (Students) and so on. 

 This is my tip for a great resource today.

再见！