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1Q 2025

Flickserve

Entry posted by Flickserve in 1Q 2025

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Back after a long hiatus.

 

Didn’t do anything most of 2024. I lost the rhythm of learning and totally dropped it concentrating on other projects.

 

 I did travel to Chengdu again in August and needed to socialise a bit. Predictably, my mandarin really had gone down. There were quite a few Cantonese speakers at the event so I was able to fall back on that. However, more mandarin ability would have been great to mingle with the solely Mandarin speakers.

 

Roll on to last November and I thought of starting learning again but doing something different. After all, when repeating the same methodology and getting the same results (I.e. lack of progress, frustration and stopping starting ad nauseum), one needs to somehow break out of that cycle.
 

After reading some of the reviews in this forum, I looked at LTL’s program and pricing structure. Past experience taught me that I probably hadn’t had enough exposure to a critical level of mandarin during a week. Reading some of the posts on this forum, I decided to give it a go with LTL. The package equates to doing about four lessons a week. As I have a job that gives very irregular hours, the pricing point makes it attractive that if I suddenly have to cancel at short notice, I don’t feel bad about it. Frequency would give me a better chance of getting a feel and the rhythm of the language.

 

 I just went ahead with a leap of faith and booked the 100hour package. I started on HSK 3 for review and listening and speaking practice. So far I have done about 45 sessions over ten weeks and so far, it’s been very good for me for a number of reasons:
 

a. I have never taken classes with other people prior to this and it helps just having another student around to feed off their motivation. 
 

b. A friend of mine also signed up just after me. We chat together about the classes and telling each other about the plans for booking lessons. Sometimes we end up having lessons together but we don’t deliberately set out to do so. It helps to see someone also proactively booking lessons. 

 

c. Sometimes I am the only one in the lesson. That gives me a chance to free talk but not for too long as there’s a structure to the lesson to complete. I have enough vocabulary past HSK 3 to make a free conversation but need a better idea of correctly formed sentences.

 

d. I am a borderline disorganised mid HSK 3 level. Doing HSK 3 course gives me some reassurance that I do know some mandarin and can work on consolidating that knowledge. Learning 5000 words but not being able to use them more than half of them properly is not my style.

 

e. Because of the frequency of lessons, I started to notice some sentences and vocabulary are repeated across different lessons giving me positive reinforcement. Previously, I didn’t have enough frequency and I don’t get daily mandarin exposure in real life. I am not a great consumer of media in any language.

 

f. I am running out of HSK 3 lessons so potentially there are fewer lessons that I can take. Therefore , I book into HSK3+ lessons and occasionally HSK 4. HSK 3+ keeps adding a layer of consolidation. 
 

g. After doing some of LTL HSK 4 lessons, we I realised in the past I was trying to learn too much in a short space of time, especially without the external language environment. My brain rejects the sensory overload. A few teachers have said I am at HSK4. However, it’s a false impression. 
 

h. The different teachers follow a roughly similar teaching format. I don’t mind having different teachers as they follow the slides and it’s actually exposure to different accents and personalities - all the better if you get exposed to the same sentence in a different lesson but hearing it in a different accent. 
 

 

On to the next 50+ lessons and see where I end up. 

 

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Flickserve

Flickserve 1331

Posted

I have done roughly 16-17 more lessons since my last update making me just ahead of schedule. So far, I am very satisfied with the progress.

 

I can feel it’s starting to get a bit easier picking up new vocabulary. I have a little list of new vocabulary of which I ask my HK colleagues their opinion on how it’s used. Of course, that’s the Cantonese version. I then use the Hellotalk app to ask a Chinese group the words for the mandarin version.

 

Sometimes I use Hellotalk to listen in. There’s one group that does English and Chinese readings. I listened in a couple of times during my drive to work in the morning. The English speakers have to read the Chinese passage and get corrected on their pronunciation. I found that acts as a good way of frequently repeating new vocabulary. I picked up some lesser known words such as 斧头 and 洪水 from a story they were reading. Quite surprised to discover I can recall those words quite clearly. 

 

I really need to go back and do some revision and one to one on the lessons I had before. There are sentence constructions that I want to get more practice on. I know what they mean but don’t think of using them when I speak. Even though I keep saying I want to revise things I know, new stuff keeps interrupting in. 
 

Have a couple of trips planned - to Taipei and Shanghai. It will be fun to see what I can do. 

Flickserve

Flickserve 1331

Posted

It's coming up to just under four months of having LTL classes. I have done nearly 95 classes of the HSK 3/3+ course. The package gives you 100 lessons valid for six months. Averaging five lessons a week means being ahead of schedule. I also got five free classes for introducing a friend.

 

Conclusion?

 

It's been good for me. Really good. Highly satisfied. I don't remember all the vocabulary, my tones are off but fluency is better.

 

One issue is I don't get time to revise and the random order I take lessons means I lose the structure of the plan of the course. After finishing, I want and need to spend some time consolidating and clarifying the information. For example, a teacher gave me 将要 in sentence and I didn't think to ask why not use 将会. Of course, a teacher is not instantly available so I just went and asked a couple of people on Hellotalk their opinions.

 

It's been good to have a variety of teachers working on the same course. You really get to know their teaching styles. One of them really emphasises pronunciation and has reminded me where I go wrong. My first tone doesn't have a high enough pitch, my second tone holds level for a microsecond before going upwards, double fourth tones need stronger emphasis. Her standards are really high and I am actually quite happy about that sort of feedback as it's making more aware of where I can improve in a systematic fashion.

 

I have one notable event from last week to recount. At work, there's a mandarin speaker from Hunan with second language English. She came to HK to work and wanted to learn Cantonese to fit in. Sometimes I try using Mandarin with her but it quickly reverts to us using English or her heavily accented Cantonese. Earlier last week, I had two lessons in succession where the strict tone teacher put me through the wringer and hung me out to dry. Exhausting. Two days later, I tried talking in mandarin to my work colleague during lunchtime - just some casual chat about the chilli she was adding to her lunch (Hunan native 😀 ). Lo and behold, she replied to me in Mandarin! She went on to tell me about how only Hunan natives would know the chilli brand and it had a copyright case over the brand name that went to court and the company eventually lost. The funny thing was, I don't think she even realised she was speaking to me in mandarin. Another cantonese colleague was sitting at the table observing us and later said she also thought our colleague didn't realise the conversation was in Mandarin. That gave me quite a buzz. All along in the past, one problem of Chinese language partners is they revert English very quickly or the ones with little English I can't communicate enough. Summary? If you thought tones were important and have worked on them, you still might not be accurate enough for the native speakers' ear.

 

The course will finish at the end of March. I will consolidate and do the revision and flashcards. I particularly want to go back to words that I know and get the tones better - emphasising on those ones where I don't have a good tone out of habit. There will still be a few lessons leftover and I might do the traditional Chinese lessons.

 

During the consolidation phase, there won't be any lessons. What should be the next move? I think just trying to apply the lesson content to some day to day conversations for consolidation and use those grammar structures and new vocabulary. I am so glad I did the HSK3 course. I didn't really have to preview the slides and I could still cope. I would not be able to get away with not doing a preview on the HSK4 course. Working on tones twice a week (as opposed to grammar and vocab) sounds very appealing. To get that teacher, I would need to purchase some private lessons.

 

I will have a short trip to Shanghai in a couple of weeks - definitely feeling pumped and up to the task. 🙂

 

Bring on 2Q

 

 

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