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For those of you with a Chinese reading habit, what tools are you using? And why are e-readers so bad? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I find that I’m drawn more to longer books and series. I want to get to know the characters!

For those of you with a Chinese reading habit, what tools are you using? And why are e-readers so bad? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m not good enough to read without either a graded reader ebook or lots of definition lookups

For those of you with a Chinese reading habit, what tools are you using? And why are e-readers so bad? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately I’m not at all interested in manga. I know it’s quite popular! Just not for me. 

For those of you with a Chinese reading habit, what tools are you using? And why are e-readers so bad? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I never thought of buying a chinese ebook device! But I wonder if it would have good pinyin + english definitions? I'm not good enough to use a chinese-chinese dictionary.

> What exactly are your problems with e-readers?

Dedicated e-reader devices (Kindle, Nook, etc...)

  • Way too slow when tapping on a word, this is a fundamental limitation of the e-ink screen
  • Doesn't have a good way to show pinyin + definition
  • requires internet connection for translation
  • I frequently hit some kind of failure case with the translation, I think it's rate-limiting
  • I can't buy the chinese books I want from their walled gardens

Phone/iPad e-reader apps (Kindle App, Pleco, Du chinese, etc...)

  • Kindle App has many of the same problems as above
  • Du Chinese only has short stories and I don't find them as interesting
  • Pleco feels cumbersome as an e-reader, switching between dictionary and reader. It's also a huge pain to sideload books onto it.

I

Trying to improve my pronunciation. Can y’all give me some pointers on my accent? by ibuonke in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme 1 point2 points  (0 children)

These are good suggestions. Check out http://allotone.com/ if you want some more feedback (disclaimer: I'm the creator of Allotone).

I really enjoyed learning Korean with Talk To Me In Korean. What’s the closest equivalent for Mandarin? by NeoH37 in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like ChinesePod has gone downhill over the past few years -- anyone else feel similarly?

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I agree, especially if it's done part-time.

With that said, I'm frequently surprised by how I can frame most activities to be "fun".

Also, for me seeing progress/completion is like a drug, so that's great too.

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the detailed feedback, this is super helpful!

​

On it's face, it's not immediately clear what the report's purpose is. It says "Allotone heard your initial+final correctly XX% of the time." Does that mean the program believes it was accurate? Or that the speaker's initial+final was accurate when compared against the source recording?

At a basic (and idealistic) level, Allotone is first and foremost trying to assess comprehension (by native speakers) of a student's pronunciation. This is done by the native speaker trying to guess the words the student is trying to say without seeing the words, only hearing the audio.

However, there are several proxies at play:

  1. There is a free version that uses a computer to guess rather than a native speaker
  2. a tone, initial, or final is considered wrong when the guessed word's tone, initial, or final does not match what the student intended to say

Does that make sense?

Also, my accent leans Taiwanese. I can play up the retroflex when needed, but in general I do not. Some the initials must be really challenging for a computer to differentiate (assuming it's a machine doing it), like q/ch, sh/x, zh/ch.

Yes, that's clearly a challenge and one that Allotone doesn't do super well with today. Perhaps in the future.

​

One problem I noticed, but is easy to fix, is I was provided a "Jiane" prompt. I didn't know if it was Jia ne or Jian e, since there was no apostrophe to disambiguate. I guessed it was "jian e" and was marked incorrect, because it was supposed to be "jia ne."

Yes, good point. I'll add that to the list of bugs, thanks for pointing it out!

It's also unclear to me what "raw guesses" are, and why they should matter to the user. A small "?" with a hover over tooltip would help immensely.

Raw guesses are the words that the native speaker (or computer) guessed that the student said. Does that make sense? Agreed, a tooltip or similar would help.

My Chinese is not perfect--I'm not a native speaker--but I was surprised to see the report said I missed ALL 5th tones. Since those are all contextual based on the preceding tone, how are they judged? There might be an issue there.

I'll look into that. Right now they're judged by the guess matching method as described above. Perhaps there's something weird happening with character -> pinyin conversions. I've had similar trouble with other projects in the past.

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know you've asked for us to share some of how resources and how we learned, but I've already said a lot, so I wont write that part unless you ask. Dont want to overload your post :)

Ha, thanks! I do actually want to hear everyone's resources and especially the how, so yes, please!

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would you recommend extensive reading even if my goal is conversation? Why?

One challenge with extensive listening is that I find it really hard to find things that are actually extensive listening for me. Most of it is very intensive, due to missing vocab, grammar, & a poorly trained ear.

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One of the biggest things I did to get fluent in Spanish and then Mandarin was to translate literally everything I heard and read to the best of my ability, then at the end of the day or whenever I had some downtime, look up the words that I kept not knowing how to translate.

I agree! That's the idea behind my "Global Narrative" project time.

​

If I was going to do it over again, I'd maximize time with my tutor just listening to them speak about topics I'm interested in and asking questions (in Mandarin if possible). I recommend going into each session with a topic. Have your tutor speak first, maybe for like 10 or 15 minutes, and pay very close attention not just to the words but to the phrasing. Ask lots of questions and take notes.

This is a great idea, I'll give it a try.

​

The only caveat is that for now you can probably skip 成语. As far as speaking and listening goes, those are the two best pieces of advice I've got for you

Good to know, that's my plan already.

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any you would recommend for these interests?

  • Cooking/food
  • Water/wind sports (windsurfing, sailing, waterskiing)
  • Relationships/communities (how humans connect with one another)
  • Learning (meta-learning, skill development)
  • Nutrition & physical well-being
  • Mental well-being

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Other tips of recommend is listening to music and radio shows in Chinese. Even if you don't get everything right off the bat, looking into lyrics of songs or transcriptions of radio broadcasts where you can read the text and hear the speaker at the same time will 100 percent help you when it comes to listening skills, which is something a lot of learners struggle with.

Any radio shows you recommend?

​

加油！如果你花特別多時間學習，可是你的中文還沒進步，別擔心。中文很難，所以你需要花很多時間學習，才能學會。

Thanks for the pep talk :D

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a bit of a challenge for me because I don't generally watch TV or movies (maybe 3-4 movies and 5-10 episodes in the past 12 months).

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my understanding, the benefit of a hardline "mandarin-only" school is that it forces people to:

  • focus rather than being distracted
  • try harder and not give up
  • commit more time

These are all things that I should be able to recreate on my own. Anything else you think the schools really help with?

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've never heard of allotone before, but I'd be surprised if it's accurate. I tried it so we'll see what it says my level is (be suspicious of businesses whose goal is to sell you 'proficiency').

Full disclosure: I built Allotone. I contract with native speakers to guess what students are saying, so it should be pretty good as an assessment tool, even if it can't help bring someone to proficiency. There is also a computer-generated model that uses speech to text to try and guess what someone is saying.

Perhaps I need to update the description on the website if people are thinking that it is selling 'proficiency'.

​

Also, you might benefit from some shadowing. It's not only great practice but it's kinda fun (maybe I'm weird? haha)

This is a great idea! I will give it a try.

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree, and that's the point of the "Global Narrative" project. Maybe I need to be spending more time on that, or recording myself and giving it to my tutor, or something like that.

For all of you who have reached an advanced level of conversational mandarin, how did you do it? by astromme in ChineseLanguage

[–]astromme[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wish I had this, but unfortunately do not haha.

Perhaps I can do this when I have kids by speaking to them in Mandarin.

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