Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy (Language Learning Log) Language Learning Forum

Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy
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Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log

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outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 25 of 230 12 April 2013 at 9:01pm \| IP Logged
	Weekly Progress Entry 4 4.12.2013 I am beginning to enter the thick brush of elementary Mandarin grammar. The sentences are starting to go beyond the most basic "subject + verb" pattern and starting to include auxiliary verbs, coverbs, adverbs, and various types of reformulations into questions. I feel like I am handling the output of tones fairly well. However, my confidence is very shaky on whether or not I am mentally distinguishing tones in regards to associating it to vocabulary discernment. At this early stage obviously my vocabulary is very small and thus there are not many minimal pairs at all (except when learning the characters, but that is not as important there, since most are used in multi- syllable words). Thus, I understand the dialogues simply because I recognize the words spoken. I have not encountered a situation yet where there are two words that have the exact same syllables but different tones. It will be interesting to see what my processing is of them. I may look into some sort of online hearing practice help to distinguish tones in words with same syllables or something in that realm. The vocabulary is going OK, no problems there. The grammar is still very straightforward, though today I had my first "doubt" of usage that I had to ask a question for because an actual clarification was not provided in the course (but perhaps was implied by the example). I just needed confirmation from speakers or more advanced learners about the correct answer. I am trying to finish Lesson 2.1 today. It's taken me a couple of days longer than anticipated because it has a lot of new grammar, but especially a ton of practice exercises, almost double that of prior lessons, and clearly more than subsequent lessons in this unit. So it's natural it's taken me a bit longer to master the material. I am getting there as we speak though. I plan to re-do all lessons after I finish Unit 2, and then do the same when finishing Units 3-4, etc. Obviously, going again through the lessons should be far quicker than the first time. My Hanzi is going well. I maybe off by a day in reaching 200 (I had said Monday, I think it will be Tuesday. This count includes traditional characters, so in reality the actual REAL count is lower. But as I have mentioned, I'd rather learn the simplified and traditional (plus how to write them), as they present themselves. Given the extensive review I will do of the spoken series, that affords me time to learn characters this way and not get ahead in the sense that I know more characters than I can really use (this is why I also plan to stop learning how to write new characters, at least for a time, beyond the ones taught in the courses and the ones I learn from a couple of frequency lists... I probably will be using any characters beyond those infrequently that it is just not worth the effort until I am really really advanced in speaking and understanding). I can't start the tutor for about another month at least. A bit of a bummer, but it may be better. That will give a nice change of pace to the learning. As of yet I'm still very "hyped" up about my current routine, meaning it has not become stale yet. This week I tentatively see myself wrapping up Unit 2 by the end of the week or during next weekend. I may start using some sort of deck system for my characters soon. Till the next WPE on 4.19.2013! Edited by outcast on 12 April 2013 at 9:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 26 of 230 13 April 2013 at 7:02pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 5 Unit 2 Lesson 1 Basic Spoken Chinese 4.13.2013 (longer lesson and significantly longer sentences. Since I follow the book which states that mastery of the lesson involves doing the sentence transformation exercises with the book closed, it took a couple more days to internalize and remember the longer sentences, and then spew out the new sentences :) ) Edited by outcast on 13 April 2013 at 7:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 27 of 230 13 April 2013 at 10:56pm \| IP Logged
	Special Entry 2 I just wanted to refine a little my approach by writing it down here for my future reference. I have been reading a couple of other Mandarin logs, including Flarioca's and Irrationale's. I will probably get around to reading some of the others too. I have made no major modifications to my plan, but I wanted to state I agree basically in principle with the approach of these two Mandarin learners. I probably will purchase the Beginner's Chinese reading book Flarioca posted in his log, it seems like a very useful tool, after I have completed the Basic Written Chinese, which does have a good amount of reading exercises. Sadly, it seems the Intermediate Written Chinese will not be out any time soon, so I will not be able to profit from it. His approach of practicing all facets of a language is one I also have long held to be quite important. I agree with him entirely there. I also find myself in strong agreement with Irrationale's multi-course approach and his graduated "bringing in" of new material, with one significant difference, and this difference is only caused by what appears to be just a different way of preferred learning between two individuals. Irrationale commented that he began with Pimsleur, then moved to FSI and NPCR (I must admit I am quite impressed by how QUICKLY Irrationale went through the NPCR series!!). My idea is a little the opposite: start in my case with Basic Spoken Chinese, and halfway through the basic course bring in the Pimsleur. This is because one of my big strengths is figuring out grammar. I always loved learning grammar, deconstruct a language, and learning the why's of how it is put together so. I also have studied quite a bit of grammatical "science" so there is virtually no concept that can be presented to me in any language that would see radically alien (only in producing such output at real speed, which is different from understanding the grammar at an intellectual level!). Irrationale is the opposite: he stated he is not one for "grammar" lessons. By me learning some of the basic grammar, I can then use Pimsleur as a solid reinforcement of these notions. Furthermore, this will free up my focused listening to pay attention to tones, pronunciation, and vocabulary WITHOUT also trying to figure out (or be left wondering), what the grammar is or why the words are in the order they are. From my point of view, where grammar is one of my strengths, there is no reason to fumble unnecessarily fumble through Pimsleur trying to figure the grammar out along with all the rest. Once I hit Unit 5 of Basic Spoken Chinese, I will mix my learning up by bringing Pimsleur. My plan is to then finish both courses at around the same time (the second half of BSC and Pimsleur should take me both 2-3 months from what I have noticed from my rate of speed in going through Basic Spoken Chinese, and others going through Pimsleur). I am debating whether I should even do the more advanced level Pimsleur. Many people here and in other sites have tended to state that the returns diminish significantly past the first couple of levels. I have to think about that. Anyway... On the writing side, my plan is still to learn and know how to write the 1000 most common characters from two frequency lists, plus the characters presented in the courses I am taking. Beyond that, I will not learn how to write characters because as I have said, the 1000 most common should cover 90% or more of whatever I will ever write, so going further right away on writing new ones seems a bit of overkill. I will simply learn to recognize characters beyond that, and probably slow down my rate of acquisition to 4-5 a day. Why? What I will do (and this I had not mentioned before, I have just formulated this idea), is instead of learning more characters after 1000, is use that time originally taken by learning characters individually and shift to learning WORDS, VOCABULARY, and useful PHRASES. If any new character presents itself as I learn this vocabulary, only then will I learn how to write it, as part of a word. But I will not learn to write new individual characters. To me this seems like a much more efficient goal: a. Learn characters on an individual level up to 1000 so I can read and write as fast as I can b. Learn new characters after that in the context of new vocabulary MAINLY. To me, this seems like an approach that is a great compromise and will work, by me learning characters now while I can't really read much or learn a ton of vocabulary and get that out of the way... so then I can use that time to read, read, read, and learn vocabulary until the end of time. That's it for now. :) 1 person has voted this message useful
Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5671 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, English^C2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin	Message 28 of 230 14 April 2013 at 5:32pm \| IP Logged
	I'm also reading your log and it's already very clear to me that I'm going to profit a lot from your experience with "Basic Spoken Chinese", among other stuff. My plans are already been tweeked and major changes are not excluded. On the other hand, at this point, I'm not going to learn traditional characters and I'll try to follow the basic stroke order rules, but I'm not going to worry much about stroke order details for each character. Edited by Flarioca on 14 April 2013 at 5:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 29 of 230 16 April 2013 at 12:17am \| IP Logged
	Special entry 3 Hanzi learned @ 4.15.2013 = 200 Met my deadline!! 101-200 间　間 (S / T) 天月日早星期上下午明年号　號 (S / T) 几　幾 (S / T) 吃了晚饭　飯 (S / T) 哪王林山北京台　臺 (S / T) 何李海广　廣 (S / T) 州东　東 (S / T) 西成路津去很高太川安香港南湖市湾　灣 (S / T) 金省难　難 (S / T) 街忙坐先走认　認 (S / T) 岁　歲 (S / T) 怎屋样　樣 (S / T) 识　識 (S / T) 可现　現 (S / T) 点　點 (S / T) 口木机　機 (S / T) 力白门　門 (S / T) 手百今正杯边　邊 (S / T) 马　馬 (S / T) 夫又云　雲 (S / T) Edited by outcast on 16 April 2013 at 12:36am 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 30 of 230 16 April 2013 at 12:59am \| IP Logged
	It took me 11 days to learn the next 100 to reach 200. That would be a rate of slightly below 10 characters a day, which I would estimate to be average, nothing to crow about, not bad either. Given this first time pattern, I am setting myself a goal of next Friday the 26th for reaching 300 Hanzi. If this rate were to hold, I would reach my goal of the 1000 most used characters in their traditional and simplified forms, plus any other characters the courses I am studying present (approx. 1,600 characters - 200 already in the bag), in around 5 months. Given life happens and the fact I will certainly need to review the characters I already know (which will require more time the more characters I learn), I would guesstimate that I will be reaching the goal somewhere in October. Let's hope! 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 31 of 230 17 April 2013 at 8:16pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 6 Unit 2 Lesson 2 Basic Spoken Chinese 4.17.2013 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 32 of 230 19 April 2013 at 8:12pm \| IP Logged
	Weekly Progress Entry 5 4.19.2013 Beginning my second month of full time Mandarin Chinese. In the last 7-10 days for the fist time I have noticed a noteworthy improvement in my output of tones when reading text. At the beginning, of course I could not read anything, and had to take each "word" piecemeal by the constituent syllable, repeat it a few times, in order to get it right. Then, during my second/third weeks, I could "read" dialogues at slightly faster speed but my tones were a coin toss-up. 50% of the time I would read the syllable with the correct tone, 50% of the time I would be wrong. I had to slow down again significantly and practice the words to pronounce them right. Now however, I can read dialogues and get the tone right 75-80% of the time. That's still leaves tons of improvement of course, but at least I can say I "notice" that practice does help you be less imperfect. :) The grammar is still fairly straightforward, there is nothing where I went "oh no, what is this?"... The increasing number of particles are the one thing that I would tend to focus on in order to understand the different nuances between using one or the other, as well as in positive statements or negation. But that is less a grammatical concept or rule to understand, but more a conceptual/aspect one. "Understanding" them will simply just require lots of input and time. That said, my solid background in studying grammatical aspects and the concept of "time" in languages helps a lot in identifying what it is that "in general" particles like "le" convey in different situations. Characters sre still going strong, I'm up to 225 today... I honestly have little problem remembering what a character means or it's pronunciation, much less than I expected. I expect the latter of those two to become more difficult as the number of characters grow, and thus many syllables "repeat" (already I have three different characters with the pronunciation "you3"). Producing the characters from memory is more of a challenge though I have tested myself on the fist 100 characters last two days and overall I have been pleased. I only got 5-6 wrong and mainly very minor mistakes. Only simplified "zhei4" ("this") got me good for some reason. So to recap, I'm in a full regular routine now, which I expect to continue through unit 5. Then I get the Pimsleur, and hopefully by the also get my tutor going. I am not getting many hours at my job so it's taking me longer to get the money to pay for my first package of classes. I expect to wrap up Unit two this weekend or early next week, and start Unit 3. I am on target to reach 300 characters by Friday, but if I do a little extra work this weekend I could beat the deadline. Till the next WPE on 4.26.2013! 1 person has voted this message useful

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outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 25 of 230 12 April 2013 at 9:01pm \| IP Logged
	Weekly Progress Entry 4 4.12.2013 I am beginning to enter the thick brush of elementary Mandarin grammar. The sentences are starting to go beyond the most basic "subject + verb" pattern and starting to include auxiliary verbs, coverbs, adverbs, and various types of reformulations into questions. I feel like I am handling the output of tones fairly well. However, my confidence is very shaky on whether or not I am mentally distinguishing tones in regards to associating it to vocabulary discernment. At this early stage obviously my vocabulary is very small and thus there are not many minimal pairs at all (except when learning the characters, but that is not as important there, since most are used in multi- syllable words). Thus, I understand the dialogues simply because I recognize the words spoken. I have not encountered a situation yet where there are two words that have the exact same syllables but different tones. It will be interesting to see what my processing is of them. I may look into some sort of online hearing practice help to distinguish tones in words with same syllables or something in that realm. The vocabulary is going OK, no problems there. The grammar is still very straightforward, though today I had my first "doubt" of usage that I had to ask a question for because an actual clarification was not provided in the course (but perhaps was implied by the example). I just needed confirmation from speakers or more advanced learners about the correct answer. I am trying to finish Lesson 2.1 today. It's taken me a couple of days longer than anticipated because it has a lot of new grammar, but especially a ton of practice exercises, almost double that of prior lessons, and clearly more than subsequent lessons in this unit. So it's natural it's taken me a bit longer to master the material. I am getting there as we speak though. I plan to re-do all lessons after I finish Unit 2, and then do the same when finishing Units 3-4, etc. Obviously, going again through the lessons should be far quicker than the first time. My Hanzi is going well. I maybe off by a day in reaching 200 (I had said Monday, I think it will be Tuesday. This count includes traditional characters, so in reality the actual REAL count is lower. But as I have mentioned, I'd rather learn the simplified and traditional (plus how to write them), as they present themselves. Given the extensive review I will do of the spoken series, that affords me time to learn characters this way and not get ahead in the sense that I know more characters than I can really use (this is why I also plan to stop learning how to write new characters, at least for a time, beyond the ones taught in the courses and the ones I learn from a couple of frequency lists... I probably will be using any characters beyond those infrequently that it is just not worth the effort until I am really really advanced in speaking and understanding). I can't start the tutor for about another month at least. A bit of a bummer, but it may be better. That will give a nice change of pace to the learning. As of yet I'm still very "hyped" up about my current routine, meaning it has not become stale yet. This week I tentatively see myself wrapping up Unit 2 by the end of the week or during next weekend. I may start using some sort of deck system for my characters soon. Till the next WPE on 4.19.2013! Edited by outcast on 12 April 2013 at 9:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 26 of 230 13 April 2013 at 7:02pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 5 Unit 2 Lesson 1 Basic Spoken Chinese 4.13.2013 (longer lesson and significantly longer sentences. Since I follow the book which states that mastery of the lesson involves doing the sentence transformation exercises with the book closed, it took a couple more days to internalize and remember the longer sentences, and then spew out the new sentences :) ) Edited by outcast on 13 April 2013 at 7:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 27 of 230 13 April 2013 at 10:56pm \| IP Logged
	Special Entry 2 I just wanted to refine a little my approach by writing it down here for my future reference. I have been reading a couple of other Mandarin logs, including Flarioca's and Irrationale's. I will probably get around to reading some of the others too. I have made no major modifications to my plan, but I wanted to state I agree basically in principle with the approach of these two Mandarin learners. I probably will purchase the Beginner's Chinese reading book Flarioca posted in his log, it seems like a very useful tool, after I have completed the Basic Written Chinese, which does have a good amount of reading exercises. Sadly, it seems the Intermediate Written Chinese will not be out any time soon, so I will not be able to profit from it. His approach of practicing all facets of a language is one I also have long held to be quite important. I agree with him entirely there. I also find myself in strong agreement with Irrationale's multi-course approach and his graduated "bringing in" of new material, with one significant difference, and this difference is only caused by what appears to be just a different way of preferred learning between two individuals. Irrationale commented that he began with Pimsleur, then moved to FSI and NPCR (I must admit I am quite impressed by how QUICKLY Irrationale went through the NPCR series!!). My idea is a little the opposite: start in my case with Basic Spoken Chinese, and halfway through the basic course bring in the Pimsleur. This is because one of my big strengths is figuring out grammar. I always loved learning grammar, deconstruct a language, and learning the why's of how it is put together so. I also have studied quite a bit of grammatical "science" so there is virtually no concept that can be presented to me in any language that would see radically alien (only in producing such output at real speed, which is different from understanding the grammar at an intellectual level!). Irrationale is the opposite: he stated he is not one for "grammar" lessons. By me learning some of the basic grammar, I can then use Pimsleur as a solid reinforcement of these notions. Furthermore, this will free up my focused listening to pay attention to tones, pronunciation, and vocabulary WITHOUT also trying to figure out (or be left wondering), what the grammar is or why the words are in the order they are. From my point of view, where grammar is one of my strengths, there is no reason to fumble unnecessarily fumble through Pimsleur trying to figure the grammar out along with all the rest. Once I hit Unit 5 of Basic Spoken Chinese, I will mix my learning up by bringing Pimsleur. My plan is to then finish both courses at around the same time (the second half of BSC and Pimsleur should take me both 2-3 months from what I have noticed from my rate of speed in going through Basic Spoken Chinese, and others going through Pimsleur). I am debating whether I should even do the more advanced level Pimsleur. Many people here and in other sites have tended to state that the returns diminish significantly past the first couple of levels. I have to think about that. Anyway... On the writing side, my plan is still to learn and know how to write the 1000 most common characters from two frequency lists, plus the characters presented in the courses I am taking. Beyond that, I will not learn how to write characters because as I have said, the 1000 most common should cover 90% or more of whatever I will ever write, so going further right away on writing new ones seems a bit of overkill. I will simply learn to recognize characters beyond that, and probably slow down my rate of acquisition to 4-5 a day. Why? What I will do (and this I had not mentioned before, I have just formulated this idea), is instead of learning more characters after 1000, is use that time originally taken by learning characters individually and shift to learning WORDS, VOCABULARY, and useful PHRASES. If any new character presents itself as I learn this vocabulary, only then will I learn how to write it, as part of a word. But I will not learn to write new individual characters. To me this seems like a much more efficient goal: a. Learn characters on an individual level up to 1000 so I can read and write as fast as I can b. Learn new characters after that in the context of new vocabulary MAINLY. To me, this seems like an approach that is a great compromise and will work, by me learning characters now while I can't really read much or learn a ton of vocabulary and get that out of the way... so then I can use that time to read, read, read, and learn vocabulary until the end of time. That's it for now. :) 1 person has voted this message useful
Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5671 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, English^C2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin	Message 28 of 230 14 April 2013 at 5:32pm \| IP Logged
	I'm also reading your log and it's already very clear to me that I'm going to profit a lot from your experience with "Basic Spoken Chinese", among other stuff. My plans are already been tweeked and major changes are not excluded. On the other hand, at this point, I'm not going to learn traditional characters and I'll try to follow the basic stroke order rules, but I'm not going to worry much about stroke order details for each character. Edited by Flarioca on 14 April 2013 at 5:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 29 of 230 16 April 2013 at 12:17am \| IP Logged
	Special entry 3 Hanzi learned @ 4.15.2013 = 200 Met my deadline!! 101-200 间　間 (S / T) 天月日早星期上下午明年号　號 (S / T) 几　幾 (S / T) 吃了晚饭　飯 (S / T) 哪王林山北京台　臺 (S / T) 何李海广　廣 (S / T) 州东　東 (S / T) 西成路津去很高太川安香港南湖市湾　灣 (S / T) 金省难　難 (S / T) 街忙坐先走认　認 (S / T) 岁　歲 (S / T) 怎屋样　樣 (S / T) 识　識 (S / T) 可现　現 (S / T) 点　點 (S / T) 口木机　機 (S / T) 力白门　門 (S / T) 手百今正杯边　邊 (S / T) 马　馬 (S / T) 夫又云　雲 (S / T) Edited by outcast on 16 April 2013 at 12:36am 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 30 of 230 16 April 2013 at 12:59am \| IP Logged
	It took me 11 days to learn the next 100 to reach 200. That would be a rate of slightly below 10 characters a day, which I would estimate to be average, nothing to crow about, not bad either. Given this first time pattern, I am setting myself a goal of next Friday the 26th for reaching 300 Hanzi. If this rate were to hold, I would reach my goal of the 1000 most used characters in their traditional and simplified forms, plus any other characters the courses I am studying present (approx. 1,600 characters - 200 already in the bag), in around 5 months. Given life happens and the fact I will certainly need to review the characters I already know (which will require more time the more characters I learn), I would guesstimate that I will be reaching the goal somewhere in October. Let's hope! 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 31 of 230 17 April 2013 at 8:16pm \| IP Logged
	Unit Completion Entry 6 Unit 2 Lesson 2 Basic Spoken Chinese 4.17.2013 1 person has voted this message useful
outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4738 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish, English, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean	Message 32 of 230 19 April 2013 at 8:12pm \| IP Logged
	Weekly Progress Entry 5 4.19.2013 Beginning my second month of full time Mandarin Chinese. In the last 7-10 days for the fist time I have noticed a noteworthy improvement in my output of tones when reading text. At the beginning, of course I could not read anything, and had to take each "word" piecemeal by the constituent syllable, repeat it a few times, in order to get it right. Then, during my second/third weeks, I could "read" dialogues at slightly faster speed but my tones were a coin toss-up. 50% of the time I would read the syllable with the correct tone, 50% of the time I would be wrong. I had to slow down again significantly and practice the words to pronounce them right. Now however, I can read dialogues and get the tone right 75-80% of the time. That's still leaves tons of improvement of course, but at least I can say I "notice" that practice does help you be less imperfect. :) The grammar is still fairly straightforward, there is nothing where I went "oh no, what is this?"... The increasing number of particles are the one thing that I would tend to focus on in order to understand the different nuances between using one or the other, as well as in positive statements or negation. But that is less a grammatical concept or rule to understand, but more a conceptual/aspect one. "Understanding" them will simply just require lots of input and time. That said, my solid background in studying grammatical aspects and the concept of "time" in languages helps a lot in identifying what it is that "in general" particles like "le" convey in different situations. Characters sre still going strong, I'm up to 225 today... I honestly have little problem remembering what a character means or it's pronunciation, much less than I expected. I expect the latter of those two to become more difficult as the number of characters grow, and thus many syllables "repeat" (already I have three different characters with the pronunciation "you3"). Producing the characters from memory is more of a challenge though I have tested myself on the fist 100 characters last two days and overall I have been pleased. I only got 5-6 wrong and mainly very minor mistakes. Only simplified "zhei4" ("this") got me good for some reason. So to recap, I'm in a full regular routine now, which I expect to continue through unit 5. Then I get the Pimsleur, and hopefully by the also get my tutor going. I am not getting many hours at my job so it's taking me longer to get the money to pay for my first package of classes. I expect to wrap up Unit two this weekend or early next week, and start Unit 3. I am on target to reach 300 characters by Friday, but if I do a little extra work this weekend I could beat the deadline. Till the next WPE on 4.26.2013! 1 person has voted this message useful