Learning Chinese vocabulary as a headless chicken

How to learn new words when you work a full-time job, have 1001 interests, write a newsletter, two blogs and still be a well-managed human being.

My ebook reader has been an invaluable tool in my language learning.

Not gonna lie, when I read

Victoria

’s Study Notepad: Language studies or

Magda

’s Mandarin Weekly, I feel like a total slacker.

I have a vague-ish study plan somewhere in my noggin’, but there’s no way I can get organised enough to do pie charts, or count the number of hours I spend learning Chinese.

For one, Excel makes my head explode and I am already dealing with spreadsheets at work, and don’t really want to do it after work, thank you.

Yet, I totally understand the value of tracking stuff, so I’m glad that Tofu Learn at least has some stats thingy that I can keep track of.

My main learning goal for Chinese is to read as soon as possible, so my language learning activities are geared towards that.

My vocabulary-learning tools

I mentioned in my previous newsletter that I use a frequency list based on Chinese film subtitles.

But while the list is helpful, learning off a list is extremely boring, and for some reason, doesn’t stick very well in my head.

What I found very useful, however, was to use a graded reader.

Graded readers are specially written stories geared towards “graded” levels of readers. They are also written in such a way that characters get repeated often enough that by the end of the book, you’d be able to recognise the letters.

The third tool that has been invaluable for me is my ebook reader, a Chinese brand called Boox that is actually an e-ink tablet that enables me to install Android apps and best of all, comes with a Chinese-to-English dictionary. All I have to do is tap on a character and the character’s hanyu pinyin and English translation will pop up.

And, of course, I have Tofu Learn, my trusty SRS flashcard review app and Pleco, a Chinese-English digital dictionary.

My preferred graded readers

Some readers have hanyu pinyin right on top of the Chinese characters. I don’t use these as I find my eyes just gravitates towards the hanyu pinyin and ignore the characters.

So I prefer to read the Chinese text without any hanyu pinyin next to it.

My favourite graded reader so far is ones by Mandarin Companion. I think they’re written and structured very well, with enough character repetition for the character to really stick in my mind. But if there’s one tiny criticism I’ll offer is that they may need to come up with more interesting stories.

The next one is by Imagin8 Press. I’m currently slowly working through their Learn to Read Chinese, Book 1 but I’m dying to read their graded reader versions of Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods, both classic Chinese stories that I’ve been dying to read in Chinese. (But I’m nowhere near that good yet, sobs.) Compared to Mandarin Companion, you need to know a higher number of characters to start reading their books.

Finally, there’s Mandarin Bean, an excellent website that offers readers graded by HSK level. Each essay comes with hanyu pinyin which you can turn off, and also audio. I sometimes read the text with the audio on. I find Mandarin Bean slightly frustrating because their HSK 1 level essays will sometimes include words or characters from higher HSK levels, which isn’t really helpful if you’re trying to improve your reading gradually. But, I tolerate it because the person who writes the essays comes up with the wittiest stories such as this one!

There’s also Du Chinese, but I prefer not to invest in a subscription app, especially since I have all these graded reader resources already.

My simple learning programme

This is my rough learning schedule for the week:

• Morning, every day - read an essay or a chapter from a graded reader right after I wake up*

• Morning, right after reading the graded reader - record 3 new characters from the graded reader and enter it into Tofu Learn*

• Afternoon or evening, every day - use Tofu Learn’s space repitition system or go through the list of characters I’ve already learned and revising those that I have forgotten. (I usually do this during lunch time.)

• Every weekend - write sentences from the new characters I’ve learned in the week. (I usually dedicate at least two hours on Saturday or Sunday for this.)

• Watch or listen to a heckuva lot of Chinese dramas, vlogs or podcasts - passive learning. (I most probably spend about 10-15 hours a week doing this!)

* I used to scroll mindlessly right after I wake up, usually reading world news, which is hardly the most cheerful thing to do. I’ve replaced this habit with this and it’s far more useful and productive.

So, that’s it. I learn Chinese in the snatches of time. I am probably beefing up my listening skills too much, but sorry, I can not stop watching Chinese dramas even if I tried lol. However, I try to take note of the Chinese subtitles as I watch the drama.

How about you? How do you learn new vocabulary in your chosen language?

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