Flashcards

We discovered an online free flashcard program, Anik, that's taking over my life.  Well, not completely.  But it's quite addictive.  I decided that I was going to start reviewing all of the Chinese characters from my three books.  I downloaded the stack of cards from "Chinese Made Easier" and  I was really excited.  Well, I still am, but I need to "review / learn" 6328 characters and when I make a mistake, the card goes back into the stack and I have to continue reviewing it.  I'm currently studying book three and realizing that it's going to take a long time until I get to my current vocab for my chapter.  I probably only have about 3,000 characters left to "review."

 So I've started a "new deck" of cards.  Ok, I confess, basically every day I seem to start a new deck of cards.  I have my "Chinese sentence deck,"  my "chapter 33" deck, my "other" Chinese sentence deck, and then a few others ones.  It actually takes quite a long time to go through the cards, but it's worth it since it is a great way to not just memorize, but really learn the sentences and characters.  Vocab lists are great, but my grammar's still pretty rough.  So it's nice to have sentences in my decks and then go out and practice them.

My previous flashcard program, yellowbridge, was great, but it focused on the chapter I was studying without reviewing previous ones.  I loved it, but this way, I am constantly looking over previous characters, definitions, measure words (so many Chinese words have measure words and it seems like there's about a billion of them:) )

Last week some time, I was studying late up until I went to bed.  As I climbed into bed, so did the image of the Chinese character for "a white gourd." 

I kept tossing and turning, thinking about the gourd and I woke up various times in the night, still envisioning the way it was written, and even thinking about the tones, etc.  Not really what I would consider a relaxing sleep or break from thinking in Chinese.  So now, before I go to bed, I try to do something besides flashcards like, read, talk with people on Skype, etc.

While I'm still with a tutor, my DH's now onto university study.  There were various reasons for the change: he wanted to focus on language learning instead of splitting his time between preparing, teaching and studying, it's partially a visa decision (we're still waiting on things to go through!), also a desire to be pushed and challenged  with other students, etc.  He's finding it VERY difficult and at times, frustrating.  But he does well under pressure and it's amazing how his vocabulary and comprehension are changing.  It also means, more hours studying, and revising in order to keep up in class.

As for my classes, I decided that this semester that I need to approach them with a different attitude and continually go in the opposite spirit. I think I'm still a very opinionated / difficult student as I "help" my teachers learn how to "help me:"

Some of the thing I've mentioned....

1. more hand-outs
2. please talk quicker
3. no more talking about the weather
4. more practical sentences
5. I'd rather not have to always talk about me...  

I'm grateful for their hard-work, for always being ready to try something new and that slowly, I'm learning more and more.

So that's a bit of our Chinese learning... now onto some flashcards!