I have for some time been using a new approach for learning and that have been remarkable useful for me so let me share one way of studying. For most of us we need to have context to what we learn. After I got some basic words in my vocabulary I have started to read newspaper articles. I use my own scripts to get suitable articles based on my level but any article will do. For each sentence I add the words that I do not know and also the whole sentence to get the context. E.g. I got this sentence: 在经济全球化和新科技革命背景下 That is roughly translated into: Economic globalization and new technologies in the context of the political revolution. Yes that is a strange sentence but still useful;-). I did not know those two words. 全球(global) and 革命 (political revolution). I add those two words to skritter and for each of them I also add the full sentence (spaced) to get the usage. I finally also add the full sentence to Anki since I use Anki for sentences. This helps me to get both the word and the usage and also to read more of the articles each time. For each iteration I get more and more of the articles without having to look them up. By using skritters scriptlet it is very easy to add the word. Some newspapers are more stiff than others but it is also possible to use e.g. blogs, Chinese forums etc to get a more daily usage type of Chinese. Especially Chinese forums are fun to read since they are very modern in the usage and full of useful structures and words. Newspapers tends to use a lot of words that are very rare or specific to the topic. Forums are more daily life type of usage. I do the same for some books as well. With children at home it is natural to read 喜羊羊:-) They are not perfect for learning sentences but do have lot of useful words and are easy and fun to read. I totally disregard that I often only get one or a few words in each sentence. The important part is that I learn something useful and that I the next time actually can read more.

This is similar to what I’m doing currently. Additionally I’ll check to see if the word also appears in 现代汉语词典 and usually give it up if it doesn’t.

Btw, 革命 can refer to any kind of revolution and not only political revolution. I’d translate that phrase as “under the background of economic globalization and violent changes in new technologies…”

Thanks pts, missed that gémìng could be used for any revolution. You see, learn things every day:-) Try to keep to simple articles but sometimes you need to get some political ones to challenge your self.

Mandarinboy, I would be interested to know what forums you use.

You're definitely right that context helps a lot. I can remember things from ages ago and the context (and sometimes place etc.) in which i learn't it, the only thing is that it might be a bit slow though.

To Do:

1 - Teach kindergarten daily
2 - Improve teaching skills and techniques
3 - Keep ahead of lesson planning
4 - Teach Chinese teachers English *new*
5 - Exercise daily
6 - Find a girlfriend
7 - Skritter daily
8 - Keep up with friends and family
9 - Find a Chinese teacher
10 - Work on my writing
11 - Contextualize my Chinese learning *indef. postpd.*

sigh...

I feel much more comfortable with "夹心" ("filling; fill with stuffing") now that I know that "火腿夹心面包" means "pig in a blanket". ;)

James

Shouldn't that be 热狗夹心面包？
Or do they have a different recipe in China?

What's your source? Survival guide for expats?

服务员！ 来一个热狗！

@podster I got it from nciku, although your version looks truer to the spirit of pigs in a blanket.

try this, although Skritter tends to eat URLs:

http://www.nciku.com/search/all/火腿夹心面包

Edit: Googling turns up mostly hot dogs for 热狗夹心面包 and mostly ham pockets for 火腿夹心面包. Maybe somebody needs to start a pigs in a blanket chain in China.

For those not familiar with this amazing food, take a look here:

http://www.jrcigarblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/pigs-in-a-blanket-big3.jpg

James

jww1066, i have always wanted to ask...is that you in ur profile pic?

Yeah, that photo was when we were in the Presidio in San Francisco with some friends and my wife (who is a professional photographer) asked us all to jump.

Any particular reason you chose a leprechaun photographer for your avatar?

James

James, that pigs in a blanket jpg shows what is probably called 香肠卷。

@pts Thanks!

That's jumping!?

I always thought it was a monster impersonation.

No no, the monster face is just my personality coming out.

火腿 is the equivalent of a hot dog in China, generally, so 火腿夹心面包 would be the closest thing 95% of China could get to a pig in a blanket. 火腿 don't hold a candle to those filthy American treats we call hot dogs, though.

On an optimistic note, while I thought contextualizing my Chinese was never going to happen (aside from the effects of living in China, of course), just last night a bunch of words I had added from a book I tried to read a while ago came up, and I picked it up again after my Skritter session and found that I could actually understand 70% of the first chapter now, rather than 40 or so before I got those words in. 加油！

@Antimacassar. I mainly use http://tieba.baidu.com and some Hangzhou ones. At Baidu 贴吧 you have numerous of areas covered so it is easy to find an group that suits your interest. I currently follow some groups about housing and the stock market in China as well as Chinas relations to other countries.

@mandarinboy,I meant to ask, what did you mean by "I use my own scripts to get suitable articles . . ."?

James, I tried to upload my own pic but it didn't work so just chose one of the Skritter ones that no-one seemed to use.

Thanks Mandarinboy btw!

@podster, A long time i developed a tool that i use in this way. I export my list of words from skritter and use that as input for the tole. I then enter an root URL for any newspaper e.g. http://www.xinhuanet.com/ or similar. The tools is then scanning all the links on that site for text and compare the text against the words I do know. I set a threshold value e.g. 50% to only get articles where I know at least 50% of the words. The program is then machine scanning the texts and try to identify the words I do know. For the remaining words I do not know I get them with an Java popup with the correct translation and pinyin. Not a perfect solution but it works for my purposes. I will try to find the time to actually clean this code up and make it available for other skitters. The code is very, very quick and dirty and not at all optimized or nicely written.

@ Mandarinboy,
It sounds like sheer genius to me. I think I saw someone try something similar on Chinese Pod, except the goal was more to look for lessons that were rich in words that were not yet learned but that the person wanted to learn. I guess in your case the goal is to find suitable reading material that you can read with a minimum of frustration and still learn something. In the other case the goal is to find reading material that will reinforce specific words. In both cases the user would get reinforcement of the input words. Does that sound like a correct description? I encourage you to develop and publish this tool. (Or license it to someone if you don't have the time or desire. Maybe the Skritter team would have interest.) I am not technically inclined, so I don't know if this is a 10 hour project or a 10,000 hour project.

@mandarinboy I agree, that sounds really useful. I'd love to take a look at it if you're interested in sharing. (I'm a programmer, so am comfortable working with things that aren't too highly polished.)

James

@mandarinboy ha, I've been thinking of writing up a quick and dirty tool like that for a few days. Should be pretty quick to do in Perl for instance. Or in Javascript for a browser extension that would tell me my chances of being able to read a given page... So I'm interested too, in your tool and in the sites you crawl for reading material.
So far I have found this sampler of Chinese readings:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dporter/sampler/sampler.html

Since there seems to be some interest in this i can put up the code at sourceforge.net. I am doing some heavy traveling now and have the code back in Japan so I can't put it up until beginning of June. I am ashamed to say but the code is written in vb script, yes quick and dirty. I have been thinking to rewrite it in C# but any language will do i guess.

@Mandarinboy the perfect is the enemy of the good. I'm sure whatever you have will be interesting and possibly quite useful.