Neil Barker's ELT & Language Learning Blog

Summer Heat & Humidity

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Neil Barker| 1 Comment

It’s been pretty brutal here in South Korea…always hot and humidity is feels pretty high. To be honest, I’ve fallen out of practice with Chinese Mandarin the past few days. Time to get back to practicing today. I plan to move from simple listening to listening + reading from this week.

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Tagged Chinese Mandarin

Artistic Chinese characters

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Neil Barker| 2 Comments

I’ve been spending about an hour a day for the past 3 weeks listening to Chinese Mandarin. Unfortunately, I haven’t spent anytime reading yet. My plan has been to re-familiarize myself with the tones and some basic vocabulary. I hope to do more reading over the next few weeks.

Sinosplice has an interesting post about artistic Chinese characters that certainly makes reading more interesting. Like this example for the Chinese character for ‘bear’/'熊’ (xiónɡ):

If you look closely and compare the picture to the character, you’ll see the resemblance.

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Posted in Chinese

Tagged Chinese

Monsoon season & language learning

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Neil Barker| 2 Comments

Here in Korea, the monsoon season has started which leaves a lot more time on the weekend to focus on language learning. I’ve still been keeping up with my Chinese Mandarin program. It’s been 99% listening and 1% reading. From Monday, I’m going to add in more reading. Yesterday, I was searching for some simple books in Chinese, but couldn’t find anything interesting. The trouble here is most of the books for learning Chinese are written for the Korean market. Probably better for me though, as I tend to rarely finish language learning books anyways.

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MBA…done!

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Neil Barker| 8 Comments

MBA…done! Well, the last class anyways, still have to wait for grades.

“And we now return to a our regularly scheduled progra — er –blogging.”

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Some Chinese Mandarin listening/reading practice

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Neil Barker| Leave a comment

Input, input, input. I’ve been listening to Chinese Mandarin nearly 2 hours a day when I commute to and from work. I’ve been using a series of greetings & introductions from Lingq to re-familiarize myself with the four tones and basic vocabulary.

It’s been pretty good so far, and I’m amazed at how much I remember from my intensive Chinese Mandarin course back in university (1997~1998). Anyways, I’m still focusing on input only with most of my time spent on listening. Reading will take time, and I’m going to look for some basic Chinese readers this weekend.

As I mentioned before, VOA is still my go-to site because it’s so user-friendly and is free. I’ve tried a few articles in Chinese, but the content is still far above my skill level. Think a 2-year old reading War and Peace.

Just a quick sample of a VOA News article in Chinese with listening (look for the MP3 link on the top right of the article):

中国星期二为它的司法制度辩护。此前，一些国家谴责中国以间谍罪判处美国地质学家薛峰8年徒刑。

OK, just listening to the beginning of the audio, I only understand a few vocabulary words:

中国 – China
的 – possessive article, similar to /’s/ in English
美国 – United States
8年 – 8 years

That’s just listening to the audio twice. Not bad though considering it’s been more than 10 years since I’ve studied the Chinese. Anyways, I intend to keep up the Chinese studies for the next 3 months as my Q3 language learning goal.

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Posted in Chinese, Listening comprehension

Tagged Chinese, Listening comprehension

“How can I improve my listening skills?”

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Neil Barker| Leave a comment

“How can I improve my listening skills?”

I’m asked this question quite often by people who want to improve their English listening skills. I think the simplest and most effective answer is to listen to audio that you can understand. However, let me break my answer down a little bit:

Efficient: listen to English audio you can understand.
Effective: listen to English audio that you can understand that is both interesting and slightly challenging.

So, what are the problems with each? Following the efficient method will get boring pretty quickly and you’ll make slower progress. Progress will come in steps and stages as you plateau quickly and grow bored with the material.

The problem with the effective method is being able to find interesting material that is slightly above your level. I’m at this level now listening to Chinese Mandarin audio. It’s slightly above my level and is challenging which is good, but it’s a little time-consuming trying to find interesting material.

I’m still a big supporter of VOA News, and think it provides a great source of material for English language learners. I’ve tried to use the VOA News Chinese-language site, but it’s far above my level because I’m still at “Hello! How are you? My name is ___.”

Just a few thoughts on listening improvement.

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Posted in Listening comprehension

Tagged Listening comprehension

Quick update

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Neil Barker| 2 Comments

Still working to finish a batch of projects for school, but should be back to regular posting from July 11th.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a lot of listening of basic Chinese Mandarin. For the past 3 days, I’ve been listening to basic lessons I downloaded from LingQ. I already knew about 75% of the vocab, (have to thank my Mandarin teacher at Carleton University for that.)

Once I finish all of these assignments, I’m going to focus on doing 2+ hours a day of listening for the next few weeks and then add in some recorded speaking and flashcards SRS phrases. I know I’ve said I hate using flashcards in the past, but I’m going to use them as a supplement to listening and reading.

Bear with me, regular posting to continue soon!

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July 10th can’t come soon enough

Posted on June 30, 2010 by Neil Barker| Leave a comment

July 10th — last class for my MBA program…well, at least for me anyways. Once I finish this last class, I’ll get back on track with language learning, EFL, and business-related goals. Regular posting to resume shortly.

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