Had a G+ hangout with +Gammon Stark discussing out level one mandarin proficiency. A 30min introduction extended to 1 hour. We exchanged notes and we able to hear each others mandarin and were able to get some constructive criticism in a safe place among like-minds.
- Reinforcing Peers – its hard enough to find internal motivations, its nice to have some external forces that help achieve certain goals. Having like minds reinforce incentives and motives, so it really helps.
- Related Topic Banter – the thing about study groups is that we can talk about related interests that reinforce why we are learning these skills.
- Homoeostasis – no one wants to be too far behind the group, so I had a good look at my deficiencies and I’m pretty motivated to fix them.
- Talking about challenges. Sometimes talking about something and the other person listening and trying sort their meaning is a great learning method.
I forgot to mention why I’m studying mandarin, actually its a weak reason – pure nerd boner. I look at my “practical reasons” like business and expanding cultural horizons but these seem weak and fake. its like I’m telling myself these are great reasons but it sounds like a hard sell. What seems realistic is that I want to run Qin: the Warring States and throw chinese phrases around, the way Lazlo Montgomery would pepper his lecture with phrases.
I understand this is very NEW territory, using G+ hangouts to find study buddies when there is no formal or precedent on how to go about this. There is no expectations or definite commitment, its just that we will try to meet up and talk about our progress.
Pretty much we have a similar curve in learning, Pinyin is becoming confusing to memorize and we’d rather start learning characters than the pinyin. I have problems remembering the tones, but we are much better in identifying it than before. Its interesting to learn of the mental constructs we make that facilitate our learning.
One of the interesting mutually discovered methods is the “air time” of pronunciation. The way all tones except 4th and 5th have a lot of airtime. Sometimes we can “cheat” the tones by giving one tone more airtime than the other.
Another trick is the Second tone is not just in the Tone of a Question but in a Sarcastic Tone. The long upward tone of 2nd tone sometimes sounds like the stress we place on a word when we say it in that mocking voice.
Another trick is the 1st and 3rd tone in a “singing” pitch. To say the first tone in Falsetto and the third tone in a deep low pitch. The sound you would expect if your balls were suddenly grow all of a sudden. Lolz.
It seems there are so many tricks and if one trick works for you thats great, but to have all the tricks accessible helps alot because all the tricks paint a picture of how its supposed to be.
A lot of it is pronunciation tricks, which is funny because it means we need to be more aware of the nuances of english in order to have a way to remember the observation by contrast.
Well we’ll try to make it a every other week thing. Too bad there is no way to draw the characters yet on G+ hangouts.
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