Q1 Language Learning Recap

A good start that could have been better and will hopefully do so in Q2.

Picture of Paris from Montmartre taken on one of my last runs in the area.

One quarter’s already passed. Times truly flies.

In my first post this year, I gave myself vague goals focused around Chinese.

To be more precise, I decided to focus on specific aspects of Mandarin each quarter. The first one was easily chosen because I wanted to surprise my girlfriend by speaking to her in her native tongue for her birthday.

Little did I know that holding off on speaking to her in Chinese would be hard. Even though she had never pushed me to speak to her in Chinese since we had started dating, she began asking me to do so around mid-January (a month and a half before her birthday) and wondered why I refused.

She was delighted when I finally told her on her birthday that I would now speak to her in Chinese whenever she wanted...and finally let us hear the sound of me saying 餓, a sound she said was hard to make and that she laughed at when she first heard it (not in a mean way but out of surprise).

Unfortunately, however, we didn’t have many conversations in Chinese since then. Barely even, apart from text messages, so my pronunciation hasn’t improved that much more in March.

This being said, I was rather consistent with my shadowing during the first quarter. I practiced shadowing articles from TheChairmanBao’s levels 4 and 5 an average of 2 times per week (some weeks every day, some others not at all).

It helped getting more at ease with chaining sounds in my mouth but not in building sentences on the spot in a “fluent” way so I still find myself struggling with words when I don’t have to repeat a sentence I have in front of my eye or one I just listened to. This is something I plan on fixing by having more conversation from now on, either with my girlfriend or with ChatGPT (Gemini doesn’t get my Chinese accent at all but ChatGPT does...god know what that implies.)

While the beginning of the quarter started well, I did have quite a few slumps as work got extremely busy for a month while I covered for a colleague on a burnout leave. Getting back in the groove was difficult so I often turned to “easier” tasks such as:

• Listening to Radio.garden in Mandarin,

• Watching a movie in Mandarin or another language but with Mandarin subtitles,

• Doing some Anki,

• Listening to AI Podcasts with NotebookLM in Mandarin

Around mid-March, I began reading a bit more in my target languages too. Not Chinese, but I instead picked up a novel from my favorite Japanese author Higashino Keigo only to discover 30 pages in this book was connected to three other novels that would make this one more impactful. I dropped it and turned to another one late last week.

I also turned back to the novel I had mentioned at the beginning of the year: 만일 내가 인생을 다시 산다면 in Korean. I’m not reading it much but I’d say about 3-4 pages every few days, sometimes a bit more. Every time I open that book I’m reminded of how beautiful I find these characters, a love I will talk a bit more in another piece soon.

I’ve also watched one drama in Japanese (Silent Night) and am in the middle of another one in Korean (“Can This Love Be Translated?”). I’m still looking for one in Chinese that I’d be able to drive into but no luck so far.

Q2 plans

My focus for Q2 is officially Grammar but that’s actually only part of it. The goal of this quarter is to improve overall with a specific aim: taking the HSK5.

I’m not sure yet whether I’ll take it this quarter (I’ll decide in the next 2-3 weeks) but I’ll at least work towards it.

Earlier this week I took a mock test of the listening section. I felt completely lost yet somehow got 29 out 45, with most of my errors on the few questions I felt I knew the answer. I plan on doing mock tests of the two other sections to see how much work I’d have to do.

During this quarter, I want to use the HSK5 grammar patterns to push myself to create more varied sentences and get used to more patterns in my listening and reading sessions too. I’ll rely mostly on a few textbooks I’ve found (some I have since 2014!) but will also ask Suno AI to create songs I can listen on repeat with these new patterns so I can really engrain them in my head. I’ll also ask NotebookLM podcasts to include at least two patterns three times in the podcasts I’ll generate for myself (mostly about interior design, color theory, or new topics I fall upon).

On other personal topics, I’ll also be moving to a new place in about a month so any habit I have now or create before then will have to pass the test of that period of change. One thing I am saddened about is that I’ll lose the opportunity to go on runs in the early morning to the Montmartre Basilic because it’ll stop being so close to where I live. I’m sure I’ll find other great places where I’ll live but I doubt I’ll get a better view (and challenge) than the Montmartre area!

Overall, I’m quite psyched about this new quarter though!

For April, I decided to do what Victoria did in March: a bingo board. I’ve already done a few squares (Akinator in Chinese, reading a webtoon in Korean, Do a mock test in Mandarin, listen to radio.garden in Chinese…) and the variety makes it super fun!

I’ll give some more updates on it once the month ends.

In the meantime, enjoy spring and don’t forget the French saying: En Avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil !¹

Cheers for reading,
Mathias

1. The first part of a French saying that means “April showers bring May flowers” but literally translates to “In April don’t remove a thread”