Yearly Archives: 2010

What makes a good vocabulary list?

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People study foreign languages in many different ways. Because my main goal is reading, my particular method for studying Chinese places a large emphasis in acquiring receptive vocabulary, knowing the pinyin and the definition of words from the written characters. This is done through either flashcard software (I use Stackz) or spaced repetition software (like Anki). If I have an electronic text available, I use home-grown scripts to segment the text into words, and then create a word list of all the unique words. If I only have a printed book or magazine, I pick out the unknown words by hand, although this can be overwhelming with a difficult text. (more…)

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Harry Potter in Chinese

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When the forum question comes up, “What should I read when I’ve passed the beginner stage?” a number of people suggest: “哈利波特!” At one point maybe two years ago, I had peeked at a chapter posted online, just to give it a try. It seemed still to be above my level, even though I had known roughly 5,000 words or so at that time. But recently in a buying mood, I made 《哈利·波特与魔法石》 my first purchase of a Chinese book. Never having been to China, receiving it in the mail and opening the package was a real excitement, as it was my first book entirely in Chinese that wasn’t a textbook. On occasion I have checked out Chinese reading material from the local university library (which has a huge selection), but I read so slowly that I could never make it past the first 2 chapters before it was due a month later. This, on the other hand, was a book I could keep forever, giving me a hope that I could actually finish it, even if it took years. (more…)

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Word Frequencies from Corpus Data

Knowing the frequency of the Chinese words you are studying helpful in a few different ways. If an unknown word is relatively common, then it’s generally more important to learn that word, compared to a less common word. With that knowledge in hand, you can feel less guilty about removing the rare words from your flashcards, and persist in learning the ones that are common yet difficult. If a word has a low frequency in general, but happens to be used a lot in a particular text, that word may be of interest to study. In the early stages of learning, studying the top N (100, 200, 500, etc.) words as flashcards is an effective way to bootstrap one’s word knowledge before diving into authentic texts. But it’s not 100% effective; the long tail of infrequent words will keep you busy learning new vocabulary for years!

So, how can we obtain word frequency data? With Chinese, it’s trickier than it sounds. (more…)

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Recording Streaming Radio with VLC

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Being able to stream internet radio stations from all over the world is a great opportunity for language learners. Living in a country full of native speakers is the ideal environment for listening practice, but not everyone has the chance to travel or to spend significant time in the target country. For the rest of us, listening to live radio online gives us a touch of authentic culture, whether it’s a call-in show, traditional or pop music, or even commercial ads. In addition to streaming radio, podcasts are another way to listen to native speakers. As podcasts are individual files that can be downloaded, they make suitable material for listening practice, with the ability to repeat or slow down sections that are unclear. But podcasts in Chinese are few in number. Being able to record streaming radio would give the learner a wealth of practice material with massive variety. Or it can just record hours of music for your listening pleasure. (more…)

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