Post class review

I’m not sure what other people do after their class to review, but I’ve found this to be a be useful part of my post lesson routine: I simply put the keyword of the lesson, in Chinese, into Youtube/Yoku/BiliBili and watch a video or two related to the topic. For example, yesterdays lesson 奖学金 (4+). I watched a video of a Taiwan girl telling how she got a scholarship for a university in Singapore. It’s obviously native speaker stuff, and I can’t follow it all, but I immediately hear the word in context over and over again, and lots of words that were also in the lesson inevitably turn up as well.

4 Likes

Smart idea this. Will try it for my next classes.

How is the 30 day challenge going by the way? Feeling improvements?

I did the last one yesterday and was glad to get it done! It was kind of a pain to do every day and had to do several takes because the first few sound terrible.

That said, it was a useful exercise. It forced me to listen to my own voice recorded 30 days in a row. I got some constructive criticism and corrections from native speakers on WeChat. I had to review vocabulary and grammar to answer some of the questions. As far as improvements, it’s like watching a cat grow, hard to notice day to day.

1 Like

@Feng2.Zhe2-HSK_4_plus you could try Language Player (from the same authors that created Chinese Zero to Hero). The videos are curated, you can hear vocab in context spoken by different people/accents, and you can always follow subtitles to understand the meaning.

https://languageplayer.io/en/zh/phrase/search/奖学金

To review classes, I always keep notes and handouts in Evernote for every lesson and also add new words to Skritter so that they are automatically added to my daily reviews.

Thanks @Feng2.Zhe2-HSK_4_plus for sharing your study tips here. It’s always great to learn about new ways to improve language learning.
@Ben-Mandarin-HSK_5 Do you have any tips for organizing your notes or optimizing your Skritter reviews?

When optimizing Skritter or Hack Chinese reviews, consistency is number one. If you skip a day, you must work twice as hard the next day, so it’s easier to just clear your reviews daily.

The other is to learn each character or phrase well (and in context) before you add it to your review. When you close your eyes, you should be able to paint each stroke in your head, understand every part of the character, and be able to use it in a sentence.

Otherwise, you’ll be just piling leeches (mentally draining items that you have trouble recalling) into your ever-growing queue.

3 Likes

This advice is super helpful :heart_eyes:

1 Like

Well said that man. All about consistency, especially with SRS.

1 Like