False starts

I've had a few false starts with my Chinese studies. I think the hardest part is finding the most efficient method to learn. I gave the program supermemo a try, but the user interface is unusable. It's just not worth it. Luckily, I have found another program called Mnemosyne. The user interface is actually usable, and it's free. Right now I am working on the 2000 most common Chinese characters. On the other side of the equation I am working with a tutor. We have been focusing on pronunciation and writing. She is a very patient teacher and is thrilled about my enthusiasm and dedication to learning Chinese. My teacher will not be in Zhangzhou during the summer, but she promised she would help me find a tutor for the summer.

I am not interested in learning survival Chinese. I am aiming for near native fluency. This requires a long term commitment but I think in the end, the effort will pay off. I have been scouring the internet on the best methods to learn languages. One of the best websites I found was All Japanese All The Time. The author claims to have attained near native fluency in Japanese in 18 months. While this claim must be taken with a grain of salt, I can't help but hope this is possible. He suggests trying to learn entire sentences instead of single words. If you can memorize and understand 10,000 sentences in the target language, then your brain will be able to make connections it otherwise would not if you just memorized individual words. I think it makes sense. Just because you know 1000 words doesn't mean you can put them together in the correct order. You could study grammar, but then you have to think about the grammar rules while you are trying to put together your sentence. Too see how ineffective this is, go to South Korea.

The author of the website strongly advocates using the spaced repetition system for memorizing. This method is used in the supermemo and Mnemosyne programs. While supermemo is a terrible program and costs money, I still think the idea behind the program is sound.

My current plan is to continue meeting my tutor twice a week. Once I have learned 1,000 characters I am going to switch to memorizing entire sentences...10,000 of them. Ambitious? You bet your ass.