Me Studying Chinese

Having decided a little while ago to concentrate my foreign language study on learning Chinese, I have begun to set aside time in the day to accomplish this. I am in the process of writing out the characters I am learning that will make my total at about 3,500 (from 1,700). This should enable me to more effectively follow the text in Chinese newspapers and give me a more fighting chance at understanding spoken Chinese. I did have a bit of a setback on the Internet: I can't seem to get the VOA Mandarin Chinese webcasts, which I had been planning to download on to my MP3 to listen to at work . However, as I reported in yesterday's article, I did find some podcasts from the BBC and Australia in Chinese that I was able to download. Also, I have a Chinese reader that I study from time to time. But I find myself disappointed for not having spent enough time studying Chinese.

So, in summation my strategy with Chinese for now is to learn the new characters, find some way to download webcasts onto my MP3, listen for long stretches to those webcasts, read Chinese text off the Internet, and continue to study my graded Chinese readers. I don't have someone with whom I am have regular contact to practice speaking Chinese with. Should that change, I'll have another dimension added to my study.