I started this on 1/12/16 and officially completed 366 words on 12/23/16. I didn’t plan to finish a week ahead of schedule, but it was nice to have a few days to think and write down my thoughts on this project.
In the grand scheme of life goals, this mini project of mine is of little significance, but there is still a great satisfaction that comes from completing something you set out to do.
This project was purely for personal improvement. No one would ever have to know if I quit and, other than myself, no one would care if I never finished this. What started as a way to learn vocab turned into a challenge to see if I would quit if no one was watching—whether I would be consistent even if the stakes were low.
Regardless how many words I’ve forgotten or how many errors I made (There are many. Chinese Readers: don’t laugh too hard at my cringe-inducing sentences!), the fact remains that I completed my New Year’s resolution and I’m proud of myself!
How this Started
While we’ve lived an ocean apart since 2010, my friend Nicole and I have a tradition of creating new year’s resolutions together and keeping each other accountable for them. On a cold night in December 2015, my friend, Nicole, and I sat in her Hong Kong apartment. As I was using the TRX I lugged over from Seattle, we talked through our goals as Nicole sat down at her computer to type out our goals (which she later designed a poster of and sent to me!). One of my goals was to improve my English and Chinese vocabulary by learning a new word every day.
After three weeks in Hong Kong, around Taiwan, and Tokyo, I started this blog on 1/12/16 at Seatac Airport.
I committed to learning a new word in English and Chinese each day. For English, I just wanted to learn more words. For Chinese, I wanted to prepare myself to take the HSK exam (the Chinese equivalent of the TOEFL). Each day (more or less), I chose a new word in English and a new word (or phrase or topic) in Chinese. Using the new word, I wrote 5 sentences in English and 3 sentences in Chinese.
Side note: While the HSK exam tests simplified Chinese, I chose to write my words and sentences in traditional Chinese. (There are two types of written Chinese: (1) simplified, which is used in mainland China and (2) traditional, which is used in Hong Kong (i.e., where my parents are from) and Taiwan).
Finding Words
English: I got my words from m-w.com or GMAT/SAT/GRE wordlists like http://www.soundkeepers.com/GMAT
It became increasingly difficult to find words I didn’t know, which I suppose is the point 😉
Chinese: I started with HSK study cards, but quickly found them too easy or too basic to use in diverse sentence structures. I moved onto some word lists I found online. Sometimes I just wrote a diary. I ended the year by learning some slang words (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chinese_(Mandarin)/Slang) and Chinese idioms. I tried to note where I got my more trendy terms. Other times, I would choose words from the Facebook posts of my Chinese-writing friends.
My Schedule
For the most part, I stuck a daily vocab schedule. There was a period in April where I was at SXSW and didn’t have the energy to do vocab. I made up for this by doing doubles the following week. Some time in the latter half of the year, I got ahead of schedule and stayed ahead of schedule. My initial plan was to end vocabulary on 12/31/16; however, when I realized I was a week ahead of schedule, I decided to finish posting on 12/31/16 but to learn enough words to complete the full 366 days (it’s a leap year!) on 1/11/17.
It’s obvious which days I had no interest in doing my vocab because my sentences are short and very similar to each other on those days. For Chinese, if I didn’t feel like asking someone to look over my sentences (which was 95% of the time), I would just leave the sentences as is—errors and all.
I learned to recognize ahead of time which days I would be too busy/tired/unmotivated to do vocab and double up ahead of time or afterwards.
What I’ve Learned (and Have Not Learned)
Some Background: Technically, my first language is Cantonese, but I was born and have spent my entire life in the U.S., so English is by far my dominant language now. I learned some Mandarin when I was young and have slowly, but steadily learned more over the years through music, friends, and dramas 😉 I also took a year of Chinese in college (where I learned most of my reading/writing). I 4.0’ed the year. #aznbraggingmoment
No, I do not remember all 366 words in English or Chinese (I tried to not repeat words, but it’s possible I repeated a word or two; I’m ok with this because if I repeated a word, I probably didn’t learn the word the first time around). However, I do know more words than I did before I started 🙂 That’s good enough for me.
A Disorganized Summary of What I’ve Learned:
I learned that this exercise, while sufficient for me to increase my English vocab, was insufficient for learning Chinese. This makes sense as my English was much better than my Chinese from the start.
This project gave me a greater interest in words and language in general.
As you might have guessed, Google Translate is not the most accurate. I’ve learned some of it’s quirks. For example: If you write “ta” twice in a sentence, Google translate will randomly change the second”ta” to be a different version (feminine/masculine/neuter) than the first version. Also, sometimes it would change my words after I typed them in! I tried to catch these types of errors, but I’m guessing there are several sentences with these types of errors in them.
Honestly, the greatest lesson I learned was commitment to myself and how to get over a lack of motivation. I’m sure there are many ways to overcome lack of motivation, but my strategy was to prioritize consistency over all else, including quality. I refused to beat myself up over missed days (because I could easily make up for it) and mistakes (it’s part of the learning process).
What I Still Need to Work On
There will always be room for me to improve my English writing skills, but at this point in my life, I think I’ve done enough for now.
As for Chinese, there are SO MANY areas I need to improve. The more obvious issues include:
- Measurement words (I’ve always struggled with this)
- Chinese punctuation (usually just went by American English punctuation rules. I also used the English period instead of the Chinese one (open dot)…because I think it looks better)
- Better than basic sentence structure
- Writing complete thoughts
What’s Next
After a year long project like this, I thought my interest in studying Chinese would wane. However, I feel even more passionate about becoming a better Chinese listener/speaker/reader/writer than before. I would like to concurrently work on my Cantonese, but not sure how feasible this will be. I’m hoping improving my Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as reading/writing) will be a lifelong endeavor.
I still want to take all six levels of the HSK exam (which includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing), so this year I will be dedicated to bettering my Mandarin and I will focus on simplified Chinese.
The last parts of the HSK exam require one to summarize a 1,000 character essay into 400 characters. I’m definitely able to do that, but I’m confident I’ll be able to do that within the next year.
I think I learn best with workbook type practice work, so I will go towards that. Workbooking is less interesting from a blogging perspective, but I will continue to update this blog with my progress. Or I might start a new blog. Whatever format I choose, I will still be practicing Chinese in 2017.
Thanks for reading!
andrealearnsnewwords 