Still Struggling With Chinese But At Least I Have A Plan?

After watching some YouTube videos of ‘rhythm Chinese’ (in Korean) I start to think that the ‘chant music’ from my Chinese word book (in Japanese) actually make sense and help me remember the tones. I thought the chant music was distracting before. Unfortunately, it’s still impossible for me to memorize the sample sentences. I can remember them in written form, just without the correct tones.
But, even so, I think learning 8 Chinese words a day is better than nothing. If I can memorize 8 words a day from the book, I will finish the book on May 2, and I will be able to ‘speak’ 504 Chinese words. Let’s see what happens…

And I made my new rules, inspired by the Japanese book I read about memorization tips:

1. Don’t work hard at learning Chinese.
2. Instead, make Chinese language a part of my daily life.
3. Keep in mind that if I don’t revise within 24 hours, I will likely to forget. ‘Neglected’ words will be forgotten.
4. Keep it mind that I can only use what I remember.
5. Read aloud helps me remember so always read aloud.
6. Memorize & recall in small bites for short-term memory.
7. Make sure repetitions happen and treat new words with care at least for a month, so they will be transferred to long-term memory.
8. Stay interested. Keep ‘I seriously want to remember these stuff’ mindset, in contrast to ‘I hate these stuff and I don’t want to deal with these if I can’.
9. Keep it fun. Because if it’s not fun, I’ll quit.
10.  Have some rough planning and just do it. But I will not do what I don’t feel like doing because that will be against rule no. 1.

I found that the Japanese author had his own YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/990english/ (in Japanese)

What else? Oh, I tried using Papago app (similar to Google Translate app) to check my Chinese pronunciation but I never got it right. I really should find out how to pronounce those Chinese consonants, from the start, again. But it’s OK. Because, I read on someone’s blog that ‘sounding out something with your mouth is actually fun’ and I agreed. ###

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