Telephone Numbers and Large Numbers
Recalling my phone number in Chinese is still quite a mental effort. I still try to recall the number from "sight" by seeing it in my head and translating those numbers to Mandarin instead of trusting my gut and speaking the sounds from aural memory. Large numbers like 一千五百万 and 24亿 are still difficult to translate into English quickly. Going from English to Mandarin is also quite the mental feat.
Chinese Dictionaries
The Kindle (or any e-book reader) is an amazing device for the language learner. Just a quick tap and you can learn pronunciations and definitions without barely breaking the flow of reading. I recently switched my Kindle into Mandarin and was pleasantly surprised to find that a Chinese dictionary (definitions of Chinese words in Chinese) suddenly became available. My success rate with understanding the definition is about 60-70% as many times the definition contains the very character I am trying to understand (this just might be a Kindle dictionary problem).
HSK 6 Content
I recently checked out a sample HSK 6 test. My reading speed has increased dramatically but still feels a tad too slow. I'm confident in my ability to produce Mandarin but producing intelligent-sounding Mandarin with good grammar still feels some ways off. Listening was quite difficult still. I understand the gist most times but often miss a key detail that would cause me to answer incorrectly. The audio provided for the sample test is also not the clearest. Here is an example:
8
快到春节了，常常听到“春运”这个词，“春运”是什么意思呢？“春”
就是指中国最传统的节日“春节”；“运”就是指“运输”。“春运”就是
指春节期间的运输，主要包括火车、飞机、汽车等交通工具的运输情况。
9
一对夫妻吵架后好几天都不说话。这天，丈夫想和妻子说话，可妻子不理他。丈夫于是在家里到处乱翻。妻子最后忍不住了：“你到底找什么呀！”“谢天谢地，”丈夫高兴地说，“终于找到你的声音了。
I was easily able to understand passage #8 about travel during the spring holiday but when listening to passage #9 completely missed the first sentence (audio quality, lost focus, or other) which completely ruined my chance of understanding the rest of the passage. Despite knowing all of the words and easily being able to hear and understand them, this still gives me a bit of trouble. (Reading both of these passages is a piece of cake.)
Specialty Content
Reading Chinese is quite easy, maybe even easier than learning to read English. While English does have prefixes, suffixes, and root words that often given clues about the meaning of the word, it's very rare that a Chinese word does not contain a character that I am already familiar with. When it comes to listening however, especially with content that is specialized (physics, sports jargon, cooking terminology, etc.), things get a bit trickier. Learning specialized vocabulary makes me realize just how large my English vocabulary really is and how far I still have to go with my Mandarin.
Video Games
I suppose this falls under the later category. I thought I might be able to enhance my exposure to native conversation by gaming and chatting in Chinese. I couldn't get past the training stage in either StarCraft or League of Legends.
Singing and Song Lyrics
I tried to learn a Chinese song about a year ago. Some time after learning that song I noticed that I was mispronouncing a few different words on different occasions. It took me a minute to realize that I had picked up incorrect tones from learning that song. From what I can tell, the tones are most times (if at all) not retained when Mandarin is sung. This presents quite the challenge for the language learner who is trying to cement good pronunciation habits into their subconscious.
*Small talk, Phone Conversations, Handwritten Chinese, Advertisements
Many of these are still quite difficult. When audio quality or writing quality deteriorates, understanding language quickly becomes a game of probability. The more Mandarin you know, the better guess you can make as to what words/characters you missed. Everything is shorthand with these four and its all about the best educated guess.
