Tag: chinese

Categories
general

weeknotes, 34/25

got the hsk6 books for the new school year (discounted on vinted, hurray!), and i don’t know how the teacher is going to do this feat of finishing a book each semester… it will be intense, to say the least, and i don’t feel very confident about this transition. i haven’t even done the hsk5 exam yet, and we’re already jumping ahead…

the free days in the middle of the 10 hour ones continue to be the most relaxing ever — like a mini-vacation every other day. i have so much energy to do things on those days, and long postponed to-do lists are just melting away. of course, everything will change when the parents come to visit next week, and when classes start again. but i’ll appreciate it for as long as it lasts!

continuing on our let’s-fix-stuff streak, paulo replaced the battery in my 15 year-old kindle, which refused to switch on. it worked! last week i also successfully sold the portable AC unit my brother had lent us, while our own was broken. why is fixing old stuff or selling stuff you don’t need so extremely satisfying?

this week, i increased the weight i put on the barbell for squats and deadlifts quite a bit, and it felt good to see progress at the gym. i’m still very much a newbie, but i’m enjoying it — especially how quick the workouts are. 30 minutes of sweating, and afterwards i can do sauna and sit a bit in the swimming pool.

also on the list of “things that never get done” was to repot some plant babies, so now there’s a few more specimens throughout the house. we’ve done a good job so far of picking only sturdy plants that can go a few weeks without water, and some of ours are over 10 years old now. i’m hoping these ones will do well too.

Categories
languages

graded & grided readers

graded readers are books that are “easier reading”, written for a certain level of language proficiency. often, they use simpler language, or only have a certain number of words or characters in them. they’re great for when you want to read a book in the language you’re learning, but you can’t quite manage all kinds of literature yet… so you want something that matches your level. in chinese, graded readers are usually sorted by HSK level, or number of characters one has learned.

the chinese ones will sometimes have both the chinese characters and the pinyin transliteration in the page, so that it’s easier to read. the issue with this is that our western eyes immediately float to the latin characters we’re familiar with, making the exercise a bit pointless.

and this is where the magic grid comes in! :) you apply it over the text, and it hides the pinyin lines, so that you’re left just with the characters themselves. i didn’t know what it was for when i first noticed it tucked into the back cover, but it’s such a simple and elegant solution — i love it!

Categories
postcrossing

postcrossing on the gaokao!

the gaokao is the name of the national exams in china, a series of tests that all high school students have to do in order to enter university. it’s a pretty big deal, with the whole country practically stopping and holding their breath while a generation of teenagers puts their intellectual skills to the test.

this year in zhejiang province, postcrossing was featured in the english exam! it’s kind of surreal to see something you work on being featured on an exam. the article is from an interview that paulo did to china daily a few years ago.

i thought that was pretty cool! :D

Categories
languages

hsk4: done!

so, finally, after months of studying, i’ve passed the hsk4! hurray!

the writing part didn’t go too well because of technical problems — there’s a section in which you should drag parts of the sentence into the correct order, and the trackpad of the mac decided not to work at the 11th hour… but even then, 228/300 is a pretty neat result.

level four is supposed to bring you to a level in which you can:

“Discuss a relatively wide range of topics in Chinese and are capable of communicating with Chinese speakers at a high standard.”

i’m not so sure about that though… it’s one thing to study for an exam, but conversation and free writing on different topics are a different ball game and i feel like 1200 words is barely enough to scratch the surface of communication. also, the exam does not include a speaking section, and so i’ve neglected my own speaking in favor of writing and reading.

next steps? for now i’d like to relax, start reading more and maybe get back to doing tandem sessions with chinese speakers to improve my speaking. 加油 me! :)

Categories
languages

clozemaster

one of the apps i use to practice chinese is called clozemaster. a cloze is a text or sentence with gaps that you need to to fill out with words. it’s a nice exercise, that gives the opportunity to practice reading and understanding words in context.

clozemaster turns that into an old school game, with an 8-bit look and rankings per language. naturally, with so many sentences being tested, some of them are bound to be “interesting”. here are some of my favourites so far:



the texts are always so uplifting!



what’s up with the cat?



and my absolute favourite so far, is this one that i got wrong. i chose “sports are the devil”, but turns out impulsiveness is the devil… i don’t know, i think i’m sticking with my version! :P

it works for lots of languages — give it a try if you’re learning one or just want to practice. :)