192. Immersing in Love

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45:21 Comments & Emails

Kevin Swan 凯文 on Word Structure Part 2 of 8 – Verb-What 述宾式

This makes so much sense. Over the years, I’ve studied with several native speakers, and none of them have ever been able to explain things like this. I wanted native speakers because of the pronunciation, but I realize now that teachers who have English as their first language have a better understanding of how to teach English speakers.

I sent some videos of Luke speaking to a native friend, and she said his accent was 98-99% spot-on. So, my concern about pronunciation is abated!

非常感谢！

49:20

Teodor Ruokolainen on Level 31 Complete

Man does it feel good to get another level completion mail again. I looked in my inbox and it was almost 6 months ago I received my last one. The reason for this is that I fell of the wagon pretty hard, so I want to write this both for myself and others that might run into this in the future:

The thing about spaced repetition is that you have to do your reviews everyday. This is a very effective method. If you miss one day it’s not a big issue, but if you miss more than that it really starts to build up. Around 6 months ago it was summer and I went on vacation. During that time I felt like I didn’t have time (bad excuse) to do my reviews so for about a week the reviews piled up. When I came back I was completely overwhelmed and ended up not doing my reviews (my second mistake). Rather I let them pile up for several weeks.

By the time I opened my reviews again I had over 3000 cards in my queue. Another thing about spaced repetition is that they give you reviews right when you are about to forget the card, so naturally I had forgotten a lot.

I almost quit right then and there, as I fear that others might as well. But I came up with a strategy to fight my way back. I started with the cards from Level 1. Those cards had already gotten ingrained in my memory, so those were still pretty easy. The only requirement I put on myself was to do at least one card a day. My focus was not to try to finish all 3000 reviews as fast as possible, instead I wanted to rebuild my habit of daily reviews. That strategy worked great. I found myself slowly increasing the number of reviews I did every day and saw the counter slowly decrease.

The reviews started to get very hard when I got to phase 4. I had to remind myself for almost every single new prop. But to my surprise I could still remember almost every movie scene when I had reminded myself of the props. So that was a great surprise.

After several weeks of reviews I finally ran out of cards. But I still didn’t want to start adding new cards since my amount of daily reviews were still pretty high.

A couple more weeks of reviews went and I found myself getting bored again. I started to question if I really wanted to continue. But a couple of days ago I found myself doing a new lesson, and straight away reviews were fun again. After just seeing the same old cards I had received a bunch of new toys to play with. I felt like I was progressing again!

Sorry for the long text, but I wanted to remind myself that it’s possible to get back and a feeling of progression is what makes learning fun. Especially now with the holidays coming up I want to keep this in mind. I should probably revisit some of the lessons in the Habit Bootcamp to avoid slipping up again 🙂

57:55

Ioanna Pappou on 每天 in Context

Could you also say 周周 like “every week”?

59:59

Kevin Grant on New Vocabulary Unlocked! 一半

Do the mnemonic methods in MB focus on stroke order for the characters?

1:01:39

KAH MIN CHONG on 再 in Context

Is it more common to say 我没懂 or 我不懂？

01:03:22

Kevin Swan 凯文 on Level 7 Complete

If you click on chapter 7 overall character word learning progress link above, it shows we’ve learned 36 words and 54 characters. As far as I can tell, 14 characters are also words and should be up in the “word” section. Such as:

午 口 八 四 兄 乙 乞 况 日 七 百 千 舌 汽

Am I misunderstanding something?

You’ve included 一二三 十 as words… 四 七 八 should either be included or the others eliminated. (My vote is for included—they are words.)

I’m still confused on why things like 舌 aren’t words. Pleco believes it is a word. There appears to be an option of 舌头, too.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me. I’m very attracted to systems. My brain just wants consistency. Hahaha.. It’s an OCD.

Right on!

Thanks. I get it now. Didn’t realize 舌 needed 头, like 汉字 or 名字.

Your explanation of 百 requiring “something else” is tricky. It’s

not like 舌头, but I see what you’re saying, and I think it works.

Even in English, “hundred” is challenging; it’s an adjective and

a noun, but there are rare circumstances where using it as a noun

makes sense. So, I’m in agreement with you on that

1:07:44

Allison Carrigan on 小心 in Context

What is the function of 一点 in this sentence?

小心一点，车多。

1:09:04

Tina Clark on 打球 in Context

打完球我才回住的地方去

I’ve been having trouble with 才having multiple meanings, especially when it’s used to mean “not until.” I’ve just been reading and listening to the sentences and not worrying too much about dissecting the grammar, however, I feel pretty confused about it in this sentence, enough to write in to ask you about it. Does it mean something like “not until I finish playing ball, will I return…” or is it the “just / recently” meaning here?
Thank you!

1:10:38

Merideth Ezell on Problem Initial CHI: 吃 chī，好吃 hǎochī，吃饭 chīfàn， 吃饭了吗? chīfàn le ma?

If someone asks me, 吃饭了吗 in the context of asking how I’m doing (as opposed to literally asking if I’ve eaten yet) would 吃了be the correct way to reply, “I’m well”? For example, would the phrases translate as follows:

吃饭了吗 ？(How are you?)
吃了。(I’m well.)

Or is 吃了 only the appropriate response if someone is literally inquiring about if I’ve eaten? Thanks in advance for your help, and thanks for creating such a great course!