complete chapters 1-5 of the Colloquial Chinese course by Kan Qian

I’ve just completed Chapter 3 and things are certainly getting a little harder to remember. I think the further I get into this, the more I will have to go back and revise sections. I’m looking forward to Chapter 4, which starts putting all the dialogues in Chinese script as well as pinyin and English. Then I can practise reading in both.

I had to revise chapter 1 first as it was 8 months ago, but I’ve now done chapter 2 and plan to complete this goal within the next week or two. In fact, I’m going to set it as a challenge now to make sure I do it this time! :)

I have now completed Chapter 1, and I have tried to balance it with grammar and learning to write the characters in script. The main difficulty I think I’ve had is being able to pronounce the different tones when it comes to speaking sentences. If I say one word with different tones, this is OK, but when it comes to more than a couple of words, my tones are all over the place and I can’t get it to be natural sounding.

Of course the only real solution is: Practise, practise, practise! :)

My goal “learn Chinese” is an ambitious goal that will take ages to clear off this list, so I have decided to break it into subgoals. I am using the Colloquial Chinese package to start off with but I will be supplementing it with Teach Yourself Beginner’s Chinese Script and at some point I hope to acquire Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar.

I want to balance my learning of the skills: not only listening, reading, writing and speaking, but learning pinyin in conjunction with Chinese script. I don’t want to be in a situation where I get comfortable with pinyin and have a lot to catch up with in writing Chinese in characters.

So, I’m going to aim for chapter 5 and not go any further until I have balanced it with script and grammar study.