Warning: Frustration post.

In the last 6 months I got that strange feeling that I am actually moving backwards with my Chinese abilities - with a narrower and narrower active vocab base, stagnating speech recognition, and a losing grip on Grammar. This is actually a lot worse than the usual "oh, I hit the next plateau" feeling. This "plateau" seems to have a downwards inclination.

And all this despite the fact that I didn't at all reduce my time slot - much the opposite so. I ramped it up. I inserted new sources (HSK material, exercises, 红楼梦, more Chinese with my collegue...), but it all doesn't help.

For a long time it was always moving upwards - conquering more and more territory with an almost linear builtup of vocab and grammar, seemingly getting within reach of basic fluency and a 80% listening comprehension (at least in my daydreams). But recently this all seems to blur away from the edges.

Has anybody else besides me experienced this? Is it only temporarily? Do I need different input? Should I take "real" classes?

All with the scary question in the back: Can this actually be done from outside China?

Hello, all

This post is intended as a place where people can exchange their thoughts on translation as it relates to language learning. Please share your own suggestions and experiences in learning Chinese or any other language. Here are a few suggestions for discussion:

• Is it effective to literally translate every word in an article or story as you read? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
  
• How do you choose the appropriate meaning, when a given character has many interpretations?
• What is the role of cultural knowledge in understanding a phrase or story?
  
• How do you preserve tone and clarity? 
• How do we deal with profanity and slang? For example, a recent discussion dealt with the curse word 王八蛋 wángbadàn. Would a literal translation be effective here? How do you store the word in your mind?

This discussion is open to everyone, at all levels of Chinese. I'd be very interested to hear from people whose native language is not English. How did you learn English? How did that process differ from the way in which you are learning Chinese?

I hope that this discussion will shed some light on the ways in which we learn and, ultimately, master, foreign languages. I have my own opinions and methods, but I want to hear and learn from you.

Any thoughts you share will help me and the CPod team to understand your thinking better, with the goal of helping you learn Chinese.

For career related reasons I will have to cut down my Chinese studies significantly - probably for a time frame of about 2 years. I already limited my community time, but now I need to go to the real meat.

What I absolutely want to avoid is losing it all during that time. So my primary goal for the next to years is: Keeping and consolodating my level.

What I think might work:
- listening to podcasts in idle situations (housework, commuting, etc.)

- casually reading some Chinese material

- keeping a daily "hibernating slot" (max. 45 minutes) in which I do some writing, work through the lessons here, or do some HSK material (not all each day and not in a high dose).

The fun times with 90-120 minutes each day plus some really heavy learning on the weekends are definitaly over.

Sigh. Hope it works.

I'm a serial procrastinator. There are times i'm surprised I've accomplished anything at all.  I sit down to study a lesson, or review a lesson, but then realize i'm hungry, or the phone rings, or I need to google something, and then its an hour later. Certainly, this journey of 10,000 steps called learning Mandarin needs you to do something to stay motivated and focused. 

I'm curious to hear from anyone regarding how they've managed to procrastinate less.  I doubt that serial procrastinators are ever cured, but it would be interesting to hear if someone actually overcame procrastination to become the highly effective, time efficient, mandarin learner.