Strategy for Upper Intermed

I do agree that I feel a little lost now, the jump to upper is a bit overwhelming. My main other resource is Pleco for reference and flashcards, but it sounds like I need to find new sources of content as well. Thanks for the links, they look very cool.

I am still hopeful to maintain the pace of 3-4 lessons per week, like I did with lower intermediate. The recommended study term is 160 lessons, and I want this to be done by next summer so I can take HSK 4 for my job. I tried a few upper lessons already, and it does look like it's going to be tough without changing my routine. Every upper lesson introduces about 20 new words, as compared to 4-5 for lower. Concentrating on each lesson for a couple of weeks does make sense, i will try to arrange like you said. But still need to start a new lesson every other day... How to address this spear-shield? I am hoping to find a new study technique that can handle 80 new words per week, you guys think this can be done?

I've found from teaching ESL in China and studying Chinese on my own for the past 3 yrs that 80 new words a week just isn't possible. Maybe if you just want to pass the HSK it's ok but if you want to thoroughly learn, understand and be able to use and incorporate words into your active vocabulary, you would have to lessen that amount. I think at most 40-50 a month is realistic. It's so easy to forget words if you keep at such a rapid pace of learning.

Also I think focusing on individual words and not phrases and sentence structure is not that good either. Thinking about sentence structure and phrases helps you to be able to use vocabulary and learn them more deeply.

Just my two cents. good luck!

I think it depends on what you mean by 'a month' and 'a week' - It is trivial to thoroughly learn 100 new words 'a day', and still have time to review and practice the words from previous days, if you spend 12 hours studying. I think hours is a better measure...

I would recommend a different approach - learn many lessons quickly, but only focus on the dialogue and transcript (the podcast and any expansion can be ignored). As you learn each dialogue, put it in a playlist, and listen to that playlist every day. If you spend a weekend you should be able to get 50 or so cpod dialogues mastered without much trouble at all, do that a few times and you have exhausted the archives (much of the vocab and grammar repeat so it's actually easy to get going). Then just listen to your playlist, again and again, then start repeating after it. Pretty soon, you'll have absorbed all the vocab and grammar, and will use it naturally in speech (as long as you are also doing a bit of conversation practice also, even if it is talking to yourself).

That was my experience at least. I think doing 'exercises' and intensive studying of material is far too time consuming...A rapid pace through the lessons means you will see the same vocab and grammar again and again, deep understanding will come naturally.

that's an interesting approach, sort of the opposite of normal plan --- dialogues every day, and repeat the playlist... Will try it for a couple of weeks, it could work

Cpod could improve by having longer (and more natural) dialogue files at UI and advanced, and providing transcripts for media dialogue files.

The gernal plan of watching tv shows, music and movies I feel can start at the advanced level, at least for me. Do you think Upper Intermediates should be included in the "higher levels", Jenny?

I do feel that perhaps it will be useful once I am well into the upper intermediate level and beyond. Just not immediately after graduating from lower intermediate. For now I have progressed to turning off the "Show translation" by default for the expansion sentences. Feeling pretty good that I can usually get the meaning. Still need the training wheels of the popup, but less and less.