I hadn’t tracked my Chinese immersion time in a while (and frankly hadn’t been doing that much in the first place), but in February I got back into it.
Time Spent
In total, I logged 28 hours and 16 minutes of Chinese immersion time in February. Of that, I spent 16.5 hours listening to podcasts, 6 hours reading, 4.5 hours creating new Anki cards and doing reviews, and then 48 minutes watching some random video. I really have a hard time sitting still and watching something!
Reading
The majority of my reading time was spent reading 我在北京送快递 (5 hours). In fact, this was the single largest segment of all my immersion this month, as listening time was much more fragmented among different podcasts. I’m enjoying the book well enough so far, and it’s not too difficult, so that’s nice. I’m just under 20% finished though, so I’m definitely not the quickest reader. Hopefully I can finish it by the end of March!
Apart from that, I spent the rest of my time reading some random articles online.
Listening
I had 7 podcasts that I listened to for at least one hour this month:
- 史蒂夫说 (3h11m)
- 八分 (2h36m)
- 观篮高手 (2h03m)
- 故事便利店 (1h53m)
- 打个电话给你 (1h37m)
- 讲谈社 – 中国的历史 (1h27m)
- 不合时宜 (1h02m)
Several of these podcasts are from the 看理想 app that I write about below! I had a free trial for 2 weeks and took advantage.
Vocabulary
Overall, I spent 4 and a half hours on creating and reviewing flashcards, with each activity taking up approximately half of that time. Also counted in that time are flashcards on China’s provinces and their capitals, which I finally decided to learn this month. I figure that still counts!
Reflections
Too Much Anki!
Overall, Anki time accounted for 16% of my overall time spent. Ideally, I think that would be more like 10%. Maybe next month I’ll be more efficient in my reviews and card creation, or maybe I’ll just have to let more vocab words go by in my immersion without mining them to keep the Anki time down to a reasonable level. Either way, I’m not too mad because I was able to re-establish my flashcard habit.
Podcasts Are Still The Best!
I just love going for a walk and popping in my earbuds to listen to a podcast. I always have to struggle against the desire to pull out my phone to look up words while I’m walking. Sometimes I do it when I really feel like it might be a good word to know, and sometimes I just embrace the ambiguity.
Compared to normal, this has been a warm winter, but there have still been plenty of cold days. This probably shortens my average walk time by some amount. Maybe my podcast time will go up as the weather gets warmer!
Check Out the 看理想 APP
Earlier in the month, I discovered the 看理想 APP, which . It was good immersion signing up for and navigating the new user flow which had various promotions. Most of the audio content on the platform is paid, but I might shell out for some of the shows. 故事便利店 in particular is a new show to me that had a very 温暖 feeling, and 八分 is one that I’ve listened to for a while (no new episodes, but a long back catalog) that I greatly enjoy. A friend of mine described 八分 as “extremely cultured Buddhist talks about whatever”. Check it out!
Thanks for reading!