March was a decent month given the circumstances, but not as good as I would like. I was almost able to maintain 1 hour of learning time per day while juggling a few other things in my life.
Time Spent
Overall, I tracked 25 hours and 23 minutes of Chinese study time. As opposed to last month, my largest activity was Reading (9h51m), and for the first time in a long time, I did a good amount of Watching (3h57m). Listening was OK at 7h28m, but that is down from what I would normally do. Finally, I spent 4h05m on Anki.
Top Media
- Reading: Articles! (7h02m) I got an iPad, which may have a big influence on my Chinese immersion going forward. More on that below!
- Listening: 打个电话给你 (3h57m). A classic at this point!
- Watching: 凡人修仙传 (3h57m). Jumped on the hype train, and I think I’m going to stick with it!
Reflections
iPad – A Game Changer?
I’ve been long feeling that my Kindle is good for fiction reading, but that for non-fiction I need a better system for reading. To that end, I purchased an iPad near the beginning of March, and I’ve been surprised at how much it’s changed my immersion habits:
- Online reading + articles: I use Pleco’s web reader, and it’s made me enjoy reading articles much more. I don’t like reading on my computer or my phone, because they’re too distracting and ergonomically uncomfortable. And I can’t really read articles on my Kindle. So having an iPad has opened up the world of articles to me, and I’m enjoying it.
- TV shows: I started 凡人修仙传, and am enjoying it a good amount so far! I basically don’t watch any TV, because when I’m on my computer, it’s never the thing I want to do the most. Even though it doesn’t get me off my screens, I’m much happier now watching something on my iPad away from my desk, so that’s a win in my books.
- Sentence Mining: I sentence mine words from 凡人修仙传 by taking screenshots and creating cards once I’m back on my laptop. Due to Apple’s image OCR and iPad-as-a-display integration, I can use my keyboard and mouse to highlight and copy subtitles directly from the photo and paste them into Anki. It takes time, but so far I’m finding these cards very memorable, so I’m excited about that.
The first reason that I’m enjoying my iPad so much is that it’s a better size and form factor for me to use while curled up on a couch or chair. I also find it nice to use at coffee shops, where I spend a good amount of time.
The second reason is that I’m keeping my iPad as a distraction-free device. No notifications, no social media apps. The friction of having to actively get my phone (I like to leave it in a separate room or at least in my backpack) to check those things helps me focus.
Planning for China Move
In exciting news, I’m moving to China! The plan is to live in Shanghai for 1 year to work on my Chinese. I’ve applied for my visa, and I could be going as soon as 2 weeks from now (mid-to-late April).
Prepping for this has been both good and bad for my immersion. It’s been bad since I’ve had practical things on my mind that occupy my time and energy and take it away from immersion. However, some of those practical things include calling or messaging people on WeChat in service of making my plans, so my output practice has gone up. None of that is tracked, and I would estimate that represents at least 4 or 5 hours of extra time.
I’m nervous and excited about it! If you’re in Shanghai, I’d love to meet up once I’m there. Please reach out if you have thoughts on how to find housing, how to make friends, or if you just want to chat!
AI-generated Transcripts
I started experimenting with using OpenAI’s Speech-to-Text model, Whisper, to generate AI subtitles for podcast episodes. I haven’t fully figured out my workflows surrounding this, but the subtitles seem good enough to be useful. I’ve been using Chinese Text Analyser to look at my top unknown words in an episode to prime myself before listening, and I think it’s a method that’s got potential.
I think there’s an opportunity to have a language-focused podcast app that can work with subtitles and handle my use-cases more directly, so I’m considering working on something like that in the next little while.
That’s all for now!
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! If you have any feedback on how I could make these more interesting to you, feel free to reach out to me on the Refold Mandarin discord or DMs! I like talking to people 🙂