Post 10- Week 6

This is the last week of my LLC and this is what I had planned of doing this week.

Previous Plan
Week 6- Allocate a time with the native speaker to have a post-test (speaking and writing) and grade me on whether I have improved or not throughout these 5 weeks.

New Plan
Week 6- Allocate a time with the native speaker to have a post-test on writing and grade me on whether I have improved or not throughout these 5 weeks.

I believe I have had a fairly good week. I allocated a time with my native friend to have a post test on my self-introduction in writing and this is the end result. The friend comments that I still use traditional writing at times, however, the writing has improved from when she first saw me. At first I had the interference of Japanese and Taiwanese in my writing, however, I believe I have been able to think in Chinese when writing now, however, the characters that I use at times still, they are still traditional. I guess this will take time to change, as when I first started to learn how to write Chinese, I was taught traditional characters, and not simplified. 

When I was starting the LLC, I did the VARK questionnaire and it stated that I am an aural learner and provided me with strategies with how I can improve my learning skills. When writing the self-introduction at home by myself, I do say out what I write and I have realised that I write faster if I speak and write at the same time. It just seems like they are competing with each other, my hand and my mouth. It is not a bad thing doing this, however, if I do this together, I rush things. Therefore I say a sentence, write, say a sentence, write, ... that is the pattern I used. It also stated in the strategies that I learn better when people discuss things with me. From previously that was how I learn best, therefore having a native speaker to go through my self-introduction with me really helped. She would point out my mistakes and suggest me on how I can change it. 

As to the technologies I tested out, I ended up using technologies that were not in my proposal. The apps I said I was going to use was, a translation website- MDBG Web Translator, iphone app- "Chinese" and Quizlet. It ended up being I used 2 iphone apps and Quizlet. These were Translator- Translate Text and Speech and Chinese English Dictionary Bravolo. 

The reason why I decided not to use the MDBG Web Translator was because I found that this translation website works better for translating a phrase. While doing my self-introduction, I realised that I needed more vocabulary translation instead of phrase translation. It is a perfect website for phrases, but I guess it just didn't suit my needs for this time. 

The iphone app that I decided to not use "Chinese", the reason behind that was because you could not translate words and phrases of your own. There were already set phrases in the app therefore I believed I needed to find a proper translation website or app. 







Then I found these 2 apps- Translator- Translate Text and Speech and Chinese English Dictionary Bravolo. 

The first app, Translator- Translate Text and Speech, was not a bad app, apart from it being you needed to pay after finding a few words each day. I liked the format of this translation app, because it was more like a chat conversation. Another thing that helped me a lot was the fact that there is no restriction to what language you can only translate to and into. As I can not think of English words at times, I used Japanese to translate into Chinese. 



The second app, Chinese English Dictionary Bravolo, was the app that I used the most. I found this app easy to use. Type in an English vocabulary and it will provide you with a variety of vocabulary in Chinese. When I first used this app, I thought it was very helpful as I typed in "Brisbane" in the search icon, and it came up with not just only giving me the translation of Brisbane in Chinese, but it also provided me with some general information about Brisbane. Though I am not studying geography and I do not need to know about Brisbane, however I thought it would nice if a Chinese person was needing to know the translation for Brisbane and they also learn geographical stuff at the same time. 


I used Quizlet for practicing my Chinese vocabulary skills. I believed Quizlet gave me a lot of help in remembering them. There were many activites, such as multiple choice questions, matching questions, writing questions and true and false questions. I tested out Quizlet on my computer and ipad, and I preferred doing activites on my ipad, especially writing ones. Both of the Quizlets were helpful as the computer version had a tiny bit more activities but I personally liked the ipad version. 


This is the end of the 6 weeks of my LLC. There have been good times and bad times when doing this, however overall, I have had a lot of fun. My original plan was to use approximately 1 hr 30 mins every week doing my LLC, but as you can see in the picture it varied. There were weeks where I did over what I had planned and vice versa. Of course there were different reasons such as other courses commitment and work. Improvement can be seen throughout the 6 weeks and as a end result my challenge has gone well and I have reached my goal. 

Post 9- Week 5

This was my origional plan for Week 5, however, as expected it has changed.

Previous Plan:
Week 5- Practice the accumulated self-introduction from week 2 to week 4 in writing and speaking. At the same time, finish off the self-introduction and give it to the native person to check. Once I have received feedback, I will need to practice speaking it and writing it. Use Quizlet as a revision tool for vocabularies.

New Plan:
Week 5- Practice the accumulated self-introduction from week 2 to week 4 in writing. At the same time, finish off the self-introduction and give it to the native person to check. Once I have received feedback, I will need to practice writing it. Use Quizlet as a revision tool for vocabularies.

After completing this week's self-introduction, I have finished my self-introduction. It feels like just yesterday, but I can see the improvement from my writing the first time and now. The most obvious change in the self-introduction is the length of it. I started off not even half a page long and now it's nearly a page long. 





For this week's self-introduction there were no mistakes found by my native friend. When writing this introduction, there were many times where I have unintentionally used Traditional Chinese, however, realised its Traditional, so therefore changed it into Simplified. It is still automatic for my brain to write Traditional, however, my goal is to be able to write Simplified. I guess I just need to be careful in checking my work to see if I have the correct form (Simplified) or not. 









This week I spent 80 mins altogether in my LLC. I didn't spend too much time on writing my self-introduction, that took me 10 mins, and the rest was working on Quizlet. As I was not as busy like last week, I was able to spend more time in browsing through the app. I prefer using Quizlet on my ipad compared to my desktop. There are more activities on the desktop version, however, I believe the format on the ipad helps me learn vocabulary better. This is a test from Quizlet on the desktop version. 

Desktop Version

It can be seen that there are answers to let you choose from. As I am getting more used to the vocabulary I guess right now, I prefer no help, and use my own knowledge to write the Chinese characters. As the ipad version allows me to do this, I prefer it. This is the ipad version. The ipad detects what it believes you are writing and gives you some words to choose from. 

Ipad version

In this week's workshop and reading. It was discussing about translation. I thought it was interesting because my whole LLC was based on translation. I was not surprised when it stated that Translation was out of favour with the language teaching  community in the reading, as there are also times where I believe so. It states that "translation is unnatural". It was also being mentioned as "inefficient" and "unreliable". I personally experienced it when I was doing my LLC, when I wanted to say "keep" a pet, it didn't give me the correct translation. The translation they provided me meant "keep" as well, however, that "keep" is meant to be used in another context. I need to say that there are the pros and cons for translation, depending on how you use it. It may be highly useful at times, but on the other hand, it may provide you the wrong information, leading you to learn mistaken things.