Last Week of Chinese LL Challenge!!!!!!

汉语词汇学习第六周

Hey guys! Welcome to the Sixth and final week of my Chinese Language Learning Challenge!

WE MADE IT!

And finally, just like that, six weeks of documenting my studies and progression with learning Chinese vocabulary. Even though I've been getting absolutely bombarded with other uni work and my part-time job, I've managed to overcome the barriers of laziness and finish the blog somewhat successfully!

"Somewhat" ???

Let me explain.

When I thought I had enough time to make a 200+ exam paper for myself like I said I would in my previous blogs, I thought it wasn't a problem. When it came down to making a template specifically for it, I found out that it was too ambitious for TWO main reasons.

Reason 1:
I don't need to test ALL 200 words to see whether or not I've retained them. I know exactly the words I know I can write without thinking twice. So when I started to make a template for 200 words, I knew it was a waste of time to put  EVERYTHING in there.

Reason 2:
The words that should be in the final test should be words that I struggled to memorise/retain. As I said in Reason 1, I know exactly the words I can write without thinking twice. So, I also know which words I might/should be worried about when the time comes to test it.

For these two reasons, I hand-picked from all the units of study I had done from the course of this Language Learning Challenge, the vocabulary that I felt uneasy with, or got incorrect. 

This is why I said it was "somewhat" successful. I would have said that everything went according to plan if everything DID go to plan, however, I changed a lot from my Final Proposal and even had to change my evaluation method last minute.


Unit 11 + 33 words

So far up to this week, I mentioned that I learnt 175 Chinese words. This week I'll be learning 33 more words to complete my 200 word goal mentioned in the Proposal. It's getting pretty exciting to know that I'm evaluating my methods and learning strategies that I've utilised throughout the whole six week process. By the end of this week, I'll finally get to see the REAL results. Nevertheless, my studies along with the integration of Quizlet and Pleco's will commence for the last time (for this blog) - because I'll most definitely use this method in the future.


Final Evaluation

Finally, we are here.

For starters, i mentioned that I picked the vocabulary that I felt uneasy with, or got incorrect. There were collectively 67 words that I was uneasy with and/or got incorrect. I spent a good amount of time re-doing the study sets by 'Jeremy_Weir' on Quizlet and furiously searched for similes to not be confused with on Pleco. 

Here are the results of the Final Test!




Considering that collectively, altogether, there were 208 words that I learnt throughout the 6 week block, and that I felt that (208 minus 67) 141 of those words were too easy to be tested on, getting two incorrect doesn't seem too bad at all. Besides, that means I've learnt and retained 206 words altogether, therefore...

Achieving my Learning Goal!!! (+6 words)

The two words I wrote down incorrectly were honestly pretty close to being correct, however, I had made a mistake that I couldn't fix since it was inscribed with pen. I had to take special time out after the final test to finally remember those words for good.

Final Thoughts on Quizlet & Pleco

To recap on the functions of what Quizlet could do, here is a brief summary:

• Flashcards - these are flashcards;
• Learn - registers which words you know and which words you need to improve on;
• Write - tests your writing skills and only allows you to write out the answer and not type it out;
• Spell - Dictation method of study;
• Test - It tests what you know and further evaluates what you need to learn and saves those words for you;
• Match - use your speed to get the fastest time in matching the English definition along with the Chinese word;
• Gravity - write in the Chinese word of the English word which is coming down in the form of a meteorite. Getting it correct will spare your life and allow you to get to higher levels of difficulty by destroying the meteorite. 

My study pattern would generally start off by using the Flashcards function to get familiar with as many words as possible. The Flashcards function also allowed me to 'play' the flashcards. This means that it will say the English word first, flip it to the other side automatically, whilst showing the Chinese word it would also pronounce it, and then it skips to the next flashcard. This method gave me enough time to first listen to the word, and then look at it, and then write it down until it started again with the next word. Once I got familiar with the words, I would test myself and then finally play a game of "Gravity".

I think Quizlet is an amazing app, as I mentioned before, it is perfect for learners of a second language who are focusing on expanding their vocabulary as Quizlet's many function allows learners to learn at a fast pace. 

Pleco

The Pleco app was astounding to me at first, and it still is. I tried to find another app that had similar capabilities but better, but I never could. The app allowed me to see the antonyms, homonyms, sentence examples, and even how it would sound in another dialect of Mandarin. I wouldn't recommend this to those who are looking to learn a lot of vocabulary (like how I used Quizlet), but for those who know a lot of Chinese words already and are curious of what else could be found through the search of a single character. 

Personally, through the use of Pleco on a weekly basis, I learnt ways to recognise similar characters and find a connection between them, making it easier to distinguish and also recognise/memorise and retain.

Summary

Through blogging my experience in the journey of learning the language of Chinese, I have learnt many things that positively impact my role as a student. The integration of technologies along with study was something I was never fully aware of. I had used it without noticing the impact it had on me - when I don't have my phone or computer, I honestly cannot study. 

I didn't know at the start, but something that I've noticed towards the end was that, choosing these technologies (Quizlet and Pleco), was coincidentally a great match up. The reason behind this is, in order to achieve my maximum potential of Technology Assisted Language Learning (TALL), I needed to use a software that complimented each other. For example, Pleco filled up the missing elements of Quizlet (dictionary), and Quizlet made up for Pleco's specific word searches and being unable to learn more than one word at a time. 

All-in-all, the learning strategies used has only benefited me and my Chinese learning and has given me more opportunities to succeed. Tweaking of my Proposal was very necessary in order for this outcome; progressing and adding methods of testing, learning and having fun to stay motivated were all the experiences necessary for me to reach this point.

I hope the investment towards my blogs were worth it, I truly think it was! I hope that my blog can be a guide to someone one day who is trying to learn another language also, and best of luck! Thanks again for sticking around and staying with me during my Chinese Language Learning Challenge!

Fifth Week of Chinese LL Challenge - Almost there!

汉语词汇学习第五周

Hey guys! Welcome to the [Fifth Week] of my Chinese Language Learning Challenge!

This week was the start of what I would call the "calm before the storm". I can see the assessment due dates close by. The stress is starting to build up, nevertheless, I'm still determined to see how this week's results will turn out. I'm getting closer to achieving my Learning Goal so I'm getting pretty excited yet nervous.

"Almost there, let's end this on a high note"

This is what I'm thinking this week. The results from all the previous weeks should have justified, to some extent, the efficacy of these technologies but the real challenge is next week; seeing whether or not I can retain all these vocabulary.

PRE-TEST Results Unit 10

 

As can be seen, the study I did outside of class in preparation for my pre-test quizzes are showing that the study I have been doing is effective. The reason behind this is that I've been using Quizlet to learn and practice these characters. 

It came to be natural to use the app to learn as in the early stages of learning new words, it is always effective to revise what was learnt in class after externally. I've utilised Quizlet to revise what was learnt in class, therefore, my results in my pre-test quiz shows only two errors.  

Having two errors means that there is still room for improvement, so I better get going and start studying more with Quizlet + Pleco to ace the post-test!


Technologies

Quizlet

Getting positive indicators of the amount of study seems to be a motif of Quizlet. After finishing studying a set, it leaves a deep impression of satisfaction when it shows me this (image below).

You know that feeling when you've done well in class and the teacher tells you to take a break? Me neither, but if I ever had that, I'm sure this is what it would have felt like. The app literally told me to have a study break; it wasn't hard to convince me to take it either. I took a study break every time 😄.

Pleco

As you can see below, I now know the sequence of patterns that I use in order to learn a character effectively. I noticed that if I know the meanings of the individual characters and their radicals, I am able to remember how to write them when the time comes. Doing the weekly blogs allowed me to find these shortcuts to learning the more difficult characters; this makes me so glad to have done this since I can use this method for as long as I learn Chinese!

POST-TEST Results Unit 10 

I've done pretty well for myself at this point.
My results are very consistent, getting full marks on every post-test in this blog. There is a feeling when you know once you're ready to take an exam. Next week I will have an exam for my Chinese course, I hope I have this same feeling before I do the post-test quizzes.

Getting the results I am getting is pretty self-explanatory now. I've posted it on every blog. These functions on Quizlet are perfect for someone like me who is studying a language and needing to memorise the vocabulary on a weekly basis. 

It's definitely up to the person whether or not they will be able to retain it, however, doing these Quizlet sets whenever I have the time definitely allows the success I am getting to be obtained.

Thoughts towards the end of this week:

"Almost there!"

I'm at the end of my second-last week of this Chinese Language Learning Challenge and to be honest, I'm excited to see what I'll be blogging next week. 

"Has everything I've been doing going to be worth it?"

In my opinion, 

"OF COURSE!!!"

I've learnt:

• how I can learn difficult Chinese characters with ease;
• shortcuts to learning them quickly and efficiently;
• the apps and the functions that I can use for whichever purposes I need them for; and most importantly,
• (although I don't know if I have retained them yet) new 175 Chinese words!!! 

Fourth Week of Chinese LL Challenge - JUST DO IT

汉语词汇学习第四周

Hey everyone! Welcome to the [Fourth Week] of my Chinese Language Learning Challenge!

No, this blog isn't sponsored by 'NIKE'. It's just what kept coming up in my thoughts throughout this week's challenge.

"JUST DO IT"

You would have noticed since last week, as much as I don't enjoy using Quizlet's learning games anymore, the results have shown that it works.

Technologies

Quizlet

Something that I've just noticed this week, I thought that I wouldn't have time to play the activities on Quizlet due to being busy so I thought I'd try it out on my phone. The problem was, 

[the games weren't available on the phone!]



I thought this was a huge deal since most website functions are also capable on the phone versions. It was a little  bit inconvenient since I didn't want to take time from other assessments just to do the game - I wanted to keep every week's study as consistent as possible so I had to play the games...

Anyway, I made time to play the games to further concrete my knowledge of this week's vocabulary. 

PRE-TEST Results Unit 9

 
By the way, I hadn't mentioned yet that I took a lot of time to make this new template for the pre/post tests. I think this way is the easiest way as I can easily cover the pre-test side with another sheet of paper when doing the post-test; it also feels like I'm taking a real test.

Now for the results, I made two errors scoring 33/35. 

My thoughts on this week's unit, the pre-test wasn't that hard; a lot of students in the class complained that the difficulty was getting harder and that we should focus more on the characters with more strokes. Consequently, I made two errors on the 'easier' Chinese characters and made no mistakes on words like  '输赢' and '教授' (I was pretty impressed I still remembered how to write these).



Unit 9 Study and Integration of Technology

Honestly, the easy Chinese characters were easily re-learnt through Quizlet since it shouldn't be that difficult to learn them. However, there were quite a few 'medium-difficulty' words in this unit that I had a little trouble retaining knowledge throughout the week so I decided to focus on those a bit more with Pleco (as shown on the left).

The feeling is the same, I know that now that I have spent time on these words and took the time to understand individually + how they tie along with similar words to easily distinguish from homonyms, I won't be struggling too much in the post-test. 

(Feeling smarter already)

POST-TEST Results Unit 9
Just a note before I show the result, the games I played to concrete my knowledge (Match, Meteor), felt more like a drill and I completely disregarded it as a 'game' that I play, and just did it. 



















100%.



















Although at the start of this whole Chinese LL Challenge I thought that my learning goal was a bit too ambitious and unachievable, but I think that using Quizlet and Pleco alone could take me to achieve it.

If you look back at my Learning Goal in my Proposal, I wrote that I would learn 200 words by the end of Week 6. So far (including this week), I have already learnt 139 words that I can retain!  Although that's half the challenge - other half being able to retain it till Week 6 - I've been acing these quizzes with ease and will most probably exceed the 200 word limit that I've set for myself!

These thoughts alone actually motivate me very much - didn't know that motivation could come from these places, but it has. My morale is rising higher after this week, I'm now past half-way through this challenge, I should be able to do the rest successfully. 

["JUST DO IT' the way you've been doing and you will achieve your goals"] 

...is what I say to myself regularly, and I don't think it's a bad thing to think at all.

In the areas of vocabulary learning, motivation (as I've also said before), is a huge part and I'm glad at this point in the challenge, I am finding new ways to motivate myself; whether it may be telling myself to just do it, or thinking ahead in time and feeling the satisfaction of achieving my learning goal. (Chapelle, 2009).



References

Chapelle, C. (2017), The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning, From Past to Present: A Hundred Years of Technology for L2 Learning. pp(10-25).

Third Week of Chinese LL Challenge - Stability and Consistency in my Language Learning

汉语词汇学习第三周

Hey everyone! Welcome to the [Third Week] of my Chinese Language Learning Challenge!

As you are aware by now, this weeks focus is on stability. I've now completed two weeks of this challenge and I documented in the last blog in regards to the activities I am doing and whether or not I'll get tired of them.

"Does it really matter if I get sick of it 

if I'm getting good results?" 

I'll have to see the results of this weeks post-test in comparison to the pre-test to answer that question, but this will be the focus of this week's blog. 

Quizlet & Pleco

So I've mostly highlighted already in the previous weeks what I do with Quizlet, I'm running out of new things to try within this application, however, I don't see why I shouldn't do the same things repeatedly if I might get the same perfect scores and results. So that's why I won't be repeating what I said the last blog, I'm just going to do the same activities, same learning strategies and see how that affects my scores at the post-test.

Same goes towards Pleco, this application is rather simple, if I need more information on a particular word, I can obtain it in order to learn that word more efficiently and better. It hasn't failed me yet either, it doesn't really have any fun activities that separates it from any other dictionary, but it's the convenience; from learning one character, I'm exposed to many more characters with the same conjunctions etc. 

PRE-TEST Results Unit 8


As you can see from the pre-test on the left, I made five mistakes - the most I've gotten wrong in a pre-test so far. This week's unit was pretty hard due to the amount of words that I
haven't seen being pretty high.

I've spent a lot of time on each week's units so I can't blame the amount of time I spent to be the reason for these errors; I'm very sure that I spent the same amount of time, therefore, I believe it's just the difficulty of the units getting harder as it gets towards the end of the textbook.

These two combinations - difficulty getting harder, and the high quantity of words I've never seen before - are the reason I believe I didn't do that well in this week's unit.

I think it's a good chance to see if the methods and learning styles I've been using will be consistent; if I'm able to ace the post-test, it will prove that the methods I've been using are useful and effective for my learning goal - memorising and retaining the set amount of words.

Which will most likely answer the question for this week,

"Does it really matter if I get sick of it if I'm getting good results?". 

I'll have to see at the end of this week after the post-test then.

[Throughout the Week]

The study methods remain constant to the last two weeks to test out the efficacy of my methods along with the technologies being used. 

There is a sharp distinction between the hard and easy characters shown by the number of strokes in the Chinese words. I chose to only write down the 'harder' words so I'm not wasting time on the easier ones. 

[a few days later...]

POST-TEST Results Unit 8
Throughout the week whilst studying these characters with Quizlet and Pleco, I could feel the confidence in acing the test uprising correspondingly to the amount of time I spent on the task. It's to no surprise actually, in Chapelle's (2017) research clarifies that the time on the task is one of the main factors of effective language acquisition. 

  

Whilst doing the post-test, I could feel the confidence I had built throughout studying with Quizlet  and Pleco, and as expected, I scored 100%!!!

Thoughts:

I'm not going to lie, the games I played on Quizlet were getting so tiresome. I knew in the back of my head that if I 'just did it' (✓),  I wouldn't regret it when it's time to see the results. Perhaps I should look for another platform/application similar to Quizlet, but the conclusion will most likely be the same - me getting sick of playing the same games over and over again for the final goal: to memorise and retain the knowledge. So, do I just

[keep doing the same thing?].

Maybe. 

I'm not going to lie (again), it's not going to be fun for you guys who are viewing my blog since I'm constantly using the same methods, but maybe you (the viewers) will enjoy the journey of me scoring 100% on my post-tests and then seeing the REAL result at the end of Week 6 of the LL Challenge - where I do the big test, covering all the units I covered in this blog to see if I've retained the knowledge attained through studying with Quizlet and Pleco.

Anyway, it's my journey that I'm sharing. Maybe you'd have invested enough time to care about my final results or not, but I have, so I need to see the end of it.

Till Next Time!

再见!

References

Chapelle, C. (2017), The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning, From Past to Present: A Hundred Years of Technology for L2 Learning. pp(10-25).

Second Week of Chinese LL Challenge - Getting used to it

WELCOME BACK 
It's the second week of the LL Challenge and I'm pretty excited to see how things go from here. Since I have tweaked my proposal, I'm keen to see how I'll manage with the less full-on working hours of input.

***A little refresher*** I'm going to be talking about Unit 7 this week, as I'm writing this at the start of the week, I'll be showing my pre-test of Unit 7 to show how much I know after the quiz, and at the end of the week, I'll upload the second part of that quiz to see the results of using  Pleco and Quizlet.

Unit 7 Study & Integration of Technologies
  
Originally, I would be talking about Unit 6 as well as Unit 7, however, Unit 6 was too simple and it would be a waste of time to even talk about it - I didn't have to use either of the chosen technologies because it was that easy.

SO, as per usual, I started off with my memorising-by-rote technique and writing it many times to get familiar with writing the characters down. This is particularly helpful for doing the quiz since if I do this right before the quiz in class, it's really fresh in my mind and muscle memory - I can start writing it down on paper before thinking about what it looks like. Keep in mind, this isn't the only thing I do. At the same time, since I don't know what the word sounds like, I need to listen to the pronunciation so that I can memorise it in two different techniques; memorising through writing repetitively and also repeatedly listening to the word as I look at the meaning.

Quizlet 

This is where Quizlet jumps in and aids this type of learning. There is a function on Quizlet where it allows you to play the audio of the Chinese word and its English translation repeatedly. For harder words, not the words that I can learn without this method, I can use this function to help focus on which word I am writing down, without letting my mind drift away when writing the word repeatedly - this was one of the difficulties I had to face when memorising by rote as my mind would be somewhere else whilst my hand is writing down the word.




As always, in order to do what I mentioned above, I needed a Study Set to do the listening task. Luckily, another user of Quizlet (Jeremy_Weir) had made yet another set that I could benefit from!



Pleco

As I said in the previous week, I use Pleco specifically for the words that I find 'difficult' to memorise. You can see in the picture above of the words that were 'difficult' to memorise marked with a small star ✩. My poor editing skills actually blocked two of the stars that I marked next to "Persist, uphold" and "Happiness, happy", but keep in mind that those were hard to learn and therefore marked.

The words I specifically had trouble learning were these three:
- 坚持 (Persist, Uphold)
- 幸福 (Happiness, Happy)
- 伟大 (Great, Mighty)
As you have probably noticed, I didn't include Great, Mighty (伟大), as it was only the radical that I couldn't familiarise myself with - it was hard to remember at first but I eventually got it since it wasn't that many strokes.
Moving on, this week I broke up the words into individual characters to get a better understanding of it. Pleco allowed me to not only get the definition, but also other words that I could use it for that were also commonly used. I could easily find three words that the specific Chinese character would fit in, which were also used commonly - the other characters used in those compounds were characters that I've learnt previously, so it was interesting to see that those two different characters together could create another meaning.

Focusing on specific words and characters like I did this week made me realise that the learning and understanding of these words/characters were coming naturally as I investigated its alternative uses. This helped majorly and I recommend myself to keep using this method of learning harder characters in future studies.                   






Evaluation



Firstly, I'd like to say that making a template for the Pre and Post-Tests was more difficult than I thought, I'd love to find a website with pre-made templates for these kinds of sheets - I wasted a lot of time trying to make even grids and in the end I hand-drew over the lines to make different sections...

Pre-Test Unit 7

Now for the results of the Pre-Test. I made 3 minor errors, the first highlighted error, I highlighted it not because I got it totally wrong, but because I knew how it looked but I failed to write it down correctly with confidence; leaving an abnormal stroke. For 'Frighten, Feared", I wrote it almost correctly except that I put the left side on the ride side and vice versa. However, overall a good mark getting only 3 incorrect.

For the next couple of days before I do the Post-Test, I'll be implementing my technologies even further for the aim to reach 100% memorability. This means, through Quizlet, I'll not only be using the 'Write' and 'Test' functions, I'll also be testing out the games offered such as 'Match' and 'Gravity'.

Post - Test Unit 7

Just in case the message wasn't clear, I scored 100%!

(100% !!!)

Just in case the message wasn't clear, I scored 100%!

I'm especially happy this week as I made a promise to myself that I would try my hardest to follow my plans and activities set for this week on my LL Challenge, and I was able to keep it!. The biggest challenge was obviously retaining the memory of the characters and their strokes, but also, retaining the accumulating vocabulary every week can be a struggle. I can see that in the fifth week of my LL Challenge that, if I don't keep up with my Quizlet activities, I'm going to be struggling to ace the final test in Week 6. 

Final Notes

I think the biggest factors of this week's success comes from the different methods of testing my knowledge. I was able to ''test out' the vocabulary that I learnt in order to make it concrete. 

These small motivational boosters were actually quite meaningful after I tried hard to get the fastest time!

Knowing that the learning strategy I am using is working, it gives me a lot of positive motivation; my progress in this LL Challenge shows that now I have learnt and retained 69 new Chinese words! Motivation is one of the four key aspects of the language learning process (Nunan, 1997), and through knowing that these learning strategies are affecting my levels of motivation positively, I'm able to take responsibility of my own language learning and personal development; correspondingly to Weinstein and Mayer's (1986) study. If I push through with this, my learning goal is going to be met so I'll keep this in mind. 

I want to see whether or not I'll get tired of using this same method, It's only been a week since I've used the games etc. but I feel like it could get old - just like playing any other games constantly.
On that note, we'll see how that goes next week!



References:

Nunan. D, (1997) Lenguas Modernas , Does learner strategy training make a difference?,24, pp. 123-142

Nunan. D, Lillian, L. C., (2011-6), The learning styles and strategies of effective language learners, pp144-163 DOI:10.1016/j.system.2011.05.004

Weinstein. C, Mayer, R. (1996) (M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (third ed.), The Teaching of Learning Strategies, Macmillan, New York (1986), pp. 315-327

First Week of Chinese LL Challenge - How to start?!

你好！

Hey!

First of all, this week was super hectic. What I wrote in my proposal for my first week of this challenge, wasn't what I had in mind. I found out that I have an exam next week, (not because I'm a bad student, but because I forgot). Since it was 4 units of content, I decided to learn 2 units this week, and learn the other 2 units next week so that I would be prepared for the exam next week.

Therefore, this week, I will be covering the units: 4 and 5, and next week will be units 6 and 7.

Although this workload was more than I expected in the final proposal, I thought that it would be the most perfect opportunity to use Quizlet and Pleco to its full extent.

Unit 4 and 5 Study & Integration of Technologies

Quizlet

So I mentioned in my proposal that I would use this for its Text-to-Speech function. This function allows me to hear the pronunciation of the word precisely whilst looking at the Chinese character. More specifically, the app would first say the English word (along with the written English word), and then show the Chinese character whilst saying the Chinese character out loud.


***Quizlet users who make a study set (Vocabulary list + Translations) are mostly shared - meaning I can get access to them and use already-made flashcards etc.***

(Thanks jeremy_weir!)

I was able to find someone else's study set so that I didn't have to make up my own. I played the whole 37 character list for this unit on this app at least twice a day, and I was able to memorise how to say the Chinese word when I saw the English translation within the first half of the week.

Now that I was able to memorise the word verbally and be able to read it in the text-form, it was time to memorise how to write the Chinese characters.

As per usual, I started off by writing out the vocabulary list and writing down the characters. The left-hand side column is the English translation of the word, and on the right, are the repeated Chinese characters for that word.

(My Study Notes)

Pleco

As for Pleco, I mainly used it for Unit 5 as there were more complicated words that I struggled to memorise in rote. As I said in my final proposal, I used Pleco mainly for its stroke order and the example sentences given for the specific word.

As you can see, the words I chose to use in Pleco are not that many. I expected that I would use Quizlet far more than Pleco as the main goal was to learn and retain a certain number of words by the end of the week. This meant that I would be using apps such as Quizlet to memorise a high frequency of words easily, rather than to emphasise and spend too much time on a specific word unless they were too hard to memorise even after a few times. The words chosen for Pleco are words I had difficulty memorising even after writing them repeatedly.

Comments on these apps

I'd like to mention that these apps are perfect for both mobile phones and computers! The reason why I say this is because, the ubiquity of these devices allow me to find time wherever I am, to study these vocabulary. I remember reading in Mike Levy's (2009) study on 'Technologies in Use for Second Language Learning' that these devices were already great since the main focus for many developers were of the creation of applications and materials for easier vocabulary learning in this period. This was also one of the reasons (that I forgot to mention in my proposal) that I chose to use mobile devices and its applications; this is certainly working out very well!

  

Evaluation

I know that in my evaluation approach in my final proposal states that there would be a pre-test and a post-test in Week 1, however, that would mean I would be doing 4 units of pre and post-tests (2 units from previous week + 2 units in the current week). This was a little unreasonable as the workload was way too heavy (literally have no time to do this much work), therefore, weeks 0, 1, and 2 will have to be an exception so that I can achieve the main goal.
Hence, for this weeks evaluation (and for next week), I chose to evaluate on Unit 5 as it was the harder unit (Unit 4 was far easier/simpler), and next week I will do Unit 7 evaluation.

***Clarification*** I know this is getting way too complicated, but this is the final verdict for this week and next week.

This week's pre-test will be Unit 5 and there will be a post-test next week on Unit 5 along with the pre-test of Unit 7 and so on.

Pre-Test Results (Unit 5)

I stated in my proposal that my evaluation would have the actual quiz results from the Chinese class as my Pre-Test evidence, but I found out that it's not allowed to take assessed materials out of class for discussion. That's why I had to make this sketchy grid paper to make the tests.

(A little bit dodgy, but will improve on the format)

As you can see in the photo above, the pre-test and post-test were done on the same page. I had forgotten to take separate pictures of before and after, however, it is important to note that the pre-test and post-test photos have a whole weeks gap of learning through Pleco and Quizlet in between.

***The tests were done in pen to show that I haven't corrected any mistakes and to keep it authentic and credible. *** 

As you can see from the above results, I made 9 mistakes (highlighted in green). I guess the excuse for that week was that I had to do TWO quizzes instead of one so I made many mistakes. My prediction is that on the weeks where I do only ONE quiz, I will have much fewer errors since the workload isn't as heavy as the former.

Post-Test Results (Unit 5)
Since the start of making and editing the final proposal, I knew that the evaluation aspect of this challenge couldn't fail me as long as I did the work. I had ZERO errors in the post-test of the Unit 5 which had 9 errors in the pre-test! I already knew the results as I was doing the post-test since I was confident in what I was writing and I felt that it was almost too easy.

Final Thoughts

Despite this week and next week being the second-hardest weeks of this learning challenge, I think that if I keep doing what I am doing (with minor tweaking in between), I should be able to obtain my learning goal of memorising and retaining the knowledge 200 Chinese characters! I'm aware that there is a need to stay motivated in order to achieve it, but, knowing that I'm achieving my weekly goals gives me the satisfaction and motivation to drive me forward.

Let's see how long that lasts! 😆


References:
Levy , M. (2009), The Modern Language Journal, Technologies in Use for Second Language Learning. 
doi-org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00972.x 

Week 5 SLAT2002 Language Learning Challenge Blog -FINAL PROPOSAL-

Week 5 SLAT2002 Language Learning Challenge Blog 

-FINAL PROPOSAL-

My Challenge

I am now studying Chinese at an intermediate level since I have been studying this language for 3 years, however, I still have not managed to find an effective way to memorise the given vocabulary. I have noticed throughout the course of learning Chinese at UQ that I could not retain the knowledge of the Chinese characters that I have studied. Even if I was to ace the quizzes, I always seem to forget how to write some characters even after a week has passed. For this reason, and for reasons of obtaining a good grade for this course, I am heavily motivated to complete this blog with my utmost determination. 

My Learning Goal

The learning goal for me is to memorise the quizzed vocabulary, which is around 200 new Chinese by the end of the 6 week period. Not only this, I will be challenging myself to be able to retain the knowledge of the memorised words through the strategies outlined further below. By memorising these words effectively, I can achieve my ultimate goal of acing the weekly quizzes every week and still retaining these words for longer than just a week.

My Learning Styles and Strategies

During the lecture/tutorial time in the SLAT2002 class, there was an activity given to us which evaluates our learning styles. Through that activity, I wasn’t surprised to see that I was a visual learner as I love to take a lot of notes, draw diagrams, making summaries, copying down information from the board etc. I was however a little surprised to see that I had traits of a kinesthetic learner too. This is due to the fact that I believe studying in study groups, doing role-plays, and studying in short bursts with a lot of breaks are all effective ways of studying for me as well.

Through knowing this, the strategies I am determined to use include; not studying alone, taking notes of Chinese characters and an easier way to learn them, using the flashcard function from the chosen technology, and taking short breaks in between long periods of study.

Through writing this, I believe that these learning strategies could help not only with my Language Learning Challenge, but possibly with other content from other courses. 

The Technologies I Am Going to Test

Through studying Japanese as a major, I have found many apps that were specifically great for learning Japanese. As for Chinese, I cannot say that I have found an app yet other than the online dictionary ‘Pleco’. I have mainly used Pleco to assist me in my studies, but I have never used it for helping me with memorising the Chinese characters. I have used Quizlet back when I was studying Japanese, the flash cards had helped me through the memorisation process, and that’s why I decided on using this.

I have been fiddling around with the functions of Quizlet, and I have found some new options that I had not used before. The functions I intended to use were solely the flashcards and the text-to-speech function, however, upon discovering the ‘Learn’, ‘Test’, and ‘Match’ functions, I am keen to give them a go.

(Motivators!)

(Easy Access)

Furthermore, Pleco (Online Chinese Dictionary App) has an awesome function where it shows you the stroke order of characters, uses of those characters in a sentence, and other collocations with that specific character. Thinking about using these functions excites me as I know for a fact that these could help immensely in my progress with Chinese language learning.

(Word Collocations)

(Example Sentences for this word)

(Physically writing the characters)

(Stroke Order)

My Plan

At the moment, my plan is to break up the 200 Chinese characters that I will be learning into 6 weeks, therefore leaving me with around 30-35 Chinese characters a week.

Note: The Chinese characters I am quizzed on weekly from CHIN3020 are not always the same amount, that is why I cannot have the same set amount of characters I must learn every week. Also, the 30-35 Chinese characters will coincide with that week’s quiz from CHIN3020.

I will then use Quizlet for not only its flashcard functions but the function for text to speech, and memorise to the best of my ability the 30-35 Chinese characters for the given week. The efficacy of this app will be assessed through my evaluation approach.

My Evaluation Approach

The evaluation process consists of two steps. Firstly, I will receive my marks from the quizzes in my Chinese course. Based on the marks I receive from my tutor, I will know which words/Chinese characters I have written down incorrectly. The second way I will evaluate my approach will be based on my own tests.

My pre-test of the vocabulary will be in the form of my actual quiz answers + the characters that weren’t in the quiz. These pre-tests will be revisited in the following week when I receive the quiz results with a follow up in a post-test.

Note: In Week 1, the pre-test will be from the quiz taken from the previous week’s quiz – due to a public holiday being on a Wednesday, there will be two weeks’ worth of quizzes in Week 1 of the LLC – where only half of these will be in my pre-test for Week 1.

To be more precise:

Week 0: Pre-test of previous quiz in week 4 of uni classes;

Week 1: Pre-test of Week 5 quiz + Post-test of Week 4 quiz;

Week 2: Pre-test of Week 6 Quiz + Post-test of Week 5 quiz;

Week 3: Pre-test of Week 7 quiz + Post-test of Week 6 quiz;

Week 4: Pre-test of Week 8 quiz + Post-test of Week 7 quiz;

Week 5: Pre-test of Week 9 quiz + Post-test of Week 8 quiz;

Week 6: Pre-test of Week 10 quiz + Post-test of Week’s 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 quizzes.

 (Photos of these will be posted each week)

I will know that I have achieved my goal when I am able to see perfect results in both the pre and post-tests that I set for myself.