Over on the ChinesePod discussion forum, Ken Carroll asks how ChinesePod fits into your daily routine. I’ve recently altered the way I study Chinese and am enjoying a renewed sense of excitement at how things are progressing so I thought I’d share Ken’s question, and my response here.

I’m trying to understand you better. I’d like to know more about how you use ChinesePod. Do you have a daily routine for it? How/when/where does it fit into your day? To what extent does it allow you to learn on your terms, to fit the learning into your lifestyle, to bring the learning to you?

On average, I seem to be spending around 4 hours a day somewhere in between home and the office. This equates to two working days every week travelling (changing this part of my daily routine is still a work in progress). If I could only spend a fraction of that time studying Chinese then I’m sure progress would be good.

The reality is that, so far, mobile learning has not worked for me. In the mornings I tend to sleep, or stare blankly out of the train window and in the evenings it is again sleep or colleagues that keep me from my studies. “Excuses!” you say? The reality is that studying whilst doing something else (even travelling) isn’t as effective as dedicated study time.

• First thing in the morning I listen to a ChinesePod (Elementary) lesson whilst eating breakfast. If there is time I will try and run through the dialogue (without English) on the site.
• When I arrive at work, I save all the lesson vocabulary to my ChinesePod vocab manager, a step in my routine that has stuck for no particular reason other than that I have always done this. I don’t use ChinesePod for vocab management.
• I then run through the expansion sentences and exercises. I try and work out the expansion sentences from Hanzi alone. If I get stuck I listen to the audio, and if I still can’t understand, I mouse over the individual characters.
• Once I have completed the exercises I mark the lesson as studied and get on with clearing out my inbox.

It’s not always as clean cut as this. Some days things don’t go to plan and so I have a couple of fall back options. The best time to listen to lessons is in the morning, preferably before I leave home, but definitely before I get on the train. It is best to leave a short period of time between listening to the lesson and working through the exercises. My method is by no means perfect, but since trying this routine I’ve been enjoying my study a lot more.

Other tasks that I am trying to form into habits are:

• Posting on Twitter in Chinese. There have been some great discussions between Chinese learners on Twitter.
• I copy all vocab (using Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) from the ChinesePod site into a master vocab list. I then import this into Anki for study. I also share this list with a number of people.
• Copy the expansion sentences into an Anki deck. This allows me to test myself against all the sentences and phrases that I should know – something that doesn’t appear to be possible on the ChinesePod site.
• Running through 15 minutes of vocab study on Anki.
• Try to work a couple of spoken phrases into daily life. In doing this I need to kick the habit of mixing Chinese and English in a single sentence.

My head is full of ideas for how to utilise the upcoming ChinesePod API to eliminate the ragged edges from my routine (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V I’m looking at you). I will post more on these thoughts soon. In the meantime though I am more than happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Photo Credit: alexandralee
ChinesePod: Learn Chinese with ChinesePod