It’s been a while since I took some time to talk about my own progress here. Today being Friday, and a new podcast coming your way in the wee small hours of the morning (or tomorrow afternoon, much the same), I thought this might be a fine time to share with fellow learners some of the things I’ve been putting in the win column… and a few frustrations I’d like to toss in a wood chipper.

First, the successes.

I am absolutely crushing those Newbie lessons. I do little victory dances when I’m reviewing them on The Fix. The Elementary lessons are still challenging for me, but considering that I’ve been doing this less than a year and I didn’t speak a word of Chinese before I found ChinesePod… well, I’m all right with that.

In all honesty, the lessons themselves aren’t intimidating. It’s trying to do The Fix afterwards. I do okay on the vocabulary portion, but when it comes time to spontaneously generate new sentences using the vocab, I lose it. It’s just too fast for me at this point. And, of couse, they’re occasionally asking me to produce sentences using words I don’t yet know.

I’ve also started making more friends in China, and I spend a sporadic few hours online chatting with them every night while I try to get some work done. About 50% of these chats are in Chinese, and my typing there is getting pretty good! I still can’t figure out the way to type the 女 character quickly. It seems like there ought to be an easier way.

Now the losses.

I don’t know why, but there is some vocabulary that I simply cannot make stick in my head. Nearly every word in the Key and Supplemental Vocabulary for the Elementary lesson - The Old Man Who Moved a Mountain, for example. I have this lesson printed out and taped to the wall by my desk. I have stared at it for eight hours a day since that lesson came out. I still can’t make it stick. And some of this stuff is important! If I don’t remember the word for “to stab” from that lesson on contradictions, I think I’ll be okay. But I would actually use these words. It drives me a little crazy that I can’t remember them.

Other than that, my only real frustration involves this blog. I’m grateful for the folks who keep coming here, who keep it a living, breathing space to discuss the journey of language acquisition, but I can’t help but miss the readers that have lost their way here. The Conversations section on CPod seems to be a good place to get seen these days, but I feel even worse for the other bloggers. I went and took a look at their pages today and it seems like they get even less traffic than I do! Show some love, people! If you speak German, Spanish, Japanese, French or Korean, do me a favor and go visit their blogs. Let them know they’re not alone out there!

That’s it for me, folks. The new movie review will be posted tomorrow (or late tonight). I hope you like it!