I almost forgot I’d signed up for a Chinese Challenge - in theory I’m supposed to listen to another 58 hours by the end of this month - hahaha! (the other stats are maybe do-able). (No, I won’t be cheating!) Will I be able to do the listening???!
Let’s see…2 hours a day, eh…or maybe 4 hrs a day to cover the sick days…haha!! Okay, okay, I laugh at anything these days…
Moral: don’t develop amnesia & leave one’s challenges to the last minute! :)~
德里克, 你太牛了! Meaning: Derek, you ROCK! (and not the stupid Google Translate of you’re so bad!) You seem to have the knack of turning up & encouraging me when I need it. Best of luck to you:)
Ah, the joys of the mp3 player!
I’ve been up in the wee hours lately, nursing my sick little boy through the nights. It occurred to me - why don’t I listen to the Chinese material on my mp3 at the same time??! I haven’t been able to do “dedicated study” time, but I’ve been able to do over 9 hrs “incidental” listening:)
Mandarin…such a beautiful language…
Edited to add last night’s!
If you fall short of the listening goal by 10 or 20 hours but you make all the other goals, then I would say that is a job well done.
Thanks for that. I’m prioritising the listening first, though, since for some reason it’s the hardest thing for me to do in any language. Almost counter-intuitive! It’s not hard usually to make a lot of lingQs, and they always set the required reading amount too low imo.
加油吧ˊ_>ˋ 有志者事竟成. But somehow don’t push yourself too far.Extremes meet. Keep the process at the speed that wouldn’t overwhelm you.
Thanks Colin and a0160166! If you check out my stats on my homepage under “90daychallenge”, you will see that I’ve made up a lot of ground in 10 days!
Plus I’m more in love with Chinese language now than ever. It’s the last thing I hear before going to bed, and now I try to use my mp3 player as soon as I get up. Apart from washing dishes, I listen to Chinese during the drudgery of spoon-feeding my precious 8 year old three meals a day (during school holidays).
I’ve noticed I’ve been waking up with Chinese words or expressions, and often whilst listening, I can picture the characters sometimes. I admit that I prefer the Beijing accent over Taiwan etc - but I try not to restrict myself.
I find you can get so much listening time in if, as soon as you wake up, you put on the headphones and start listening to whatever language you are learning. Walking to work, breaks at work, shopping, dishes, hoovering, during all these things I’m listening. It really all adds up.
Yay, reached a new LingQ level in Chinese - a first ever.
Congrats on growing your feet! That’s all you need to play soccer, unless you want to be the goalie. 
Why is it enough to play soccer? You’re saying something weird.
@andrey - It makes perfect sense: he means that my avatar can now wear soccer shoes. It looks like you’ve never visited the avatar “store” yet for either Chinese or English where you can “buy” background items, clothes and accessories for your avatar. (Unless you don’t care).These items are actually free, since you pay for it with tokens earned from making LingQs. Just click on your avatar cartoon picture above your progress snapshot in each language to enter the Avatar Store.
Your avatar grows with you as you progress through the levels eg, when I graduated from Beginner 1 level, shoes became available for me to “buy” (when I had enough tokens) for my avatar, to go with my avatar’s soccer ball.
The avatar grows feet at Beginner 2. Your English avatar has hands, so it could be the goalie. Avatar Help
Tx for the link - I can never find it when I want it! (That, and spare mouse batteries…)
I’d love to be able to wear a shirt.
I use to listen to audios while working, while taking the bus, while walking to the street or jogging. I reach about 5 hours of listening a day, so believe it! It is possible! Good luck with your challenge!
Sometimes I don’t know why I set myself ridiculous tasks such as trying to learn something like 600 Chinese words in under a month (because I slacked off my challenge earlier), or listen to 58 audio hours….oh man!
But here I am, now, with only 30 words to go (currently mid-morning), and counting, to meet my tasks before the end of the month. And only 23 listening hours to go… After that, I have to finish my French challenge: only another 55 audio hrs…
Why do we push ourselves? What is it that makes us want to take on challenges? I’ve had everything under the sun thrown at me this month. Yet, we still grit our teeth and thumb our nose at opposition.I digress, but……even as a kid I liked to compete against myself. Later, I happened to see a “hard-looking” Logic textbook in my university campus bookstore. So I decided to study formal Logic studies, including truth-functions and derivations, for no other reason than: “Well, if those 20-somethings can do it, so can I!” (and I did!)
I went to law-school, too, for no reason than, “Because I CAN!”, even though I was a sole-parent of 2 then, wearing a t-shirt, jeans, backpack and sneakers to class, whilst everyone else it seemed came with their laptop briefcases and dressed like something out of “Law & Order”. Ha! I often deliberately wore a bright pink T-shirt, as my way of saying, “but just you wait and see!” Mind you, when it was time to accept my Law Prize (in a ceremony officiated by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of SA), I made sure I looked like something out of Law & Order in front of those 20-somethings! ^^
Now back to Chinese: When I had 150 words left to learn for my challenge I couldn’t see how I could learn anymore from the vocab pages. I never seem to learn from the online flashcards, either. Then I filtered the vocab page to show only ‘3’ status, remembering I put words straight into this category when I meet them, if I can read them or almost know them etc. Bingo! That reduced it to 80 words to go… Then what??! I set the vocab page to SRS option - bingo! Whole bunch of words showed up in the list that I already knew. Now I’m down to 30 remaining words, and haven’t finished going through yet. Thank goodness I didn’t have to try to learn words from scratch - I would have failed the challenge otherwise.
Anyway, back to my Chinese:)
“It’s the last thing I hear before going to bed, and now I try to use my mp3 player as soon as I get up.” I’m similar. Did a post, years ago, wondering if this was a beneficial time : Tuning In On The Twilight Zone - Language Forum @ LingQ
You seen to be doing a great work, congratulations! I think it is very good to compete with ourselves, cause it makes as feel more and more proud of ourselves, since we are not fighting and average enemy, we’re fighting ourselves, which happens to be the most equitable contender!
I think I’ve made myself a little difficult to understand, by I hope you got the meaning, which is that you’re awesome and are doing a great work, friend 
I DID IT!! - reached my first 1,000 words:) Yee-haaaa!!!
What did you guys do when you reached your first impossible 1,000? And for those who’ve studied more than one language, which was the hardest for you to get 1,000 words?
Out of Japanese, French and Chinese, Chinese vocab was by far the hardest for me to acquire.
Met all my challenge targets so far, except for 17 listening hours to go within the upcoming week remaining for my challenge. (Then I have to finish my French listening target).