After 20 hours I can say that I of course still understand very little of Chinese, although a few words have become apparent quite quickly. These words are mostly commands and short responses, like "hello", "let's go", "good" and the like.
However my main focus at this moment is not to focus on words, but to become familiar with the phonetic nature of the language.
The process is seen this graph.
In television programs, the visual input provides the point of reference of the language content. What I have learned is that programs that provide a larger number of visuals connected to the spoken content is easier to follow. Thus for comprehension, dramas, and particularly televised theater is the easiest to understand. Debates and news with few accompanying visuals are the hardest.
I am focusing now on the phonetics of the language. Rather than listening for meaning, I am trying to listen for the quality of the sound. I'm doing this in the way a person may listen to classical music, to take in all the qualities and nuances of the sounds spoken.
At this stage, it is requiring a lot of effort. However some sound patterns are becoming easier to pick up, and the language is sounding slightly more familiar.
My intention is to practice in this way until it becomes easy to hear spoken words clearly and effortlessly.
So at the present moment, I am highly dependent on good accompanying visuals to provide understanding. David Long of ALGworld says that in the first few hundred hours of language acquisition, visuals contribute to the bulk of understanding. Gradually listening takes over and becomes independent of visuals.
He then proceeded to draw something like this graph which I have rendered in digital form.
The numbers above represent the hours spent actively listening to the target language. Please note the numbers are approximations and depend on student and situation.
Lastly, as another suggestion of Davids, I have started tracking my comprehension level in 4 different categories of shows, then averaged them out.
Each time I watch TV I am estimating how much I understood as a percentage. I am then averaging each category and the total average. When I reach 50 hours I will post my progress.
The graph shows averaged self approximations of how much I feel I understand. At AUA Bangkok this method is used for the ALG assessment. Through more than 15 years of testing, David has stated that once a student reaches 50% or more by their own assessment, their predictions prove quite accurate.
So for now, treat these estimations with reservation. But when I hit future milestones, further observations and comparing numbers may give some interesting insights.
