I’m constantly feeling guilty about “not doing enough” when it comes to my hobby of learning Chinese. I have been averaging around 3-4hrs every day (I often do 25-minute pomodoro sessions to ensure full focus) for these last 6 months, balancing it with a full-time job, working out and trying to be social. I have no co-dependents and my job is sometimes quite chill which makes this doable. Either way, I still feel guilty of not being able to “obsess” over it every day by studying 8hrs as, apparently, some internet people claim they do. Even while balancing it with other stuff. Or you know, just looking at students studying engineering/law/medical school and also saying they spend 8-10hrs a day studying. Like, I didn’t even spend a fraction of this time studying by myself when I went to uni.
In the end, how many hours of deep focus a day is reasonable? Are the people saying they study 8hrs a day just lying? Or is a lot of unproductive time counted into these 8hrs? Like yes, they sit for 8hrs, but every 10 minute they check their phone for 10 minutes and then resume studying?
As long as you are actually trying everyday, I wouldn’t feel bad about the amount of time spent. If you only feel comfortable doing 25 minutes, you may retain that information better than doing longer but cramming it.
Especially in a language like Chinese where everything is extremely context sensitive like 是 and 时. (Have been doing 30 minutes a day of mandarin for a year and made a ton of progress. Right where you are just keep at it)
Absolutely, I try to avoid having any “zero-day”. There are days where I study a lot less, but it’s never zero. At least I’ll do my Anki cards. 加油 to you too!
Can I ask what resources you are using? I’m mainly using HelloChinese courses and Pleco for stuff in the wild I find. Looking to branch out. 谢谢
Yeah HelloChinese I’ve heard is great though I haven’t used it. I’d recommend you to try Pleco’s graded readers which you can buy in their store. DuChinese is another great option for graded readers (paid subscription) which has helped me a lot.
A more unorthodox suggestion is John DeFrancis’ “Chinese Reader”-series from the 60s and 70s starting with “Beginning Chinese Reader”. Those books, written in traditional Mandarin (but with simplified versions in the appendix) will start you from zero and teach you the most common 1200 characters and 8000+ words. He uses a spaced repetition scheme so every character is repeated in a calculated manner, like 10 times the first lesson it’s introduced, 5 times the next etc… They’re really amazing and available on the web if you search for it, or you can also buy them as they’ve been reprinted. I’ve been going through it steadily and even though I knew a lot of the characters already when I started reading, it has increased my reading speed and comprehension of what I’m reading drastically. It’s just so packed with good reading material, even though it’s a bit dated. It’s really hard to find that much graded reading material that progressively increases your skills.
For listening, I’d recommend podcasts like MaomiChinese, Talk Taiwanese Mandarin, TeaTime Chinese and Chinese Podcast with Shenglan. Hope this helps!