For 2012, an interested post could also be a selection of non-related to language learning Chinese reading material – press, blogs, novels – particularly appropriate to accelerate the reading speed.

Vocabulary – You have to consciously seek out and/or put yourself into a situation which allows you to use the vocabulary you wish to activate. The other thing you can do to help w/this is to write sentences using the word(s) you wish to make a part of your active vocab and having a teacher or native speaker give it the once over for usage and grammar. Writing sentences sounds horrible to most, but it is very effective. If you can use the word properly in a sentence, then you understand the meaning of the word and its usage.

@vermillon @sara
The jump from intermediate to advanced is slow. This is where many people will get stuck for a while and/or just quit. At this point you have to forge ahead and believe that you’re going to get there. From a testing standpoint (level 6 HSK or level 5 TOCFL), I think this transition is all about expanding vocabulary and reading. For testing purposes, you have to be able to read fast. In order to read fast, you need to read often. You also need to have the necessary vocabulary such that you’re not pausing too often or skipping too many words which costs you time and comprehension.

I agree with Vermillon, getting from intermediate to advanced is an difficult change to make and I feel like stuck at the intermediate level. It’s easy to get here, but now it requires some serious work to get to advanced level. Any posts helping us with this stage are more than welcomed.

As I’m very interested in different ways of learning, your blog have been great read for me. Even more now when I have some 对外汉语教学 courses at the university.

I would like to note that Chinese TV is quite popular in Taiwan. The Chinese TV sections in stores / rental shops is almost always bigger than the Taiwanese TV sections, I see more posters for Chinese TV shows than Taiwanese TV shows, and so forth. Considering that Taiwanese people have excellent access to American, Japanese, Hong Kong, and Korean TV (holy moley. Korean TV is super popular in Taiwan), as well as their own TV shows which, in my opinion, are no worse than American TV, I do not think Chinese TV would be popular in Taiwan if it sucked (or rather, if it sucked more than TV in general – I am also one of those people who finds most TV boring).

@Alan: Thank you! I must admit that I’m quite pleased with the combat diver and the aircraft carrier myself. 🙂 All the best to you as well!

@Sara: Thank you for the suggestion. As Vermillion points out, I think practising is the obvious answer. I’ve somehow managed to learn English this way and even though that’s not the same thing, perhaps, I do think that a large passive vocabulary combined with lots of active practise will slowly activate that vocabulary. Focused practise on specific words or constructions is also a good idea, such as writing sentences with words you don’t know how to use or discussing vocabulary-related things with native speakers.

@Vermillion: I agree with what you say and I will try to do that. I do think quite a large numbers I’ve written so far apply to advanced speakers as well, but more focused articles would indeed be a good idea. As for resources, that’s harder to accomplish simply because I don’t like watching TV and I’ve only read a dozen novels in Chinese so far. Also, everybody’ has different preferences, so asking for resources is probably best done in a forum.

@Erik: Glad you like the idea! I will probably start out with beginner-oriented content, probably something like “ten common mistakes I see students make” (related to how they study, of course, I’m not going to teach people to put time adverbials in the right place or how to use 了). What do you think? Do you have any other ideas?

I guess the difficult part is deciding what kind of content those mini lectures should deal with. Creating a good discussion about it might help.