Oh crap.

I've just started to look at the example sentences. It turns out that even after 3 years, I know almost no Chinese at all, just a handful of random characters.

Darn.

Don't get discouraged. Some (many?) of the example sentences are quite strange and use advanced vocabulary.

You can also take it as a challenge. Chinese is a high mountain to climb and requires sustained effort, but you also have to make sure the effort is in the right areas. If you've been focusing on conversational Chinese, for example, you won't necessarily know a lot of technical or formal terms that might be used in, say, a government statement on agricultural policy.

Are you studying lots of words? I find that tremendously helpful for understanding unfamiliar texts.

James

I wouldn't worry about it. I agree with James that a lot of the sentences are strange (or very colloquial, or use advanced vocabulary, etc.). As long as you are noticing progress in other areas (speaking, listening, reading, etc.) I wouldn't worry about it.

The example sentences are not just strange, but often deeply (and entertainingly) peculiar, so they are not a good guide. But the best thing to transform character-by-character understanding into sentence-level (and larger unit of meaning) understanding is to read, read, read. Just print out a chunk of text, and work through it. It's surprising how quickly you can make progress thanks to all that skrittering...

Yeah, the example sentences are harder than one would expect. We are planning to revamp the system and get a lot of easier sentences in there.

It's good that the example sentences will get easier, for example with 难受 I added the mnemonic that Nick made, 我感冒了，觉得很。。。 That's already more helpful to me than most of the example sentences. Also for 几乎，I have the mnemonic 我。。。就要成功了 that someone else made. Maybe being able to chose between a low-medium-hard level of example sentences would be nice too.

Thanks guys - still, if this marriage falls apart, I'm going looking for a French woman. Surely
I can get the hang of verb conjugations.

DavidHM21 I feel your pain! I have been studying Japanese for over 5 years and I feel the same way some times. My marriage is still holding up (going on 34 years now) but my wife often looks at me strangely when I talk about my language studyingbut I still keep hobbling along anyway. I think that it is important to enjoy the journey as the destination often seems beyond my reach. Still, from time to time I find some satisfaction in being able to understand bits and pieces and my Japanese colleagues are very supportive of every little breakthrough. My prescription for success in language and marriage: Don't die and don't give up!

Nick don't make them easier.

What would be nice would be, the ability to set easy, medium , hard and advanced examples.

davidhm21 , you've just got to keep at it, just keep practicing reading.

Could try a text book like Short term spoken chinese or New Practical Chinese reader
and just work through them chapter by chapter.

Or start with kids books I've got a few on my iphone/ipad - Peter and the rabbit is free
http://blog.nciku.com/blog/en/?p=1682
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=380437537&mt=8

I still need to look up a good few words.

Also a few movies/dvds can help as well.
(Make sure they are mandarin not canto)

Find that the subtitles on the Lord of the rings dvd (mandarin) are quite easy as is keeping up with the dialog without to many rewinds/jog shuttle.

Also got Madagascar 1 and 2, Kungfu panda, ice age 1,2,3 , the three lord of the rings dvds, shrek 1,2 and 3 , monsters and Avatar.

Avatar is a bit to hard yet.

Next maybe Harry Potter.


The class I'm doing has just covered resultative clauses/constructions.

My problem is thinking in English and making my chinese sentences way to long and complex.

alxx, you can already pick which sentence you want, and that'll still be around, so you'll still be able to pick longer sentences. You'll also be able to create your own and edit others', like with the mnemonics.

Yay! That will be amazing. Can't wait!