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Hacking Chinese focuses on how to learn rather than what to learn. This website is about unveiling the mysteries of learning a language in general and about learning Chinese in particular. If you’re new to Hacking Chinese, please check the essential articles below!

Essential articles

Spaced repetition software and why you should use it

Spaced repetition means that you review words you want to learn in certain intervals to maximise learning efficiency. Since this involves keeping track of much data, a computer program is needed to handle it properly. Spaced repetition software is the best thing since sliced bread and it’s a must in the long run.

Learning Chinese words really fast

After spending two articles building up our toolkit to learn Chinese more efficiently, the time is now ripe to actually use all these to something genuinely useful. It’s time to make those long-term investments pay off. This article explains how to learn new words really fast.

Memory aids and mnemonics to enhance learning

Remember almost anything is a skill that can be learnt. In fact, some of the methods I talk about in this article have been known for thousands of years. Most mnemonic methods use the power of association to enable us to remember things. In this article, I discuss how we can use this to help us learn Chinese much more efficiently.

The 10,000 hour rule – Blood, sweat and tears

Is mastering a subject mainly about innate gifts or about hard work? If it is about hard work, how long does it take? The first of these questions has of course been attracting people’s attention for a long time, but it’s not the people who ask this question who are in trouble, but those who don’t even think it is question in the first pla…

The kamikaze approach to learning Chinese

The kamikaze approach is a method for advancing faster than you are supposed to do in your language learning. It means that you jump into an environment you cannot handle, but that you will learn to handle if you have time and determination. It is like swimming by diving into the deep end of the pool. Still, it’s not stupid as long as you know what you’re doing, and I provide many useful tips on how to survive.

Goals and motivation, part 1 – Introduction

I think everybody knows that motivation is something you need to succeed at any task. I’m naturally going to assume that you are motivated to learn Chinese (otherwise, why are you reading this?), but that’s not going to be enough. Do you know why you want to learn Chinese? Are you the ambitious entrepreneur? The curious student? The involuntary learner? The Chinese culture afficionado? The linguistics nerd?

Holistic learning

Holistic learning is about integrating what you learn into a web of things you already know and thus making it much easier to learn and remember. This is in contrast with traditional education methods which often emphasise isolated facts and don’t make proper use of what learners already know.

Fascinating and exciting, not weird and stupid

There seem to be two different approaches to learning a foreign language, and learners place themselves somewhere between these two poles: Either you think Chinese is weird and stupid, or you think it’s fascinating and beautiful. What approach you have will greatly influence your learning.

Benchmarking progress to stay motivated

When we set out to learn Chinese, everything we learn is new and we can feel that we improve for each day that goes by, for each time we are exposed to the language. We know this because, in relative terms, we’re learning so much. As we progress, this feeling weakens. In this article, we look at benchmarking and how it can help us stay motivated.

Creating a powerful toolkit: Character components

If you plan to learn to read or write Chinese, you will need to learn parts of characters (components) and parts of words (characters). There are an untold number of combinations of these, and if you only study these it will be impossible. This would be a little bit like learning maths by studying thousands of examples, but never actually looking at the underlying equations.

The importance of knowing many words

Any teacher, student or researcher will agree that vocabulary is very important, but few of them will go as far as I will in this direction. I don’t simply believe that vocabulary is king, I believe it’s god emperor as well. Learning many words enables you to communicate and it also makes you learn other areas of the language faster.

Mental models and making mistakes

Everybody knows that making mistakes is part of learning and that you have to live with it. Some of you might even have heard that mistakes are good, as long as they are genuine. Very few, however, live according to this maxim. In this article I talk about making mistakes and that a healthy attitude towards mistakes is of great importance when trying to learn Chinese.

Creating a powerful toolkit: Individual characters

Learning to read Chinese requires intimate knowledge of individual characters (rather than words), not only because it allows us to decipher and guess the meaning of words we haven’t seen before, but also because it is necessary to understand the building blocks if we are to use mnemonics to remember a character.

Listening ability, a matter of practice?

Many people have asked me how to improve listening ability, not only when learning Chinese, but when learning any language. The problem is that there seems to be no tactic to employ and no smart tricks; to get better at listening, you simply need to practice. Is this really the case? Is listening ability simply about listening a lot? Can’t you hack it?

Achieving the impossible by being inspired

Teaching and inspiring are two closely related things. If you can see all superiors as sources of inspiration and knowledge, you will advance faster than if you view them as rivals or opponents. Similarly, realise that you have your own strong sides that inspire other people. Don’t hesitate to teach others if they want to be taught. Inspiration is cyclic in its nature and should flow freely in all directions.

Enjoying the journey while focusing on the destination

Everybody has different reasons for studying Chinese, but whatever the final goal is, it is important to make the journey there interesting in some way. Enjoying studying isn’t simply a cliché, it’s quite necessary if you want to invest the time needed to master a language. This article discusses the journey, the destination and the relationship between them.

The art of being corrected

Very few people can receive criticism for something they do with a perfectly open mind and a positive attitude. In fact, I would go as far as saying that being able to do that is an art. Being corrected is a natural process when learning a language and something you should welcome with open arms, even if it takes courage and practice to do so.

When perfectionism becomes an obstacle to progress

For some people, completing a certain task is not enough, it has to be done perfectly.  Intuitively, I count myself to this group of perfectionists, but intellectually, I’ve gradually come to realise that this is a double-edged sword and that there are times (quite often, actually) when aiming for perfection is simply stupid. In this article,…

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What now?

Apart from checking out the articles above, there are many other ways you can access the content of Hacking Chinese, depending on if you ‘re looking for something specific or just general ideas on how to improve your learning. Here are some suggestions:

• Browse the archive – The best way of accessing the content on Hacking Chinese is by visiting the archive. Here you will find all content sorted by category (such as vocabulary, listening or living abroad), as well as all articles in chronological order.
• Sign up for the newsletter – I don’t write about everything on the website, so if you want to receive tips, tricks and other information that isn’t available online, fill in your e-mail address in the box to the left and sign up!
• Join Hacking Chinese on Facebook - Facebook is an excellent way to join the community. Although all important articles are posted here on Hacking Chinese, discussions, announcements and much more will be posted on Facebook.
• Follow Hacking Chinese on Twitter – On Twitter, I share things that are interesting, useful or otherwise worthwhile, but are too small to write entire posts about. This is an excellent way of keeping track of what’s going on in the Chinese learning world.
• Subscribet with RSS - Hacking Chinese is updated at least once every week, so subscribing is a good idea if you want to follow what’s going on and are keen not to miss anything important.
• Ask a question - Do you have a question about learning Chinese? You can access the Question page via the top navigation bar. If you have questions about particular articles, please post comments instead.
• Give feedback - Do you have ideas, suggestions or comments regarding Hacking Chinese? Feel free to use the Guestbook to leave a message. If you want to contact me personally or want other ways of getting in touch, please see the Contact page.
• Tell your friends - If you know other people who study Chinese, why don’t you tell them about Hacking Chinese? Everything here is free and more visitors means more activity and more suggestions for how to improve the site.

Hacking Chinese? Hacking? Chinese?

“Hacking” means to gain access to hidden information using a skilled and sometimes secretive method. The ideas shared on this website aren’t secrets as such, but since I find that very few people indeed speak about them, in some cases they might as well have been highly guarded state secrets. To learn Chinese, you need to to unlock and unveil the language and understand how it works, and you need to know how you can do this in a skilled way. In other words, you need to hack it!

To the outsider, “Chinese” might seem like a straightforward term. It isn’t. However, what I mean here is simple enough: I mean all aspects of modern Chinese as it’s spoken, used, studied or otherwise exists in the world today. Most of the articles will be applicable to learning languages in general, others will even be relevant for completely different subjects. As for spoken Chinese, I’m going to focus exclusively on Mandarin, but if you for some reason want to learn another dialect, I can assure you that over 95% of the articles are still relevant.

Opening doors rather than showing the correct way

The primary goal with Hacking Chinese is not to tell you the ultimate solution to all language learning problems, because it’s naive to think that there is such a thing. Research and science might lend credibility to certain methods, but even so, students and their learning environments differ wildly across space and time. My mission is to open as many doors as I can to show you a multitude of ways to reach efficient learning, but it will be up to you to walk the roads behind those doors. Only you know if a road suits you or not.

Hacking Chinese is for everyone

This website is meant for anyone who is interested in learning Chinese, regardless if you haven’t started yet or if you have been studying for ten years, if you study a few hours every week in your home country or if you study full-time living in China, if you study because you think Chinese is the most interesting language in the world or if you study because circumstances force you to do so. Naturally, different sections will be relevant for different groups, but I’m sure that you find many articles of interest regardless of who you are.