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"Immersion and integration"
Children learn languages neither quickly nor effortlessly. Adults have several advantages that allow us to learn more efficiently. It’s true that children achieve better pronunciation and accent, but not mainly because they are children, but because adults don’t care enough, don’t receive enough feedback or don’t spend enough time. So, no, you’re not too old. You might be too lazy, too close-minded or too busy, but you’re definitely not too old.
You don’t have to go abroad to learn Chinese. The main difference between staying at home and going abroad is that it requires less effort to learn once you’re there (although it still requires quite a lot of effort). This means that you can learn Chinese at home, provided that you are determined enough and create an immersion environment yourself. This article gives suggestions and advice on how to achieve that.
If you want to improve your listening ability, always having something to listen to is essential. Preferably, it should require effort to NOT listen to Chinese. Only have Chinese audio on your phone, set a radio station on autostart on your computer, etc. This article is about RTI, an excellent source of listening material. It’s good mostly because of its diversity and ease of access, meaning that you will never run out of things to listen to.
If you enjoy playing computer games, why don’t enjoy them in Chinese? I’ve played a lot of StarCraft 2 in Chinese and even if I don’t play any longer, I still watch several matches online each week, with live commentary in Chinese. I have learnt and still learn tons of Chinese from this and enjoy every minute. As the title implies, this article is about playing or watching StarCraft in Chinese and improve your Chinese at the same time.
If we want to combine studying with a normal life or if we want to get the most out of pure language studying, we really need to examine the time we have available and see if it’s possible to learn more without removing other important things. This article uses the metaphor of a barrel with rocks, pebbles, sand and water to show that most people have more time available than they think.
Learning Chinese through music is underrated. Music is a very efficiently way of improving your Chinese in an enjoyable way that won’t interfere much with other things you’re doing (simply decrease your exposure to music in English and replace it with Chinese). This article contains five songs I like, but there will be much more in future articles.
This is the fifth article in my series about improving listening ability. After having covered background and passive listening, the topic this time is active listening, including a discussion of what it is and why it’s good, along with some exercises you can try.
If you like computer games, why don’t you start playing them in Chinese? It’s not a substitute for other types of studying, but it’s an excellent way of increasing your exposure to Chinese while having fun at the same time.
Practising sports is a very good way of learning Chinese. It’s not only a way of learning the language itself, it’s also an excellent way of meeting new friends. I’ve practised a number of sports during my time in Taiwan and in this post, I share some of the experiences with you.
Background listening is not a substitute for more active forms of listening practice, but it’s still very useful. Think of it as a way of filling your days with learning opportunities without requiring much extra time.
