Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles in the ‘Advanced’ category Page 23

  1. A minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand

    Learning characters in the first place takes time, but you also need to maintain that knowledge. This article presents an efficient way to remember how to write Chinese characters in the long term.

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  2. How to adjust your Chinese listening to the right level

    Listening to enough Chinese is difficult because it’s hard to find and manage the right amount of audio. One of the key points to success is to make sure you have enough easy audio available. This article discusses the importance of adjusting your audio to your current state of mind.

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  3. Three steps to more and better Chinese listening practice

    Learning to understand spoken Chinese takes time. This article looks at three strategies for better Chinese listening practice for long-term learning.

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  4. What you intend to write is more important than the character you actually write

    Why is focusing on intent important when learning to write Chinese characters? What you intend to write is more important than what you actually write.

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  5. 24 great resources for improving your Mandarin pronunciation

    In this article, I list 24 great resources for learning pronunciation. Naturally, some of them are limited to Mandarin Chinese, but many are more general in nature and works for other Chinese dialects or even other languages. Resources are sorted into Basic sound references, Pronunciation explained, Advice on learning pronunciation and Useful software and applications.

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  6. How to find a suitable Chinese name

    Finding a good Chinese name can be hard. If you care about your name, you should make an effort to find a good one.

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  7. How knowing your best performance in Chinese can help you improve

    When learning Chinese, it’s important to know how good your best performance is, because this determines the way you study. If your best performance is good enough, you mostly need high-volume practice, more of the same will get you there. But if your best performance isn’t good enough, you need to change tactics and go for high-quality practice instead.

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  8. How translation to another language can help you learn Chinese

    Have you tried translating Chinese to your native language as learning method? You should; it has more benefits than you might realise!

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  9. How to find the time and motivation to read more Chinese

    How to find the time and motivation to read more Chinese

    Learning to read in Chinese requires time and motivation, and this is what this article is about. How do you make yourself read more? How do you stay motivated when learning? Don’t forget to share your own experiences in the comments!

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  10. Why you should think of characters in terms of functional components

    Learning about the structure of Chinese characters can help enormously when learning the language. This article is an in-depth look at functional components, i.e. parts of characters that give the whole character either its meaning or its sound. It’s also a discussion about why we really shouldn’t talk so much about radicals when learning Chinese.

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