Articles in the ‘Advanced’ category Page 24
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Learning to write Chinese characters through communication
How much of your character learning is done through communication? It should be a significant part, but I think this is very rare, both inside and outside classrooms. This article is about using communication to make character writing more fun, meaningful and effective.
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Focusing on communication to learn Chinese
Communicating is the essence of languages and the goal of language learning. In this article, I discuss bot the merits of focusing on communication, but I also explain why focusing too much on communication isn’t the best way of learning.
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Change your attitude to enjoy life and learn more Chinese
Attitude is one of the key factors when learning a language as well as for life in general. This article is about how a change of perspective can turn negative situations into learning opportunities and become a happier person overall.
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How long have you studied Chinese? 290 years or 58 992 hours!
This article is built on a survey of readers’ study time and shows clearly that counting study time in years is completely bunk. It also shows that most people greatly overestimate how much they actually study.
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About cheating, spaced repetition and learning Chinese
Have you even found yourself grading your answer slightly more positively than you should? Even though we all know that we shouldn’t, I think this is quite common. We shouldn’t do this! We’re only cheating ourselves and impeding our progress. In this article, I talk a little about cheating, spaced repetition software and some related consequences and theories.
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Study more Chinese: Time boxing vs. micro goals
Time boxing and micro goals are both excellent strategies for getting things done, but which one is most suitable for learning Chinese? In this article, I discuss the pros and cons with the two methods and how that relates to learning Chinese. The short answer is that I use both a lot, but in different situations.
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7 ways of learning to write Chinese characters
There are many ways of practising writing Chinese characters and they all have their pros and cons. In this article, I discuss seven different ways of practising and what advantages and disadvantages they have for you as a learner. Which do you use?
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How long have you studied Chinese?
How long have you studied Chinese? Two years? Three thousand hours? Even though most people don’t expect an answer in hours, there are several reasons we should really count our learning time in hours. It’s the time we spend learning Chinese that matters, not when we moved to China or started learning Chinese.
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Focusing on radicals, character components and building blocks
How much should you focus on learning building blocks? If you don’t focus enough, you will remain in the tourist phrase book. If you focus too much on building blocks, you will end up living in brick yard rather than a house.
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Improve your pronunciation with the Hacking Chinese pronunciation check
I’ve found that pronunciation is one of the most neglected areas in Chinese language teaching. Teachers don’t have the time or don’t know how to teach it properly. This means that students are left with bad pronunciation, often without knowing it. The goal with this course, which is now open for limited testing, tries to address this.
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