Articles in the ‘Intermediate’ category Page 24
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ChinesePod review: Your companion to Mandarin fluency
In this ChinesePod review, we take a close look at one of the best resources available for learning Mandarin online. Can you beat 3,700 lessons?
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What your Chinese course will not teach you
Taking a Chinese course will give you a framework for learning the language, but it’s far from enough. This article is about what you need to do apart from going to class.
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Learn Chinese character meaning and pronunciation together
A large majority of all Chinese characters look the way they do because of how they are pronounced. You can use this to your benefit if you learn Chinese character meaning and pronunciation together.
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Listen before you read: Improve your listening ability
Listening ability is often overlooked when learning Chinese. Make sure you get the most out of the listening resources you do have and improve your Chinese listening ability.
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Learn Chinese faster by leaving your comfort zone
If you want to learn Chinese faster, you have to make sure you leave your comfort zone and challenge yourself as much and as often as you can. There are many things of doing this, including immersing yourself in language above your current level or putting yourself in situations that demand a higher level of performance. Leave your comfort zone!
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Can you use English learning materials to study Chinese?
There’s a very large number of books available for Chinese people learning English, but even if it’s tempting to think that we can use these to learn Chinese, doing so comes with several problems. ESL books have their use, but not as many as you might think.
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Learning tones in Mandarin is not optional
Learning tones in Mandarin is not optional. The longer you wait before paying attention to tones, the more you will have to relearn later. If you don’t know the tone, you don’t know the word. It takes time to learn to hear tones and treat them as integral parts of syllables, but the sooner you start, the better.
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The Hacking Chinese free tone training course
Learning to hear the difference between tones is difficult for many learners. Research shows that speaker variability and a systematic and predictable approach are key to overcoming the problem. With this article, I launch a tone training course, which is meant to provide you with just that. For free!
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Learning to hear the sounds and tones in Mandarin
Learning to hear the difference between tones in Mandarin can be difficult for adult learners. In this article, I introduce two effective ways of overcoming this problem, as well as my own research project, which is meant to help students and will be available soon.
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How to verify that you use the right Chinese font
For second language learners, using the wrong font can make learning characters very confusing. In this article, I will help you verify that you have the right fonts installed and discuss what happens if you don’t. This is a follow-up to an earlier article about Chinese fonts for students.
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