Articles in the ‘Intermediate’ category Page 29
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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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Language learning with a Chinese girlfriend or boyfriend
Learning Chinese with a partner is very good, because it makes you more motivated and makes it more fun to learn. However, it isn’t a magic bullet that will solve all your problems. You will still need to study, you will still need to practice, it’s just that some of the things you need to learn will be more enjoyable and you will hopefully be more motivated to learn. That’s worth a lot, but you can find other fun ways to learn and other things to drive you forwards.
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A learner’s guide to TV shows in Chinese, part 2
After having talked about how and why to use television to learn Chinese, it’s time to look at actual genres and programmes and see how these can help a language learner improve his or her skills. In this second article, the focus is on cooking, quiz and gaming shows, as well as home-made videos, cartoons and anime.
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Sensible character learning challenge 2014: The Big Finish
This article marks the end of the 2014 sensible character learning challenge. Post your progress report to win prizes and read about my own reflections on learning characters! There’s also some information about future challenges on Hacking Chinese and an offer to beta test a new challenge engine.
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How to reach a decent level of Chinese in 100 days
Scott Young has written a lot about how to learn more efficiently and this year he has turned his focus entirely on languages. He spent three months in China and managed to reach a very decent level of Chinese in that time, including passing HSK4. In this article, he shares his experience and the strategies he used. The article also contains two video interviews, one with John Pasden (Sinosplice) and one with me.
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