Articles in the ‘Listening’ category Page 6
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Improving your Chinese while watching TV shows
Watching TV is a great way to learn languages. It combines lots of useful Chinese words and phrases while providing rich context because of the visual nature of the medium. This article introduces ideas for how to learn, as well as recommended TV shows for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners.
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Should you learn to speak Chinese before you learn Chinese characters?
The question of whether or not to delay learning Chinese characters in favour of the spoken language is an interesting one many arguments in favour of both approaches. For most people setting out on their Chinese learning journey, focusing on important aspects of the spoken language, such as pronunciation, is certainly more important than learning characters.
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Learning Chinese words: When quantity beats quality
Any teacher, student or researcher will agree that vocabulary is important, but how should you go about it? What’s the goal? This article argues that a common problem for learners of Chinese is that they spend too much time learning too few words, and that they would be better of aiming for quantity over quality in many cases.
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When spaced repetition fails, and what to do about it
Spaced repetition software can boost your vocabulary learning significantly. The idea is to schedule each review as late as possible, but not so late that you forget the answer. This sounds good in principle, but when it comes to learning languages, just barely being able to come up with the right word is not enough!
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Text adventure games and how to use them in the Chinese language classroom
Interactive text games work well for individual learners, but they are also excellent in a classroom setting. This article gives you everything you need as a teacher to play Escape! in your classroom. A Chinese version of this article is available as well.
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How to figure out how good your Chinese is
Figuring out how good your Chinese is can help you focus on the right areas and evaluate your learning methods. But language assessment is hard! This article describes how and why you should assess how good your Chinese is, and gives you tools and resources to do so.
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The simple trick I used to double the amount of Chinese I listen to
Learning to understand spoken Chinese requires an awful lot of listening practice. In this article, I introduce and explain a simple trick that allowed me to listen twice as much as I used to!
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Does using colour to represent Mandarin tones make them easier to learn?
Some learning materials, apps and tools allow you to add colours to show Mandarin tones, but is this really helpful? This article discusses the ins and outs of using colour to learn and remember tones, along with some practical considerations.
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Can too much guidance make you learn less Chinese?
Guidance and support can make learning Chinese easier, but could too much of it make it harder? This article discusses the downsides of receiving too much help and the benefits of engaging more with the Chinese language on your own, without having everything explained to you.
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Why is listening in Chinese so hard?
Most students think that listening in Chinese is hard, but how much of that is just listening being difficult in general and how much is attributable to Chinese specifically? This article covers both aspects and discusses reasons why listening is difficult, both in general and for Chinese in particular.
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