Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles tagged with ‘Characters’

  1. Interview: Insights from Skritter’s Complete Guide to Learning Chinese

    If I wrote a comprehensive guide to learning Chinese with a special focus on vocabulary, what would it look like? Now you can find out – for free!

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  2. Skritter review: Boosting your Chinese character learning

    Skritter is a modern tool for learning ancient characters. It combines research-based methods such as active recall and spaced repetition with great Chinese-specific tools and content. While it’s not a free resource, it has enough edges over more generic, free services to be worth it in my opinion.

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  3. Vocabulary lists that help you learn Chinese and how to use them

    Learning new characters and words from a list is rarely a good idea, but there are exceptions! Let’s have a look at five types of vocabulary lists how to use them to learn Chinese.

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  4. Should you learn Chinese vocabulary from lists?

    Students often rely on lists to learn new Chinese characters and words. This can be useful in some situations, but there are also many problems with this approach.

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  5. How to learn Chinese characters as a beginner

    Whole books have been written about how the Chinese writing system works, and understanding how Chinese characters really work is a lifelong project, but what do you do as a beginner when asked to memorise a list of characters and words? Here are eight easy-to-follow strategies!

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  6. The building blocks of Chinese, part 6: Learning and remembering compound words

    Compound words in Chinese can look confusing at first, but once you see the patterns, learning and remembering them becomes much easier.

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  7. The building blocks of Chinese, part 3: Compound characters

    A vast majority of Chinese characters are compounds, and understanding how the components fit together and which function they have, will make learning and remembering characters a lot easier. This article explains the most important types of compounds you’ll encounter and how you can use that knowledge to learn characters more easily.

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  8. The new HSK 3.0: What you need to know

    On July 1st, 2021, a new Chinese proficiency standard takes effect. This will have big consequences for the HSK, the most widely used proficiency test for non-native speakers. What are these changes and what do they mean for you as a student?

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  9. Overcoming the problem of having too many Chinese words to learn

    Learning words is very important, but how should you deal with the fact that there are so many of them to learn? This article discusses the problem of having too many words to learn and suggests some solutions to get around the problem.

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  10. Sensible character challenge, January 2015: Wrapping up

    It’s time to wrap up last month’s character challenge. How did it go? What did you learn? In this short post, I share some thoughts of my own and hope you’re willing to do the same. I also announce prize winners as promised!

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