Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles tagged with ‘Immersion’ Page 3

  1. Chinese immersion with Carl Gene Fordham

    It’s widely known that immersion is an effective way of learning languages, but the details are less clear. How do you go about it? This article contains an interview with Carl Gene Fordham, who has many interesting things to say about how he learnt Chinese to an advanced level, as well as how we continued from there and became a translator and interpreter.

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  2. Asking the experts: How to bridge the gap to real Chinese

    Many students of Chinese think that it’s hard to bridge the gap from textbook Chinese to the Chinese used by native speakers in the real world. This article contains useful insights and hands-on advice from more than 20 language learners and teachers. The overall message is encouraging: the gap can certainly be bridged, you just need the right attitude and the right method!

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  3. Immersion at home or: Why you don’t have to go abroad to learn Chinese

    Chinese immersion at home

    You don’t have to go abroad to learn Chinese. The main difference between staying at home and going abroad is that it requires less effort to learn once you’re there (although it still requires quite a lot of effort). This means that you can learn Chinese at home, provided that you are determined enough and create an immersion environment yourself. This article gives suggestions and advice on how to achieve that.

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  4. 14 extra songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons

    This is the fourth and possibly final article about Chinese music. As before, the goal this time is to expand your horizons a bit and help you find music you like. Music is useful because it’s fun and is a relaxed way of learning. We need learning of all kinds if we want to learn fast, so music fulfils a really important function.

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  5. 12 songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons

    This is my second article about Chinese music. The goal this time is to expand your horizons a bit and help you find music you like. You will probably not like all songs presented here, but it’s fairly likely that you will find at least a few!

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  6. Learning Chinese with StarCraft 2

    If you enjoy playing computer games, why don’t enjoy them in Chinese? I’ve played a lot of StarCraft 2 in Chinese and even if I don’t play any longer, I still watch several matches online each week, with live commentary in Chinese. I have learnt and still learn tons of Chinese from this and enjoy every minute. As the title implies, this article is about playing or watching StarCraft in Chinese and improve your Chinese at the same time.

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  7. Why learning Chinese through music is underrated

    Learning Chinese through music is underrated. Music is a very efficiently way of improving your Chinese in an enjoyable way that won’t interfere much with other things you’re doing (simply decrease your exposure to music in English and replace it with Chinese). This article contains five songs I like, but there will be much more in future articles.

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  8. Chinese listening strategies: Improving listening speed

    A lack of listening speed is what stops you from understanding spoken Chinese even though you know most of the words and sentence patterns being used. I think the problem is generally overlooked and in this article I explain what listening speed is, why you need it to understand Chinese. I also talk about how to practise listening speed.

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  9. Chinese listening strategies: Passive listening

    After having looked at background listening in previous articles, the time has now come to discuss passive listening in more detail. In this article, I provide some thoughts on how to adjust passive listening to your current situation, making it less or more active.

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  10. Chinese listening strategies: Background listening

    Background listening is not a substitute for more active forms of listening practice, but it’s still very useful. Think of it as a way of filling your days with learning opportunities without requiring much extra time.

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