Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles published in September 2010

  1. Learning Chinese through social media

    People spend lots of time every day using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Communicating with native speakers in a relaxed way is a very good way of learning a language, especially if it doesn’t feel like studying. Apart from the global social media, China also has its own variants that can be very useful for language learners.

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  2. Making mistakes in Chinese is necessary to adjust your mental models

    Everybody knows that making mistakes is part of learning and that you have to live with it. Some of you might even have heard that mistakes are good, as long as they are genuine. Very few, however, live according to this maxim. In this article I talk about making mistakes and that a healthy attitude towards mistakes is of great importance when trying to learn Chinese.

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  3. Learning Chinese is easier than you think

    Natives and foreigners alike tend to spread the myth that Chinese is impossible to learn. This isn’t true. If you have the correct attitude and approach, Chinese isn’t all that difficult to learn, at least to a conversant level. This post is meant as encouragement for those of you who think or believe that Chinese is impossible to learn.

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  4. A pre-launch plea for help

    Since I started studying Chinese, I’ve realised that there are many things to learn that no textbook and few teachers will tell you. I’m not talking about things in ordinary books here, but on how to study Chinese. As you probably know, I’ve written extensively about this on my website for many years, but I’ve now decided that it’s time to write something more serious about it. To start with, I’m going to launch a new website called Hacking Chinese, but my goal is ultimately to write a book about learning Chinese.

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  5. Requirements to be met before site launch

    Even though the site is available from now on, there are a few things I want to accomplish before launching the site officially. If you feel something is missing in this list or have any suggestions of any kind, please let me know! This article simply summarises what I have left to do before launching the site officially.

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  6. Domain name registered, software installed

    After having registered the domain name and installed the necessary software, Hacking Chinese is now working properly. This is not a formal launch, however, although I won’t try to stop people from finding their way here, I’m not going to launch the project properly until a number of conditions have been met. These conditions involve […]

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