Hacking Chinese

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  1. Outlier Chinese Character Masterclass review: Understand more, learn faster, remember longer

    Mastering Chinese characters, whether you find them enchantingly beautiful or overwhelmingly complex, is essential for literacy in Chinese. Outlier Linguistics will help you understand how the Chinese writing system works, making it easier to learn!

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  2. Review: The Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters

    Outlier Linguistics Dictionary of Chinese characters is an excellent tool to help you understand and thereby learn Chinese characters more effectively. This is an in-depth review, covering the two versions of the dictionary, essential and expert, as well as other related products provided by outlier. There is also a 25% discount code for those who want to try the dictionary!

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  3. 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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  4. Review: Learning Chinese by video immersion with FluentU

    FluentU offers authentic as well as learner-oriented videos for learning Chinese. A neat interface allows you to use an excellent pop-up dictionary and other useful features to watch and learn from videos. This is an in-depth review of FluentU Chinese.

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  5. Review: Language Empowerment: Demystify Chinese culture and fire up your Mandarin + interview with the author

    Language Empowerment is a neat little book that manages to pack a lot of information and inspiration into relatively few pages. I highly recommend it for people who have just started learning Chinese or who are interested in doing so. This book covers many topics that you need to know about, but which few textbooks or teachers mention! It is also easy to access and enjoyable to read.

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  6. Don’t use mnemonics for everything when learning Chinese

    Mnemonics are clever memory techniques you can use to learn and remember more, but this doesn’t mean that you should always use them. If you do, you will end up spending more time on mnemonics than you do engaging with the Chinese language.

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  7. Which Chinese learning resources are worth paying for?

    Thanks to the internet, learning Chinese is now more accessible than ever, and you can do it completely for free. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should, however. If you have money to invest, here’s how to do so with the greatest impact.

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  8. Student Q&A, November 2024: Pros and cons of digital tools for Chinese reading, and the struggle to find comprehensible and interesting texts

    Is reading digitally in Chinese better than on paper? What are the best digital tools for reading? And what should you do if you can’t find texts that are both interesting and at the right level?

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  9. Student Q&A, June 2024: How much time on flashcards, Remembering the Hanzi, and resources for learning characters

    How much time should you spend on flashcards? Is Remembering the Hanzi good for learning Chinese characters? And what resources should you use if you want to understand the writing system better?

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  10. Student Q&A, February 2024: Typing or handwriting, using new words in texts, and how to use AI to improve your writing

    Is it better to practise writing Chinese on a computer or by hand? How do you find the right words when writing? And how can you leverage AI to improve your writing ability?

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