Articles in the ‘Advanced’ category Page 33
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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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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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Extending mnemonics: Tones and pronunciation
Using mnemonics to memorise concrete objects is fairly easy, but how can we use mnemonics to remember abstract things such as tones and pronunciation? In this article, I expand my previous discussions of mnemonics and show how they can be quite powerful if you’re prepared to invest some extra time.
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The time barrel: How to find more time to study Chinese
If we want to combine studying with a normal life or if we want to get the most out of pure language studying, we really need to examine the time we have available and see if it’s possible to learn more without removing other important things. This article uses the metaphor of a barrel with rocks, pebbles, sand and water to show that most people have more time available than they think.
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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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Chinese listening strategies: Diversify your listening practice
It’s essential that you diversify your listening practice, otherwise you run the risk of performing below your actual level, not because your listening ability is poor, but simply because you’re not used to different people speaking Chinese. The only way to acquire a complete listening ability is by listening to as many different speakers as possible.
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31 Twitter feeds to help you learn Chinese
Twitter is an excellent source for learning Chinese. In this article, I list my favourite Twitter feeds in three categories: learning how to learn Chinese, learning how to learn languages in general and finally Chinese input on Twitter. Something missing in the article? Let me know!
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A language learner’s guide to reading comics in Chinese
This article is a guide to reading comics in Chinese, suitable for beginners as well as those who already have some experience. Reading comics is an excellent way of attacking the Great Wall of Chinese (the daunting effect of seeing a whole page of text and not knowing what to do). It’s also fun, which is arguably the most important thing.
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Approaches to reading in Chinese
Reading is one of the best ways of picking up new vocabulary once we reached an intermediate or advanced level, but it’s also necessary to read a lot to be able to write Chinese properly. Reading also enables us to understand word usage and brings us closer to the culture behind the language. This article is focused on reading in Chinese, including reading method, book selection, benchmarking, vocabulary and more.
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Chinese listening strategies: Deliberate practice and i+2
Actively challenging ourselves is the best way to learn, but how can we cope with Chinese which is high above our current level? In this article, I discuss active listening and how to handle audio that is actually harder than we can manage. Gradually, we can remove these aids and handle the language on our own.
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