Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles in the ‘Advanced’ category Page 36

  1. About opening doors and the paths beyond

    Hacking Chinese is about opening doors and showing the paths beyond, but what does that mean? Why is it useful to read other people’s advice? In this article I argue that it’s essential to familiarise oneself with many different methods, not to find the correct way of doing something, but to find better ways and provide contrast to one’s own learning process.

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  2. The Chinese-Chinese dictionary survival guide

    This article is about using Chinese-Chinese dictionaries, both from a personal point of view and in a more general sense. The goal is to provide tips and tricks for using Chinese-Chinese dictionaries, traps to avoid and other things that will be helpful for learners who intend to move from English-Chinese to Chinese-Chinese.

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  3. Enjoying the journey while focusing on the destination

    Everybody has different reasons for studying Chinese, but whatever the final goal is, it is important to make the journey interesting as well. Enjoying studying isn’t simply a cliché, it’s quite necessary if you want to invest the time needed to master a language. This article discusses the journey, the destination and the relationship between them. To put it briefly: don’t forget to look at the view.

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  4. Benchmarking progress in Chinese to stay motivated

    When we set out to learn Chinese, everything we learn is new and we can feel that we improve for each day that goes by, for each time we are exposed to the language. We know this because, in relative terms, we’re learning so much. As we progress, this feeling weakens. In this article, I discuss benchmarking and how it can help us stay motivated.

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  5. Learning Chinese the holistic way: Integrating knowledge

    Holistic learning is about integrating what you learn into a web of things you already know and thus making it much easier to learn and remember. This is in contrast with traditional education methods which often emphasise isolated facts and don’t make proper use of what learners already know.

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  6. Achieving the impossible by being inspired

    Teaching and inspiring are two closely related things. If you can see all superiors as sources of inspiration and knowledge, you will advance faster than if you view them as rivals or opponents. Similarly, realise that you have your own strong sides that inspire other people. Don’t hesitate to teach others if they want to be taught. Inspiration is cyclic in its nature and should flow freely in all directions.

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  7. Don’t be a tourist if you want to learn Chinese language and culture

    A tourist is someone who, when going abroad, takes a small piece of his country with him and stays therein. Learning Chinese as a tourist is very hard and quite inefficient. Being a tourist is not about the stated purpose of your stay, it’s about your attitude, which is why there are people who have lived in China for ages without actually learning Chinese. Stop being a tourist, step outside your comfort zone and learn Chinese!

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  8. How to find more time to practise Chinese listening

    Listening is probably the most important skill when learning Chinese, and the more you practise, the better. In order to listen as much as you should, you need to stop thinking about listening as a study activity and start thinking about it as a part of life!

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  9. Growing up in Chinese as a foreign adult

    Learning Chinese is in many ways like becoming a child again. That has it’s advantages, but it can also be incredibly frustrating at times. As usual, being aware of the problem is the first step towards solving it. Unfortunately, the only way to handle this particular problem is to adopt a healthy attitude towards it.

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  10. Using memory aids and mnemonics to make Chinese easier

    Remember almost anything is a skill that can be learnt. In fact, some of the methods I talk about in this article have been known for thousands of years. Most mnemonic methods use the power of association to enable us to remember things. In this article, I discuss how we can use this to help us learn Chinese much more efficiently than if we rely on conventional methods.

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