Articles in the ‘Immersion and integration’ category Page 6
-
The simple trick I used to double the amount of Chinese I listen to
Learning to understand spoken Chinese requires an awful lot of listening practice. In this article, I introduce and explain a simple trick that allowed me to listen twice as much as I used to!
Read → -
The forking path: A human approach to learning Chinese
Top-down, project management style learning often fails for a number of reasons, but there are alternative, softer approaches to learning Chinese. In this article, I introduce one such approach that focuses on small, everyday choices rather than distant goals.
Read → -
101 questions and answers about how to learn Chinese
This is the biggest collections of questions and answer about how to learn Chinese anywhere. The questions are sorted into categories, and each question is answered briefly before links to further information is provided. If you have a question about how to learn Chinese, you’re very likely to find the answer here! If your question hasn’t been answered, please consider leaving a comment!
Read → -
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.
Read → -
866 digital textbooks for expanding your Chinese
Using textbooks written with the aim of teaching Chinese children about history, mathematics and biology can be great learning resources for adult foreigners as well. This article discusses how to do that, and also introduces a resource that offers almost a thousand textbooks, all easily accessible online.
Read → -
8 tips for learning Chinese as an introverted student
Introverts are not necessarily worse language learners than extroverts, but not taking or creating opportunities to speak Mandarin will slow you down. In this article, I share some methods I’ve used to compensate for this as an introvert learner.
Read → -
Learning to unicycle, learning anatomy and learning Chinese
Is learning Chinese more like learning to unicycle or like learning anatomy? It strongly depends on what we’re talking about more precisely. Some aspects of language learning are skills akin to unicycling, others are more about knowing and understanding.
Read → -
Can you learn Chinese faster by making it harder?
Throwing yourself into very challenging situations can be great for language learning, but so can focusing on large volumes of easier content too. So when should you use which approach? This article discusses if you can learn faster by making it harder.
Read → -
Learning (or not learning) Chinese slang
Learning slang in Chinese can be fun, but it’s worth remembering that in most situations, it’s actually much less useful than more standard ways of expression. Slang is used in a limited context and changes quickly.
Read → -
Comprehension-based listening vs deep end immersion
What works best for improving listening ability, graded content targeted at your specific level or deep-end immersion? The answer is that both approaches are necessary, but which you use depends a lot on practical considerations, as well as how much time and energy you have to invest.
Read →