Articles in the ‘Learning outside class’ category Page 13
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All the resources you need to learn and teach Chinese stroke order
Stroke order for Chinese characters is something most beginners struggle with to begin with, but it’s also a problem that quickly fades away over time. This article collects all the resources you need to understand stroke order, look it up when you need to, and provides you with the practice you need.
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Diversify how you study Chinese to learn more
How is it possible to spend 80 hours a week learning Chinese? And what can you learn from that, even if you find it hard to find any time to study whatsoever, with work and family taking up most of your time? This article aims at widening the scope of what it means to learn Chinese, and shows you ways you can learn that you probably haven’t thought of before!
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Improving your Chinese while watching TV shows
Watching TV is a great way to learn languages. It combines lots of useful Chinese words and phrases while providing rich context because of the visual nature of the medium. This article introduces ideas for how to learn, as well as recommended TV shows for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners.
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Should you learn to speak Chinese before you learn Chinese characters?
The question of whether or not to delay learning Chinese characters in favour of the spoken language is an interesting one many arguments in favour of both approaches. For most people setting out on their Chinese learning journey, focusing on important aspects of the spoken language, such as pronunciation, is certainly more important than learning characters.
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When spaced repetition fails, and what to do about it
Spaced repetition software can boost your vocabulary learning significantly. The idea is to schedule each review as late as possible, but not so late that you forget the answer. This sounds good in principle, but when it comes to learning languages, just barely being able to come up with the right word is not enough!
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Dealing with Chinese characters you keep mixing up
The more Chinese characters you learn, the harder it becomes to keep similar characters distinct. If you’re not careful, a pair or group of characters can generate a lot of extra work and frustration. The solution is to trace your errors and figure out why you get the characters wrong and, then deal with them decisively!
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How to figure out how good your Chinese is
Figuring out how good your Chinese is can help you focus on the right areas and evaluate your learning methods. But language assessment is hard! This article describes how and why you should assess how good your Chinese is, and gives you tools and resources to do so.
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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!
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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.
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How to get past the intermediate Chinese learning plateau
When you start learning Chinese, your ability to communicate increases with every word you learn, but as your level improves, this feeling goes away and you it might feel like you’re no longer making progress. Welcome to the intermediate plateau!
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