Articles in the ‘Learning outside class’ category Page 22
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14 extra songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons
This is the fourth and possibly final article about Chinese music. As before, the goal this time is to expand your horizons a bit and help you find music you like. Music is useful because it’s fun and is a relaxed way of learning. We need learning of all kinds if we want to learn fast, so music fulfils a really important function.
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21 essential dictionaries and corpora for learning Chinese
There are many online resources for looking up Chinese characters and words, so many that it might be very hard for new learners to find what they need. This article introduces 21 dictionaries and corpora for Chinese learners, including what they should be used for in addition to some pros and cons.
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Horizontal vocabulary learning in Chinese
The normal thing to do when we learning characters or words is to focus on deepening our knowledge, researching components and understanding more about what we’re trying to learn. Some problems can’t be alleviated this way, however, instead they call for horizontal vocabulary learning, i.e. to putting the character or word into context and to compare it with similar characters or words. Only then can we grasp the bigger picture.
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Improving your Chinese by translating from another language
I think translation is one of the best ways of improving writing ability. Translation forces you into linguistic environments you wouldn’t have ended up in if you wrote the article yourself. This article is about how translation can be used to improve your written Chinese.
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How to create mnemonics for general or abstract character components
Anyone who has tried mnemonics for learning Chinese characters knows that some components are easier to link together than others. This article discusses in detail how to deal with abstract or general character components and how to handle components with the same or overlapping meaning, an essential skill if you’re serious about character learning.
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Sensible character learning: Progress, reminders and reflections
The sensible character challenge has now been running for two weeks and it’s time to see how things have been going so far. This post is a progress report that contains some reflections on the challenge itself, as well as some practical advice on how to solve common problems. It also invites participants to share their experience and progress so far.
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Towards a more sensible way of learning to write Chinese
This character learning challenge strives to teach students to learn Chinese characters in a way that makes sense in the long term. While the challenge is over, the principles are still applicable!
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You can’t learn Chinese characters by rote
My conclusion after years of learning characters is that rote learning is useless. Spaced repetition software is good, but it’s still not enough. If adult foreigners are going to learn to write Chinese by hand, we really need another method. We need mnemonics, we need active processing, we need to quit rote learning and stop using SRS mechanically.
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Measuring your language learning is a double-edged sword
Spaced repetition software offers a great way of measuring progress, every step forward is recorded and clearly visible. However, this is also a trap, because even though SRS is useful, it’s just a tool, not a comprehensive strategy. Measurable progress is a great help, but only if you use it correctly.
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Have fun learning Chinese or else…
Having fun while learning, or at least making the best of every situation, is essential. Learning a language requires a lot of time and if we don’t enjoy the process, we aren’t likely to invest the time we need to master a language.
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