Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles in the ‘Listening’ category Page 13

  1. 13 more songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons

    This is the third article in a series about using music to learn Chinese. The goal this time is to expand your horizons a bit and help you find music you like. While you probably won’t enjoy all songs presented here, it’s fairly likely that you will find at least a few you like!

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  2. Vocalise more to learn more Chinese

    Do you know how to make your passive learning more active and thereby learn a lot more Chinese? This article is about how you can increase your awareness of the language around you, process it more actively and therefore also learn more from the experience.

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  3. 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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  4. 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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  5. 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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  6. 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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  7. 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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  8. Chinese listening strategies: Improving listening speed

    A lack of listening speed is what stops you from understanding spoken Chinese even though you know most of the words and sentence patterns being used. I think the problem is generally overlooked and in this article I explain what listening speed is, why you need it to understand Chinese. I also talk about how to practise listening speed.

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  9. Chinese listening strategies: Active listening

    This is the fifth article in my series about improving listening ability. After having covered background and passive listening, the topic this time is active listening, including a discussion of what it is and why it’s good, along with some exercises you can try.

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  10. Playing computer games in Chinese: Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2

    If you like computer games, why don’t you start playing them in Chinese? It’s not a substitute for other types of studying, but it’s an excellent way of increasing your exposure to Chinese while having fun at the same time.

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