Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles in the ‘Reading’ category Page 11

  1. Chinese reading speed: Learning how to read ten lines at a glance

    Reading quickly is useful when taking tests and in any situation where you want consume large volumes of test. However, simply reading a lot is not the most efficient way to reach high speeds, you actually need to focus on reading speed to do that. In this article I discus various methods, tips and tricks, along with some thoughts on goals and problem analysis.

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  2. Reading manga in Chinese for more than just pleasure

    This article is about reading manga (comics) in order to improve your Chinese. Manga serves two important functions apart from being enjoyable in itself. Firstly, it gives us access to language we would otherwise hardly ever see in written form. Secondly, it lowers the threshold for reading books in Chinese. Reading manga just for fun is fine, but if you think about it, you’ll see that it can be very useful as well!

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  3. 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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  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. Memorising dictionaries to boost Chinese reading ability

    Memorising a dictionary is of course not an optimal way of learning vocabulary, but I do think it’s good to use frequency lists (such as dictionaries listing the most common characters) to plug holes in your foundation and make it stronger.

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  6. Learning Chinese through social media

    People spend lots of time every day using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Communicating with native speakers in a relaxed way is a very good way of learning a language, especially if it doesn’t feel like studying. Apart from the global social media, China also has its own variants that can be very useful for language learners.

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