Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles in the ‘Recommended resources’ category Page 7

  1. Best of Hacking Chinese 2015

    Over 70 articles were published on Hacking Chinese in 2015, but which were the most popular? What about the most important? In this article, I list the top ten articles from 2015, both by reader count and by editor’s (my) choice.

    Read →

  2. Zooming out: The resources you need to put Chinese in context

    In order to learn efficiently, it’s important that you integrate your knowledge. This means being able to break down Chinese in order to understand it, as well as looking at context and sorting out confusing cases. In this second article, I introduce tools for zooming out and putting things in context.

    Read →

  3. Zooming in: The tools you need to break down and understand Chinese

    In order to learn efficiently, it’s important that you integrate your knowledge. This means being able to break down Chinese in order to understand it, but it also means looking at context and sorting out confusing cases. In this first article, I introduce tools for breaking Chinese down.

    Read →

  4. Chinese listening practice with 锵锵三人行

    锵锵三人行 is one of the few Chinese TV programs I actually like. It’s also one of the best ones for language learners too, mostly because of it’s heavy focus on talking, availability of transcripts and variety of both guests and topics. This should be a key component of any immersion effort, but you probably need to be upper intermediate or above to benefit.

    Read →

  5. Review: Mandarin Companion graded readers (Level 1)

    Graded readers are an important step on your journey to becoming literate in Chinese. In this article, I review five books in the Mandarin Companion series, level 1, which uses only 300 unique characters. These books are useful for both beginners (extra reading) and intermediate learners (extensive reading).

    Read →

  6. Launching Hacking Chinese Resources

    “Resources” is a new section of Hacking Chinese that strives to provide you with resources for learning Chinese suitable to you. Everything is neatly tagged by difficulty level, topic/skill and type of resource, enabling you to find whatever you need, whenever you need it.

    Read →

  7. 5 websites to help answer your questions about Chinese

    It’s not always easy to know where to go when you fail to find answers to your Chinese-related questions. This article gives some advice on how to ask for help online and also introduces five websites that offer help in various forms for free.

    Read →

  8. Using Audacity to learn Chinese (speaking and listening)

    Audacity is a marvellous piece of software that allows you to record audio (yourself, other people or whatever is playing on your computer), mimic native speakers, edit and enhance the audio, as well as automatically manipulate multiple files, such as lecture or lesson recordings. In short, Audacity is a really good program for learning languages. This article introduces the software both through a video example and explaining text.

    Read →

  9. 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.

    Read →

  10. 31 Twitter feeds to help you learn Chinese

    Twitter is an excellent source for learning Chinese. In this article, I list my favourite Twitter feeds in three categories: learning how to learn Chinese, learning how to learn languages in general and finally Chinese input on Twitter. Something missing in the article? Let me know!

    Read →