Articles in the ‘Uncategorised’ category
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Student Q&A, December 2024: Learning similar Chinese characters, polyphonic characters, and flashcards vs. reading for building vocabulary
How can you remember the difference between similar Chinese characters? Are flashcards better than reading for building vocabulary? And how do you learn polyphonic characters?
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Three things I wish I had known as a beginner student of Chinese: The time machine, part 1
I started learning Chinese more than 15 years ago. Here are three things I wish I had known as a beginner!
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Why flashcards are great for learning Chinese
The humble flashcard: A key component in a successful strategy, or a distraction from what truly matters? Few things have sparked as much debate as the use of flashcards for learning a foreign language.
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Kickstart your learning with the Skritter Character Course
What’s the best way to learn Chinese characters as a beginner? The Skritter character course is my best attempt at answering that question.
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Learning Classical Chinese is for everyone (no, seriously!)
Classical Chinese is something all learners will encounter, whether it’s because it’s part of a course you take, because you’ve started learning formal, written Chinese or simply because you want to read the Art of War, the Analects or Tang poetry. How can you learn Classical Chinese and what resources should you use?
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Lost in transcription: Saylaw, Ice Island and Aristotle
Names of people and places can be quite different in different languages, sometimes so different that it causes headaches for second language learners. Do you know the world’s best footballer, Saylaw? What about Yàlǐshìduōdé? Or are you lost in transcription too?
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An introduction to extensive reading for Chinese learners
Too many students of Chinese spend most of their time reading a small number of difficult texts, whereas they would actually be much better off reading a larger number of easier content. Are you focusing on extensive reading enough?
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Whom should you trust for advice about learning Chinese?
There’s a lot of advice about how to learn Chinese floating around on forums, chat groups, social media, video services and blogs. Including Hacking Chinese. So how do you know whom you should trust? This article answers that question by discussing what my articles are based on.
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What’s in a name? Hacking Chinese, 揭密中文
What does Hacking Chinese mean and how did the title come about? What’s the proper title in Chinese and why is that some native speakers think it’s a typo? This article takes a step back and looks at why Hacking Chinese (揭密中文) is called that!
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Analysis paralysis: When choosing method becomes a problem
If you spend more time tweaking your method than you gain from making it more efficient, you might suffer from analysis paralysis. If you spend most of the time thinking about how to learn Chinese, you spend less time actually learning the language, meaning you’d be better of not caring about the method at all! Or would you?
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