Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles tagged with ‘Podcast episode’ Page 11

  1. Chinese language logging, part 2: A healthy, balanced diet of Mandarin

    How do you balance your learning to make sure you get a healthy diet of Mandarin? Logging how much you listen, speak, read and write is easy, but are there better ways of doing it?

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  2. Chinese language logging, part 1: Why and how to track your progress

    How much time are you investing into learning Chinese? Or is it maybe better to talk about it using a unit other than time, such as how many books you’ve read? Are you reading more than you’re writing? Or is listening, speaking, reading and writing maybe the wrong labels to use?

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  3. What’s the difference between Chinese pronunciation and Pinyin? Does it matter?

    It’s not uncommon for both students and teachers to treat Chinese pronunciation and Pinyin as the same thing, but they are not, and thinking that they are can lead to certain problems.

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  4. Learning the second tone in Mandarin Chinese

    Many students of Chinese struggle with the third tone, but almost as many also have problems with the second tone. So how should the second tone be pronounced, and what are the most common learner errors?

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  5. Chinese input methods: A guide for second language learners

    There are many different input methods available for Chinese characters, including phonetic typing, non-phonetic typing, handwriting and speech recognition, but which method is best for people who study Chinese? And why?

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  6. 6 things in Chinese that are harder to learn than they seem

    It’s hard to gauge the difficulty of something without having mastered it first. When something is easier than you think, that’s not very serious, but if you think something is much easier than it actually is, it can feel quite bad and decrease motivation. This article is about things that are harder than they seem when learning Chinese.

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  7. Learning science in Chinese with 李永乐老师

    李永乐老师 is a science teacher who has published many hundreds of video lessons online, for free. While the fast speech and speedy handwriting are a bit daunting at first, this is an excellent way of learning about science in Chinese. This article introduces 李永乐老师’s videos, along with a number of tips and tricks for how to make them approachable for students who want to be able to deal with science in Chinese.

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  8. My best advice on how to learn Chinese characters

    This is an overview of how to learn Chinese characters, including understanding how they work, how to learn to read and write them, as well as how to remember the characters you have learnt. Tools and resources related to characters are also covered!

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  9. 20 tips and tricks to improve your Chinese writing ability

    Writing is one of the four basic language skills, and one that learners of Chinese struggle with a lot. Good writing is based on lots of reading, but beyond that, there are plenty of other things you can do to improve your writing ability in Chinese beyond the characters themselves. Here are twenty tips and tricks!

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  10. Learning the third tone in Mandarin Chinese

    The third tone in Mandarin is the most mispronounced of all. It’s an essentially low tone, but many learners are unaware of this, partly because the way the tone is taught is flawed. Don’t think of it as a falling-rising tone, just think of it as a low tone!

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