Articles tagged with ‘Words’
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Chinese vocabulary challenge, December 2022
It’s time for a vocabulary challenge! It starts on December 10th, so enrol, set your goal and learn as many characters and words as you can before the end of the month. This challenge is sponsored by Skritter, so there are also prizes on the line! This article contains more information about the challenge, some important things to keep in mind as well as some advice about learning Chinese characters and words.
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The building blocks of Chinese, part 6: Learning and remembering compound words
Compound words in Chinese can look confusing at first, but once you see the patterns, learning and remembering them becomes much easier.
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The building blocks of Chinese, part 5: Making sense of Chinese words
How many characters do you need to know to be able to read Chinese? The truth is that characters only provide a foundation, so regardless of how many you know, you won’t be able to read much unless you also know many words.
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The benefits of using Wikipedia to look up words when learning Chinese
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, but did you know that it can be better than a dictionary for looking up words when learning Chinese?
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The new HSK 3.0: What you need to know
On July 1st, 2021, a new Chinese proficiency standard takes effect. This will have big consequences for the HSK, the most widely used proficiency test for non-native speakers. What are these changes and what do they mean for you as a student?
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Should you learn Chinese vocabulary from lists?
Many students rely heavily on lists to learn new characters and words in Chinese. This can be good, but there are also a number of problems you should be aware of. This article looks at some pros and cons with using vocabulary lists to learn Chinese.
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Overcoming the problem of having too many Chinese words to learn
Learning words is very important, but how should you deal with the fact that there are so many of them to learn? This article discusses the problem of having too many words to learn and suggests some solutions to get around the problem.
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Which words you should learn and where to find them
When learning a language, it’s important to know many words, but it’s also important that you learn the right words. How do you know which words to learn? Where should you find those words? And how much can you express using the ten hundred most common words?
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Learning the right chengyu the right way
Many people regard chengyu as the golden key to the Chinese language and believe that learning chengyu will impress native speakers and take their Chinese to the next level. However, learning chengyu in the wrong way is likely to have the opposite effect (“oh, the foreigner is trying to use chengyu, how cute!”). Focus should be on chengyu that are truly useful and frequently used, the rest should be left for those who really like chengyu or for truly advanced students.
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Horizontal vocabulary learning in Chinese
The normal thing to do when we learning characters or words is to focus on deepening our knowledge, researching components and understanding more about what we’re trying to learn. Some problems can’t be alleviated this way, however, instead they call for horizontal vocabulary learning, i.e. to putting the character or word into context and to compare it with similar characters or words. Only then can we grasp the bigger picture.
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