Learn Chinese Blog | Learn to speak Chinese » Learning Approaches

How to learn Chinese characters (p-1)

Darren — Wed, 18 May 2011 06:07:46 +0000

If you are a westerner then learning Chinese characters is going to be hard and require months and years of study. But there are many things you can do to make the task slightly easier. One resource that I have been recently using is a book called “Rembering Simplified Hanzi 1” by Heisig and Richardson.

It is not a cheap book, but the book’s subtitle tells you why it could be invaluable: “How not to forget the meaning and writing of Chinese characters”. You see it can be relatively easy to learn a new character, you look at it, hide it, and then draw it a few times and in theory you have learnt it – but the hard part is remembering that same character later on.

Now Heisig’s approach is slower but more efficient! When learning each character you will spend more time learning it than with the first approach, but you save time in the long run because having learnt it once you don’t forget it, either to read or to write. A remarkable claim!

A further claim of Heisig is that “if you were to study them full time, there is no reason why all 1,500 characters in Book 1 could not be learned successfully in four to five weeks”.

The key to Heisig’s approach is that he gives you stories that stick in your mind that relate the meaning of the character to the component parts. The stories are purposefully vivid and unbelievable, but that makes them very simple to remember, and as long as you remember the crazy story then the character is straightforward to write. Therefore his book systematically teaches characters so that new characters build upon the previously learnt characters.

Below is the link of the book 《Rembering Simplified Hanzi》on Amazon.

Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters (See all Learn Chinese Books)

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How to study Chinese – Learning style

Darren — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:21:23 +0000

It’s been a while since our last post, however, we are trying to update our blog more often and with more posts focused on Chinese language. Today, is our first post about learning style.

Thinking about studying fills some people with dread, others may really enjoy the though of a new challenge. Whatever your perspective is on studying, when it comes to studying Mandarin, one thing is almost certainly true – it needs a lot of effort and perseverance.

I have only been studying Mandarin a few months, but I have found it really helpful to consider different tips I have learnt over many previous years of study, and to see how I can apply these to studying Mandarin.

The first is that it is useful to know your learning style.

There is a plethora of research available regarding learning styles. A simple summary is that there are four parts to people’s learning styles, each with opposite ends to the spectrum. Most people will not be at either extreme of any of the styles, but it is something useful to consider.

Style	Explanation
Sensory	Like facts	Vs	Intuitive	Like meanings
Visual	Like visual representations	Vs	Verbal	Like explanations with words
Active	Like experimental and group learning	Vs	Reflective	Like to work through problems on their own
Sequential	Like details before the ‘Big picture’	Vs	Global	Like the big picture first, details later

I’ve put this first as (if you have a choice!) knowing your learning style can help you to decide where you want to do your learning. This is especially important if you are time pressured, as ending up trying to learn somewhere where there seems to be no real connection with your teachers will be a frustrating experience at best! I like to know details, and the ‘why?’ of things, so to be in a one to one Chinese class setting is ideal, as I am able to ask immediately if I don’t understand something. However, if you really like group learning, a one to one setting may be more of a hindrance than a help.

Learn Chinese Through Listening to Chinese Music

Duncan — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 07:56:40 +0000

A small follow-up of our previous post on methods on how to learn Chinese by watching Chinese TV shows, another way that you can improve your Chinese is to listen to and learn Chinese songs- and don’t forget to put it all to practice by going to the KTV with your friends!

There are many online music streaming websites in China, but one of the popular ones that I enjoy to use is Google China’s 谷歌音乐 (Google Music), however I believe that this service may only work for users who are located within China, as I know that users from the US aren’t able to connect to this service.

We’ll walk through some of the basic features of the Google Music website.

Looking first at the search bar, we can see several options of searching for the music that you’re looking for:

In the search bar, you can search for songs [搜索音乐] sou1suo3 yin1yue4, or you can search the website [搜索网页] sou1suo3 wang3ye4:

[输入歌手] shu1ru4 ge1shou3: Enter singer’s name

[专辑] zhuan1ji2: Enter album name

[歌曲名称或歌词] ge1qu3ming2cheng1 huo4 ge1ci2: Enter song name or lyrics

You can also browse the website by looking through the menu:

[首页] shou3ye4: Home page

[排行榜] pai2hang2bang3: Browse by top charts

[音乐分类] yin1yue4 fen1lei4: Browse by song genre

[挑歌] tiao2ge1: Customized selection

[歌手库] ge1shou3ku4: Browse by artist name

[私房歌] si1fang2 ge1: Artist’s recommendations

On the homepage, the main view lets you browse by songs of different languages:

[华语榜单] hua2yu3 bang4dan1: Chinese Songs

[欧美榜单] ou1mei3 bang4dan1: Europe and American Songs

[日韩榜单] ri4han2 bang4dan1: Japanese and Korean Songs

You can also see a listing of new songs, and popular songs of each language category, and on the very far right, a listing of the popular artists.

[新歌] xin1ge1: New songs

[热歌] re4ge1: Popular songs

[歌手] ge1shou3: Artists

Hopefully this gives you a good start on browsing Google China’s Music service, and will help you on your way in improving your Chinese language learning. [Google Music]

If you have any other popular Chinese music streaming websites that you like to use, be sure to share them with the rest of us in the comments!

Learning Chinese Through Listening – Stream Chinese TV Dramas Online

Duncan — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:23:12 +0000

The three mantras that seem to be drilled into any student trying to learn the Chinese language is: “多看, 多说, 多听” (duo4kan4, duo4shuo4, duo4ting1), meaning: “read a lot, speak a lot, and listen a lot”, of Chinese that is.

Moving to China to live or study is one way to practice these three directives, however, probably not an option everyone can take. One other way to help with your Chinese learning is to pick up a Chinese TV drama to follow, and I’ve heard many-a-story of friends learning to speak Chinese, or a dialect of Chinese by watching a Chinese TV series.

Fortunately, there are many options and methods of finding Chinese TV shows to follow online, and which also allow you to stream the shows online for free as well.

MySoju.com and YellowCinema.com are two popular websites that are solely dedicated to streaming Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) TV dramas online, and let you browse through shows by popularity.

Check out each of these website’s Mainland TV Drama sections:

Popular Mainland Dramas on MySoju

Mainland Dramas on YellowCinema

Read Bilingual News, Learn Chinese

Jimmy Olsen — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:18:11 +0000

Check out sl.iciba.com to read current news with English on the top and Chinese on the bottom. Although there is no pinyin, you can see the meaning of Chinese words in their context.

In the definition window you can see definitions and bilingual example sentences, although many of the example sentences seem quite obscure. You can also search for other Chinese words directly from the pop-up window.

Do you have any other useful English/Chinese bilingual websites? Share them in the comments.

Free language resource: How to Learn Chinese

1on1 Mandarin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:00:13 +0000

Please download and feel free to share with your friends.

How to Learn Chinese Guide (726)

This useful guide covers topics such as learning Chinese strategies, learning styles, maintaining motivation, overcoming barriers, memorizing vocabulary, and various other issues. Now freely available online with hard copies available at our Chinese language school in Beijing. We’ve heard some positive feedback about this practical learning Chinese guide from our current students. Hope it’ll help you improve your Chinese as well!

One of the most useful sections is about learning Chinese strategies. These chapters contain ideas such as different ways to use flash cards, recording yourself, saying the action that you are doing, grouping items or topics, labeling items, or looking for similarities. Other useful topics include maintaining motivation and learning from high achievers.

If you’ve downloaded and read some of the content, or have tried it out, let us know your thoughts down in the comments.

P.S. if you prefer to read or download individual chapters online, please see our How to learn Chinese page.

China news websites in Chinese

1on1 Mandarin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:26:37 +0000

It’s been awhile since last post, part of reason is that one of our main blogger Sarah was busy with another program and now she is leaving for US to pursue her musical dream. She is one of the most awesome person I’ve ever worked with, all the best for Sarah.

Today, we’d like to introduce some China news sites, if want to practice and challenge your reading, below are some websites would be very helpful.

Download pdf version China news in Chinese websites (232)

*download updated version China news in Chinese v2.0 (166)

Google资讯-Google Chinese news

http://news.google.cn/

南方周末-Southern Weekend

http://www.infzm.com/

凤凰网-Ifeng (Hong Kong)

http://ifeng.com/

新加坡联合早报网-Singapore Zaobao

http://www.zaobao.com/

经济和金融-Economics and Finance

FT中文网-Financial Times in Chinese

http://www.ftchinese.com/index.php

华尔街日报-Wall Street Journal in Chinese

http://cn.wsj.com

财经网

http://www.caijing.com.cn/

IT and Internet

http://www.techweb.com.cn

http://www.itxinwen.com IT新闻网

基督教新闻-China Christian News

Gospel Herald, http://www.gospelherald.cn/

Gospel Times, http://www.gospeltimes.cn/

1on1 Class vs. BLCU language programs

1on1 Mandarin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:30:33 +0000

I’ve been considering the pros and cons of learning Chinese through language programs in a university classroom setting compared to small 1-on-1 language schools like 1 on 1 Mandarin.

Consider BLCU. It is widely known that their curriculum is world-class and that many of their foreign students come out of their programs with a great understanding of the Chinese language. However, the one clear weakness with this is the quality of spoken language it produces. For the extroverted student, this weakness may be diminished by their desire to get out and speak to Chinese people, but it still does not provide a direct and constant source of correction for their pronunciation and tones.

Now consider how that compares with 1-on-1 learning. A 1-on-1 learning environment can provide all of the benefits of the same type of curriculum offered at places like BLCU, but with the emphasis on quality spoken language included. Even the introverted student is forced to speak and improve his or her spoken Chinese.

I was speaking to a Chinese friend recently who wants to improve her spoken English. She told me how all of the English she learned from childhood was focused on passing a reading and writing test. She said that she, along with many other Chinese students, can write and read English fairly well, but when it comes to speaking, they are lacking because it was never emphasized when they were going to school.

Of course, reading and writing in any language we intend to work in has great value, but on a daily basis, relationships and even just functioning in everyday life, 90% of our language is speaking and listening.

(Shared by Joel, about himself- “I moved to Beijing over one year ago at the age of 50 and began studying Chinese. My wife is now teaching at a kindergarten and we are enjoying many of the opportunities that come from living in the great city.” Lastly……

Wondering how Joel speaks Chinese now?-watch his youtube video of speaking Chinese!

Choosing Your Curriculum I

1on1 Mandarin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:19:53 +0000

Once you have evaluated your goals, finalized options of where to study, whether to study in a 1on1 setting or in a group setting, and at which school, it is now time to decide on a curriculum to follow.

Most foreigners, when arriving to China and starting language study, are very ambitious about surviving in China and thereby very eager to converse in Chinese. Therefore, the goal is to explore the most effective textbooks that are widely used to get one speaking and understanding Mandarin. In universities, most will employ books published by their own institution. For example, Tsinghua University will select textbooks published by Tsinghua University.

At our 1on1 Mandarin language school, popular textbooks for beginner and intermediate level learners are Chinese Made Easier, New Practical Chinese Reader, and Step By Step Chinese.

New Practical Chinese Reader aims to balance conversation, reading, writing, and listening. A good choice for the learner that wants to learn all aspects of the Chinese language with equal focus. Some students mention that the book can be quite boring and systematic.

Step By Step Chinese is an excellent choice for those that want to not only focus on oral communication but also want to sound like a local; in that they start learning some colloquial terminology or phrases. There is a lot more character recognition required with these series of books, so the student will also have a lot of reading practice.

Chinese Made Easier focuses a lot on oral communication, but not so much on reading and writing. Characters are introduced but at a slower pace than other textbooks as to not overwhelm the language learner. The grammar is also explained very clearly so that it becomes easy to understand how grammar structures are used. Many students also appreciate the textbook for how systematic it is. Although this would be a downfall for those who don’t like predicatability and routine methods of study. Another caution with Chinese Made Easier is that once your proficiency level advances, you may find it difficult to find advanced level textbooks that are suitable because almost all textbooks are in characters and have no pinyin.

It would be a great idea to get some feedback from other experienced language students also on what curricula they recommend.

Learn Chinese Blog | Learn to speak Chinese » Learning Approaches

How to learn Chinese characters (p-1)

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How to study Chinese – Learning style

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Learn Chinese Through Listening to Chinese Music

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Learning Chinese Through Listening – Stream Chinese TV Dramas Online

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Read Bilingual News, Learn Chinese

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Free language resource: How to Learn Chinese

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China news websites in Chinese

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Top 3 Chinese video websites

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1on1 Class vs. BLCU language programs

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Choosing Your Curriculum I

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