Learn Chinese Blog | Learn to speak Chinese » language learning http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog helpful Chinese language learning tips and resources Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:50:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 How to study Chinese – Learning style http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/study-chinese-learning-style/ http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/study-chinese-learning-style/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:21:23 +0000 Darren http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/?p=1209

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.

 

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]]> http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/study-chinese-learning-style/feed/ 0 Chinese character etymology-History of every character http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/chinese-character-etymology/ http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/chinese-character-etymology/#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:08:20 +0000 Darren http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/?p=1144

I came across this site and was quite impressed by what he did. Richard Sears made Chinese Character etymology available online after years of effort. Through his site, you can see history of any Chinese character.  You can see how each character written in different ancient Chinese character styles: simplified Chinese character (most common used), traditional Chinese character, Seal Character (篆体字-zhuàn tǐ zì), Bronze Characters（金文-jīn wén) which used Zhou Dynasty and Oracle Characters (甲骨文-jiǎ ɡǔ wén), it may not make sense to you, but it’s very interesting to see how characters change through Chinese history.

Richard found it was very helpful to learn Chinese characters by getting a step by step evolution of the character from its original form and understand the meaning of the character.  If you are interested in learning Chinese character and knowing more than what textbook offers. It’s really something you want to check out. some characters you can see: 马 (horse), 鱼 (fish), 羊 (sheep), 家 (family), 人 (person), 男 (male), 女 (female) and much more……

Lastly, if you are like Richard and very interested in learning Chinese characters, Skritter is one of great tools for Chinese character writing practice, I heard very positive feedbacks about this tool, you may want to try it out if you are serious about learn Chinese characters.

Chinese character etymology:  http://www.chineseetymology.org .

Learn Chinese Characters

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]]> http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/chinese-character-etymology/feed/ 0 Learn Chinese Through Listening to Chinese Music http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learn-chinese-listening-chinese-music/ http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learn-chinese-listening-chinese-music/#comments Fri, 05 Nov 2010 07:56:40 +0000 Duncan http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/?p=1033

google-musicA 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.

google-music-menu

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


google-music-menu

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


google-music-homepage

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!

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]]> http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learn-chinese-listening-chinese-music/feed/ 2 Learning Chinese Through Listening – Stream Chinese TV Dramas Online http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learning-chinese-listening-streaming-tv/ http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learning-chinese-listening-streaming-tv/#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:23:12 +0000 Duncan http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/?p=982

Chinese TV Drama Online StreamingThe 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


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]]> http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learning-chinese-listening-streaming-tv/feed/ 3 Learn Chinese cooking terms http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learn-chinese-cooking-terms/ http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/learn-chinese-cooking-terms/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:55:12 +0000 Jimmy Olsen http://www.1on1mandarin.com/blog/?p=703 complete

Francisco was planning to cook a great meal for his Chinese friends in his apartment. They arrived early to help him cook. He wanted to have Bavarian stir-fried vegetables with Russian borscht, which his friends had absolutely no experience with. So, he had to give them directions, but oh, no! When he wanted to ask someone to use the spatula to stir the vegetables, or to use the ladle to serve the soup, all he could say was “把那个。。。那个东西。。。那个，快点拿那个把它那个那个,快!”(bǎ nà gè 。。。nà gè dōng xī 。。。nà gè ，kuài diǎn ná nà gè bǎ tā nà gè nà gè ,kuài!) His poor friends didn’t know which kitchen utensil he wanted. It was like that all night.

So, they ordered KFC. Hope this post will help you avoid those situations.

In Chinese, 勺 (sháo) refers to spoon or a round utensil for eating/cooking, but can also refer to something that does what a spatula does – stirring or turning over food in a wok – 锅 (guō). 锅 (guō) is the generic name for most pots, but if you’re looking for a specific utensil or pot, see below. Cookware in general is called 烹调用具 (pēng diào yòng jù).

铲子 or 锅铲

炒勺汤勺饭勺 漏勺 or 笊篱 平低锅 汤锅 汤锅2

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