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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

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.

Before Enrolling to Study Mandarin: Identifying Your Learning Style

1on1 Mandarin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:11:04 +0000

Before enrolling to study Mandarin Chinese, it is very important to identify your learning style. This will be helpful for your teacher to adjust his/her teaching approach to cater to your needs and how you learn most effectively. If this is not possible, you can find a teacher whose teaching approach fits with your learning style. Being aware of how you learn most effectively will also help you to study more efficiently and reduce your chances of being bored or overwhelmed from studying Chinese. Below is a list of learning styles:

Learning Style 1 : Analytical / Relational
Learning Style 2 : Perception / Process
Learning Style 3 : Sensory Channel
Learning Style 4 : Personality

Check out some articles here to find out more about your Chinese learning style.

Learn Chinese Blog | Learn to speak Chinese » learning styles

Learn Chinese Through Listening to Chinese Music

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Learning Chinese Through Listening – Stream Chinese TV Dramas Online

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