Articles published in July 2014
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Focusing on radicals, character components and building blocks
How much should you focus on learning building blocks? If you don’t focus enough, you will remain in the tourist phrase book. If you focus too much on building blocks, you will end up living in brick yard rather than a house.
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Improve your pronunciation with the Hacking Chinese pronunciation check
I’ve found that pronunciation is one of the most neglected areas in Chinese language teaching. Teachers don’t have the time or don’t know how to teach it properly. This means that students are left with bad pronunciation, often without knowing it. The goal with this course, which is now open for limited testing, tries to address this.
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Language learning with a Chinese girlfriend or boyfriend
Learning Chinese with a partner is very good, because it makes you more motivated and makes it more fun to learn. However, it isn’t a magic bullet that will solve all your problems. You will still need to study, you will still need to practice, it’s just that some of the things you need to learn will be more enjoyable and you will hopefully be more motivated to learn. That’s worth a lot, but you can find other fun ways to learn and other things to drive you forwards.
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A learner’s guide to TV shows in Chinese, part 2
After having talked about how and why to use television to learn Chinese, it’s time to look at actual genres and programmes and see how these can help a language learner improve his or her skills. In this second article, the focus is on cooking, quiz and gaming shows, as well as home-made videos, cartoons and anime.
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Sensible character learning challenge 2014: The Big Finish
This article marks the end of the 2014 sensible character learning challenge. Post your progress report to win prizes and read about my own reflections on learning characters! There’s also some information about future challenges on Hacking Chinese and an offer to beta test a new challenge engine.
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