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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Love and language: Challenges and opportunities in learning Chinese with a partner
They say that dating a Chinese partner is the ultimate shortcut to fluency. “You’ll learn effortlessly,” some claim, “you’ll always have a teacher by your side!” But is learning Chinese with a partner as seamless, engaging, and straightforward as it’s often made out to be?
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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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