Regardless if we are full-time students enrolled in a serious language program or casual learners who study on our own for fun, being able to plan our time and organise our studying is essential if we want to make progress. We need to make sure that we study what we need to study and we need to find the time to do so. Even if studying Chinese is perhaps not the most important thing we do, we still want to make sure we get the most out of the time we invest.
Thus, this is not merely about discussing the time we have available, it’s also about finding time where we thought there wasn’t any, it’s about being smart and incorporate Chinese into our lives. It’s about learning without actually having to sacrifice other parts of our lives, learning in other ways than traditional studying. Most articles in this category are relevant to other walks of like as well and aren’t strictly related to learning Chinese.
Articles about organising and planning:
- Welcome to The Fluent Listener, a new course from Hacking Chinese!
- Four key principles to improve your Mandarin listening comprehension
- Three things I wish I had known as an advanced student of Chinese: The time machine, part 3
- Three things I wish I had known as an intermediate student of Chinese: The time machine, part 2
- Three things I wish I had known as a beginner student of Chinese: The time machine, part 1
- How I used a notebook to learn more Chinese, and why you should too
- The three factors that determine how much Chinese you learn
- Habit hacking for language learners
- Interview: Insights from Skritter’s Complete Guide to Learning Chinese
- How to learn Chinese in the long term with intrinsic motivation
- Listen more and learn more by building a personal Chinese audio library
- How to best use flashcards to learn Chinese
- Student Q&A, December 2023: How many words to learn, if it’s good to learn radicals, and whether to learn simplified or traditional characters
- 100 hours of Chinese listening in 3 weeks: What I learnt and how to apply it
- How long do you have to study Chinese to make it useful?
- Should you throw away your Chinese textbook?
- Hacking Chinese Podcast three-year anniversary Q&A
- Is Chinese difficult to learn?
- Timeboxing Chinese: Get more done in less time
- Learning Chinese is more like walking a thousand miles than running 100-metre dash
- Should you use an efficient method for learning Chinese even if you hate it?
- Don’t try to improve everything at once when learning Chinese
- Using the HSK as a roadmap to learning Chinese
- Learn Chinese efficiently, not quickly
- How to study Chinese when you don’t feel like it
- Chinese language question triage: When to ask whom about what
- Analyse and balance your Chinese learning with Paul Nation’s four strands
- Time quality: Studying the right thing at the right time
- How to start learning Chinese again after a break
- How to survive and thrive in a difficult Chinese course
- Learning Classical Chinese is for everyone (no, seriously!)
- Is taking a Chinese course that’s too hard good for your learning?
- Should you enrol in a Chinese course or are you better off learning on your own?
- Why your Chinese isn’t as good as you think it ought to be
- Chinese language logging, part 3: Tools and resources for keeping track of your learning
- Chinese language logging, part 2: A healthy, balanced diet of Mandarin
- Chinese language logging, part 1: Why and how to track your progress
- 20 tips and tricks to improve your Chinese writing ability
- How to not fail with your New Year resolution to learn Chinese
- 7 ideas for smooth and effortless Chinese listening practice
- Why not going to China now could actually be good for your Chinese
- Diversify how you study Chinese to learn more
- Should you learn to speak Chinese before you learn Chinese characters?
- How to figure out how good your Chinese is
- New course: Unlocking Chinese – The Ultimate Guide for Beginners
- The nine principles of learning (and the mistakes from failing to follow them)
- 101 questions and answers about how to learn Chinese
- Learning to unicycle, learning anatomy and learning Chinese
- Are you practising Chinese the right way? Is your method valid?
- How to adjust your Chinese listening to the right level
- Launching Hacking Chinese Challenges
- How long have you studied Chinese? 290 years or 58 992 hours!
- Study more Chinese: Time boxing vs. micro goals
- How long have you studied Chinese?
- Focusing on radicals, character components and building blocks
- How to reach a decent level of Chinese in 100 days
- The grand listening cycle: Improve your Chinese listening ability
- Sensible Chinese character learning challenge 2014
- Sensible Chinese character learning revisited
- Flashcard overflow: About card models and review directions
- Learning how to fish: Or, why it’s essential to know how to learn
- Preparing for rainy days and dealing with slumps
- Your slumps affect your language learning more than your flows
- What’s your next step to master Chinese?
- Why you need goals to learn Chinese efficiently
- The get-back-up-to-speed summer challenge
- If you think spaced repetition software is a panacea you are wrong
- Learning how to learn Chinese through self-experimentation
- Is your flashcard deck too big for your own good?
- Measuring your language learning is a double-edged sword
- The time barrel: How to find more time to study Chinese
- Defining Language Hacking: Lessons Learned From Hacking Chinese
- The importance of counting what counts when learning Chinese
- If you want to master Chinese, make long-term investments
- Benchmarking progress in Chinese to stay motivated
- How to find more time to practise Chinese listening
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 4 – Micro goals
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 3 – Short-term goals
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 2 – Long-term goals
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 1 – Introduction