Articles in the ‘Distinctively Chinese’ category Page 13
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Wuxia, a key to Chinese language and culture
Wuxia is something genuinely Chinese and is great for learning both about the culture and the language. in this article, Sara K. introduces wuxia to Chinese learners and explains what it is, why it’s relevant for learners and how to get started with wuxia if you find it interesting.
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25 books I’ve read in Chinese, with reviews and difficulty ratings
I set the goal of reading 25 books in one year. This article is about the 25 books I read and is meant to serve as encouragement and inspiration. You might also find a book or two you want to read yourself! At the end of the article, I discuss my reading habits in general as well.
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Learning to read aloud in Chinese
Reading aloud in Chinese is hard, but it’s not impossible. It requires a lot of different skills, but it also seems like reading aloud is a skill in itself that needs to be practised specifically if we want to improve our reading ability. In this article, I discuss an experiment I did to see if I could increase my own ability to read aloud in Chinese.
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5 websites to help answer your questions about Chinese
It’s not always easy to know where to go when you fail to find answers to your Chinese-related questions. This article gives some advice on how to ask for help online and also introduces five websites that offer help in various forms for free.
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Reading aloud in Chinese is really hard
Reading unfamiliar Chinese text aloud is very hard. This article sheds some light on why this is the case and what consequences it has for people who learn Chinese as a second language. In general, as a student, don’t feel down if you can’t read aloud well, because it really is very hard, and as a (native speaking) teacher, please understand that reading aloud in Chinese is much harder than you think.
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Phonetic components, part 2: Hacking Chinese characters
This is the second and final article about using phonetic components to hack Chinese characters and make it considerably easier to handle similarly looking characters. This article describes both the principles and gives plenty of examples that might resolve some of your current problems for you.
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Phonetic components, part 1: The key to 80% of all Chinese characters
At least 80% of all Chinese characters are made up of one semantic component (meaning) and one phonetic component (pronunciation). The sheer number of characters formed this way means that these characters ought to be taught properly, yet I think this topic is largely glossed over. This is the first article of two dealing with phonetic components and how they can help you learn Chinese better.
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Dealing with near-synonyms in Chinese as an independent learner
Near-synonyms cause major headaches for language learners and it’s especially hard for Chinese learners due to the lack of adequate resources in English. This article suggests some ways of handling the problem of near-synonyms when learning Chinese.
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21 essential dictionaries and corpora for learning Chinese
There are many online resources for looking up Chinese characters and words, so many that it might be very hard for new learners to find what they need. This article introduces 21 dictionaries and corpora for Chinese learners, including what they should be used for in addition to some pros and cons.
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Horizontal vocabulary learning in Chinese
The normal thing to do when we learning characters or words is to focus on deepening our knowledge, researching components and understanding more about what we’re trying to learn. Some problems can’t be alleviated this way, however, instead they call for horizontal vocabulary learning, i.e. to putting the character or word into context and to compare it with similar characters or words. Only then can we grasp the bigger picture.
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