According to the Chinese lunar calendar, the year of the rooster (鸡年/雞年) is drawing to a close and the year of the dog (狗年) will begin soon! February 15th New Year’s Eve (除夕), which is when you traditionally have dinner with family. Here in Sweden, it’s just a normal working day, but the Spring Festival (春节/春節) is still special for both teachers and students of Chinese!
To celebrate the new year, there’s a time-limited special offer for my video, audio and text course focusing on how to learn Mandarin. The goal of the course is to help you get the most out of your studying.
Chinese New Year and New Semester Course Discount
It’s not only a new year, but for most students it’s also a new semester. Depending on where you live, the spring semester has just started or is about to start right after the new year celebrations are over. This is a good opportunity to take control of your learning. Until the end of the week (noon, pacific time), you get $10 off the course. To get the discount, please apply the following discount code in the cart:
gou3nian2
Read more about the course by clicking the link below, but I have also summarised the most important things in this post, so reading here works too!
Hacking Chinese: A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin (video/audio/text course)
An example screen from the episode on how to learn pronunciation.
This course is the result of thousands of hours of work and just like the Hacking Chinese website, it’s about how to learn Chinese in a better way. Unlike the website, though, the course is comprehensive, structured and has a lot more to offer than scattered articles. It represents my most complete attempt at helping others to learn Mandarin so far. The course contains:
- 15 video episodes highlighting the most important parts of the course, each with practical exercises and calls to action.
- A 347-page e-book discussing all major aspects of learning Chinese in depth. This offers the structure the website doesn’t really have.
- Full audio version of the book allows you to listen to the book instead of reading, freeing up time you can use for learning Chinese instead.
- A checklist for learning in a better way summarising the advice given throughout the rest of the course.
Added content: WordSwing iOS app
As regular readers surely know, I’ve been working with Kevin over at WordSwing to create interactive text games for Chinese learners. They are a like graded readers, except you choose your own actions and the story develops accordingly. I think this is both more interesting and more effective for learning Chinese!
What’s new is that we now have an app out through which you can play all the games, as well as some other learning activities. So far, it’s only available for iOS and you can check it out in the app store here. While you can try the games, playing the full versions require a subscription. For a limited time, one month is included in the course package!
Time limited new-year discount
If you get the course before the end of the week, you’ll get $10 off (use the discount code “gou3nian2” in the cart). You still get all the content, of course, including the $100+ in discounts and coupon codes for various useful services, such as Pleco, Skritter and ChinesePod.
Hacking Chinese: A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin
What does this course offer that the site doesn’t already offer for free?
Good question! Zachary Danz, one of the first students to finish the course, summed up the difference between the website and the course as follows:
As someone who has followed Hacking Chinese for a long time, I couldn’t be happier – I feel like I have the full picture of the message Olle has for Chinese learners, whereas before it was scattered and incomplete.
This course helps you connect the dots and avoids not seeing the forest for the trees. There is also a big difference between reading fragmentary articles that were written over five years without structure and using a comprehensive course containing video, text and audio.
