Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

You searched for third tone | Page 9 of 11 | Hacking Chinese Page 9

  1. Learning Chinese words: When quantity beats quality

    Any teacher, student or researcher will agree that vocabulary is important, but how should you go about it? What’s the goal? This article argues that a common problem for learners of Chinese is that they spend too much time learning too few words, and that they would be better of aiming for quantity over quality in many cases.

    Read →

  2. Training your Chinese teacher, part 3: Listening ability

    Listening ability is generally overlooked in language teaching. At first glance, it might seem that having a teacher is not as useful for improving listening as it is for improving speaking, but is that really the case? This article covers both what you should and what you shouldn’t do with your teacher if improving listening ability is your goal!

    Read →

  3. Training your Chinese teacher, part 1: Introduction

    Finding a good Chinese teacher is not easy, but there are many things you can do to get more out of the time you spend with a teacher, and in a sense, train him or her to better suit your needs and preferences.

    Read →

  4. A student’s guide to comprehension-based learning

    In this third and final article, the focus is on how students can make their own learning comprehension-based, with or without a teacher. It draws from the principles and ideas of the previous articles and allows you to apply these to your own learning.

    Read →

  5. The benefits of a comprehension-based approach for teaching and learning Chinese

    Diane Neubauer continues her series of guest articles about comprehension-based approaches to teaching and learning Chinese. In this the second part, the focus is on principles and motivations for using a comprehension-based method. There’s also an overview of teaching practices that fall into this category.

    Read →

  6. How I learnt Chinese, part 5: Returning to Sweden

    Excursion with Taiwanese exchange students

    In this fifth part of the story of how I learnt Chinese I write about the two years I spent in Sweden after returning from Taiwan. I learnt on my own, through online course and by hanging out with exchange students.

    Read →

  7. Learning to pronounce Mandarin with Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA: Part 3

    As adults, understanding is important when learning pronunciation. One way to achieve this is through the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which will allow you to see the sounds your ears might fail to hear. Learning IPA also means learning basic phonetics, and that will do you good in the long run!

    Read →

  8. Learning Chinese characters through pictures

    This article is about using pictures to learn Chinese characters. In order to learn characters efficiently, it’s important to understand how they work and what the building blocks are so that these can be used in other characters. Any pictures you use to remember should be based on this. Avoid using pictures that obscure the real meaning.

    Read →

  9. Zooming out: The resources you need to put Chinese in context

    In order to learn efficiently, it’s important that you integrate your knowledge. This means being able to break down Chinese in order to understand it, as well as looking at context and sorting out confusing cases. In this second article, I introduce tools for zooming out and putting things in context.

    Read →

  10. 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.

    Read →