Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Articles tagged with ‘Immersion’ Page 4

  1. Why learning Chinese through music is underrated

    Learning Chinese through music is underrated. Music is a very efficiently way of improving your Chinese in an enjoyable way that won’t interfere much with other things you’re doing (simply decrease your exposure to music in English and replace it with Chinese). This article contains five songs I like, but there will be much more in future articles.

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  2. Chinese listening strategies: Improving listening speed

    A lack of listening speed is what stops you from understanding spoken Chinese even though you know most of the words and sentence patterns being used. I think the problem is generally overlooked and in this article I explain what listening speed is, why you need it to understand Chinese. I also talk about how to practise listening speed.

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  3. Chinese listening strategies: Passive listening

    After having looked at background listening in previous articles, the time has now come to discuss passive listening in more detail. In this article, I provide some thoughts on how to adjust passive listening to your current situation, making it less or more active.

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  4. Chinese listening strategies: Background listening

    Background listening is not a substitute for more active forms of listening practice, but it’s still very useful. Think of it as a way of filling your days with learning opportunities without requiring much extra time.

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  5. Chinese listening strategies: Problem analysis

    Do you know why you don’t understand as much Chinese as you should/want/ought to? When solving a problem, the first step should always be to figure out what the problem is. Simply knowing that we don’t understand spoken Chinese at a certain level isn’t good enough, we need to know more than that if we want to improve. In this article, I discuss various ways of identifying and analysing problems with listening ability.

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  6. Triggering quantum leaps in Chinese listening ability

    Listening ability is mostly a matter of practise, but the level of difficulty of the input also matters. My theory is that most people listen to Chinese that is too easy for them and would benefit from challenging themselves more, even if they spend the same amount of time practising listening ability.

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  7. Achieving the impossible by being inspired

    Teaching and inspiring are two closely related things. If you can see all superiors as sources of inspiration and knowledge, you will advance faster than if you view them as rivals or opponents. Similarly, realise that you have your own strong sides that inspire other people. Don’t hesitate to teach others if they want to be taught. Inspiration is cyclic in its nature and should flow freely in all directions.

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