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Quote:and SRS intelligent flashcards on iPhone, made up of words that I’ve encountered in everyday conversation or on the street.
Could you expand on this a little bit? Is it an app? How does it work? When someone uses a word you don’t understand you look it up in the app and bookmark it or something? And then you can train?
If it doesn’t work like this, does an app like this exist? 🙂
Quote:and SRS intelligent flashcards on iPhone, made up of words that I’ve encountered in everyday conversation or on the street.Could you expand on this a little bit? Is it an app? How does it work? When someone uses a word you don’t understand you look it up in the app and bookmark it or something? And then you can train?
If it doesn’t work like this, does an app like this exist? 🙂
I found this useful website with the 3000 most commonly used Chinese characters. I’m finding it to be a good review for words I’ve already learned but keep forgetting.
Outstanding. Here’s something I stumbled on today which I bookmarked:
Have an iPad & some apps and ready now….but SO MANY resources.Do I 1st learn Pinyin and writing,then local dialect,then Mandarin or do I just stumble on the best I can?Then there are Radicals,alphabets etc,4ways to pronounce “Ma”??Then I am a little lazy too.Dammit!
Quote:Have an iPad & some apps and ready now….but SO MANY resources.Do I 1st learn Pinyin and writing,then local dialect,then Mandarin or do I just stumble on the best I can?Then there are Radicals,alphabets etc,4ways to pronounce “Ma”??Then I am a little lazy too.Dammit!Select whichever path suits your needs. Here’s what I did:
Step #1: Learn pinyin
Step #2: Pick up vocabulary that you will use, write it down
Step #3: Learn radicals
Step #4: Learn characters to go along with your new vocabulary, write it all down
Then add new vocabulary + characters and get to using them. I never spent much time on Chinese grammar specifically because it is pretty easy. I never spent much time focusing on tones specifically either, for me I noticed after hearing the same words hundreds of times over and over again the tone gets ingrained naturally.
I downloaded a new new iPhone / iPad app today called Mandarin Tap which is pretty good for beginner/intermediate learners. It teaches not only characters but contextual series of phrases and has you reconstruct them by tapping. Worth checking out, costs $3.
For iTunes users, , ItunesU has a good collection of chinese language tutorials from few universities. Most of the courses are aimed to teach basic language for beginners, its worth to check it out.
The course from hongkong university is good to start with.
I started using a new tool a few weeks ago that’s been really helpful: Mandaread
It basically provides editorial content in Chinese (news articles, novels, etc) with characters and words that you can mouseover to see pinyin and english descriptions. After you create an account, you can click on individual words to add them to a word list for later review.
Building word lists has pretty much been my primary way of advancing my Chinese for the last 5 years or so. I normally use Pleco on the go, adding and saving new words when I see them, or copying and pasting blocks of text into Pleco (and using the Pasteboard feature to flip through the passages and get pinyin).
I’ve also been using Duolingo for a few months to learn Spanish. Overall it’s an incredible app: beautifully designed, ingeniously simple, and free. Hopefully they add Chinese! Duolingo on iTunes
Ah I’m using language corners. I am having a lot more fun going to Chinese Corner then I do going to normal class and I am learning a hell of a lot more. Yesterday I learned words for Gamer, playboy, pervert, asshole 😀 among other useful terms. Most importantly I learned how to use them. So if anyone is interested and at a beginner/intermediate level, you are welcome to come join us. Right now we actually have more regular chinese friends visiting us to help than foreigners, so you can meet a lot of cool people too.
Ah I’m using language corners. I am having a lot more fun going to Chinese Corner then I do going to normal class and I am learning a hell of a lot more.
Interacting with people is definitely the best way to learn. Especially at the beginning levels, it is crucial to spend a lot of time listening and speaking to pick up the subtle nuances of pronunciation and cadence. Once you have a solid grasp of the grammar and pronunciation the challenge becomes acquiring more words and phrases, along with the context of how to use them. At that stage I find that learning using characters and sentences is easier than speaking. That’s where Mandaread and the pasteboard reader in Pleco really come in handy (breaking down actual articles or text).
I took Chinese classes once, briefly, to prepare for the HSK and was very bored. I agree that there are much better methods, assuming you have access to native speakers. Which we’re all lucky to have.
Cheers to everyone who has shared. I feel like I’ve tried a million different apps, websites, methods etc. but very few of them really stick in the sense that going back to them day after to day is something that I actually look forward to, rather than being something that I have to force myself to do.
Having said that the no. 1 resource I have used (as a beginner) that has been great, in terms of both “stickiness” and actually teaching me something is Michel Thomas, which is an audio program, kind of like Pimsleur but way better. Put it this way, I studied Chinese at university in Taiwan for six months and still had no idea of the tones. Nailed it in about 30 minutes of Michel Thomas. It probably depends very much on your own individual learning style but for me this is far and away the best, at least for conversation/listening comprehension (no reading or writing).
I’m kind of going on about it because my guess is for some reason it’s not as well known as stuff like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur and some of the other methods, but I think it really should be.
And to echo a previous poster, if you’re creative and willing to do a little digging then you might be able to get your hands on it at something less than full price.
Ah I’m using language corners. I am having a lot more fun going to Chinese Corner then I do going to normal class and I am learning a hell of a lot more. Yesterday I learned words for Gamer, playboy, pervert, asshole
among other useful terms. Most importantly I learned how to use them. So if anyone is interested and at a beginner/intermediate level, you are welcome to come join us. Right now we actually have more regular chinese friends visiting us to help than foreigners, so you can meet a lot of cool people too.did they teach you the Sichuan Dialect? Cause it is more useful here.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it, but you can basically watch any Chinese show on sites like Youku, PTV, PPTV, Toudou, and if those fail, a simple search on Baidu with turn something up. Here is a good list of what to watch if you don’t know.
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/24097-tv-series-recommendations-and-index-thread/
Sure, there ain’t no Wire or Breaking Bad, but unless your Chinese is at a highly advanced level, I don’t think it matters since you are still trying to wrap your head around the language first before even getting to the story.
Learning Chinese is serious work and doing just a little once a week doesn’t cut it. It takes a large amount of time over a long period of time, and working at it consistently. Watching TV everyday, and looking up words you don’t know, for many months will get you places though.
TV is probably the best listening practice; people can dumb down their speech for you, but TV doesn’t judge and just talks and talks and talks to you regardless of whether you understand. The fact that everything said is also subtitled in Chinese makes it way better study material.
But you still need to talk with people in Chinese, whether they are native-speakers or not.
I am a Mandarin Chinese teacher , if you want to learn Chinese you could E-mail me . [email protected]
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