Learning Chinese
The blogs on this site are in categories and the pages are either independent, with no relation to the blogs, or they are an introduction to a category.
Most people learn Chinese because they were born in China, or into a Chinese family somewhere else in the world. More than 1,300,000,000 people learned it for that reason. Some do it because the characters look a lot prettier than English. Others learn for business reasons, to make money in dealings with China. Many learn Chinese because they think China is one of the most interesting countries on earth and they want to find out more about it or even go to live there. I’m in the last group and found an opportunity to come here and teach. I went about it the wrong way so made slow progress. I hope I will soon graduate from kindergarten level to early primary. I want to give you tools to do better than that! The quickest and best way to learn Mandarin Chinese, or Putonghua, is to learn reading and writing at the same time as you learn vocabulary. As your vocabulary increases you can write letters to people and read children’s books and comics, then newspapers and finally adult books.
EuroAsia Software provides free language learning software and it’s good. If I had their Chinese Homework Trainer three years ago and learned Chinese characters at the same rate I learned vocabulary I would be many levels above where I am now. I still can’t read shop signs, let alone newspapers, so work on the characters as hard as you do on listening and speaking. Here is their site.
http://www.euroasiasoftware.com/
If you are a student you can use the many vocabulary lists which integrate with various flash card learning approaches and character learning animations. You can add your own learning sets by typing in the required vocabulary or importing them into the programme. All I can say is that I am going to use this programme daily and accelerate my learning.
I’ll add more software or site links as I find really useful stuff on the net.
If you are preparing to visit China you will do well to read my blogs about China. They outline many of the frustrations and joys that Westerners experience when they live in China or visit for an extended period. In Shining Girl I tell the tale of a trip round China my daughter and I did when she came to visit, so that is more about the travelling in China experience. Teaching in China is created from my journal and is a day by day account which is a different mood from the reactive mode of much of my China, critique, etc. blogs.
Come to China, it’s a challenge. Have go at saying a few things in Chinese. Even xiexie, thank you will get you the great smiles that Chinese people often hide. from public view. In my Amazon store you’ll find lots of phrasebooks, language courses and books about aspects of Chinese software. Here’s a link http://astore.amazon.com/chichiandthes-20/105-6159943-8789255?node=0&page=2 or look at the ads in the right column.