Delete your flashcards
Delete your flashcards! This isn’t me turning against flashcards. It’s advice about how to learn most effectively with when you’re using an SRS system.
Sentence mining
If I could only recommend one technique for learning Chinese more effectively, it would be sentence mining.
Understand before you learn
Here’s some advice about learning that sounds like it doesn’t make sense: understand before you learn.
Sharpening the saw and learning Chinese
You’ve probably heard the parable about sharpening the saw. There are two people who want to cut down trees. The first one sets to immediately with a blunt saw and no skills. The second person first spends time sharpening their saw and improving their knowledge. In the beginning, the first person gets ahead whilst the other one spends time improving their ability. But once the second person gets going, they quickly gain the lead with the improvements they have made.
How to Learn to Write Chinese: Introduction
Anyone can learn to write Chinese if they have the right knowledge and the right approach. Even with poor knowledge and a bad approach, it’s still totally possible for anyone to learn to write Chinese. In fact, I would say that most people do it with poor knowledge and a bad approach, at least at first.
Why Randy Hunt is wrong about flashcards
I recently came across this article by Randy Hunt arguing that flashcards aren’t just a waste of time when learning languages, but are actively bad for you.
A simple test for your Chinese study methods
How do you know if your Chinese study methods are good ones? It’s a simple question, and there are some intuitive answers. You might ask any of the following to gauge how effective your learning methods are:
How to Learn to Write Chinese: The Method
The final article in this series on how to learn to write Chinese covers the actual method I would recommend for learning to write Chinese characters. If you haven’t already, read the other two articles first.
How to Learn to Write Chinese: Key Concepts
Once you’ve read the introduction on how to learn to write Chinese, it’s time to get on with learning the essential concepts. This is the middle article in my series on how to learn to write Chinese. The whole series has three posts which I’d recommend you read in order.
Set Up Lifelong Chinese Character Learning in 10 Minutes
With just ten minutes of work, you can set yourself up with a Chinese character learning system that will keep your hanzi up to scratch for a lifetime. Here’s how.
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