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278 - A minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand
Season 1 Episode 278
Chinese characters are beautiful and fascinating, but learning to write them by hand is time-consuming. If you want to learn to write Chinese charact…
4 months, 3 weeks ago
277 - Cultivate your Chinese flashcard garden... or burn it down and start afresh
Season 1 Episode 277
Flashcards are powerful, but what if your deck feels more like an overgrown thicket than a carefully cultivated garden? Do you clear away the weeds a…
5 months ago
276 - 4, 3, 2, 1: Fluency! A great technique to boost your Mandarin speaking ability
Season 1 Episode 276
Do you want to speak Mandarin fluently, no matter what your level is? Use the 4/3/2 technique to build confidence and flow!
#learnchinese #fluency #fl…
5 months, 1 week ago
275 - How to talk about Chinese characters in Chinese
Season 1 Episode 275
How do native speakers talk about Chinese characters?
The writing system is not phonetic, so you can't spell out words, but it is still possible to ta…
5 months, 2 weeks ago
274 - Why not going to China now could actually be good for your Chinese
Season 1 Episode 274
Going abroad to learn Chinese in an immersion environment can be great, but unless you plan to stay for years, you might be better off delaying your …
5 months, 3 weeks ago
273 - What a big Rubik’s Cube taught me about Chinese characters
Season 1 Episode 273
How small can Chinese characters be while still being legible? How much information do they contain per unit area? And what can a big Rubik’s cube te…
5 months, 4 weeks ago
272 - Learning (or not learning) Chinese slang
Season 1 Episode 272
Slang and swearing often top the list of what people want to learn in a foreign language. But is this curiosity actually helpful for learners, or jus…
6 months ago
271 - 7 ways to learn to write Chinese characters
Season 1 Episode 271
Learning to write characters is an integral part of learning Chinese, but how do you practise writing them? Do you type? Write on paper? Or… on the c…
6 months, 1 week ago
270 - How to not teach Chinese characters to beginners: A 12-step approach
Season 1 Episode 270
I started learning Chinese well over a decade ago, and I have encountered many great teachers. But I have also seen truly terrible teaching, especial…
6 months, 2 weeks ago
269 - Same building blocks, different characters: How component placement changes meaning in Chinese
Season 1 Episode 269
Chinese character components are usually placed in predictable ways, so if you remember the components, you can often write the character. But not al…
6 months, 3 weeks ago