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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…
9 months, 2 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…
9 months, 3 weeks 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…
10 months 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…
10 months, 1 week 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 …
10 months, 2 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…
10 months, 3 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…
10 months, 4 weeks 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…
11 months 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…
11 months, 1 week 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…
11 months, 2 weeks ago