How You Learn Chinese Well

How do you learn Chinese well?(如何学好中文？)Before we talk about that, you first need to ask yourself a question: What is the purpose of learning Chinese? For hobby? For communication and exchange? To experience a different culture? To make your life wonderful?

The reasons may go on. But one thing is always true. Learning Chinese should never be a miserable experience. For most beginners, they really struggled while learning Chinese. It seems difficult to learn Chinese since Chinese characters have so many strokes. To read and write them is never easy work, even for the Chinese. But, like most languages, Chinese is tonal. A Chinese kid 3 or 4 years old can speak much better Chinese than most foreigners who have learned Chinese for 4 years or more. What is the reason? The method!

Babies learn with sound. When babies are born, they can make and hear all the sounds in all the languages in the world. In this stage, babies learn which phonemes belong to the language they are learning and which don’t. After hearing a language sound, they simply have the irritability to imitate it, which is important for children learning a language. So, beginners should primarily focus on mandarin tones before memorizing characters and words.

Luckily, we live in the age of the Internet. With the help of the Internet, we can make Chinese learning very fun. Once a thing becomes fun, it becomes easy. Best of all, we don’t have to worry about there being no learning resources. There are countless blog posts, audios and videos online  for learning Chinese. Besides, you can also learn Chinese by watching Chinese television series, listening to Chinese songs and etc. More importantly, the vast majority of resources also are also free. The following are some of the best resources and tools for learning mandarin Chinese.

在线新华词典 is one of the most famous online Chinese dictionaries of all. You can check a Chinese word and listen to its pronunciation.

youku is probably the most well-know video websites in China. It is seen as China’s youtube by many. You can search Chinese tv series, movies, videos for learning Chinese, etc.

Stack exchange Chinese section is one of the best platform to ask and answer questions about mandarin Chinese. If you are a beginner, you can definitely find something useful there.

The list never stops. If you really want to learn a language, you can find a way. You are your biggest obstacle.