There’s been some pretty funny links floating around lately, and a few good’uns to share today – be sure to read on if you like a good laugh. The first video is absolute gold:
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It seems these days there are a million and one different channels for learning Chinese, and each has their own pros and cons. The problem I find with sifting through a lot of different sites though, is that inevitably you will also come across a lot of information that is either junk, irrelevant, or just plain spam.

For a while now I’ve been using twitter as part of my day to day work, but I didn’t quite see the relevance for my personal life, or how it could help me. What I have now discovered though is that it really is a great way to find useful resources, get interesting information, and to help you sort through all the junk that is out there.

Of course, the best way to do this is by following interesting people, and so I’ve gone through and had a good look around to find some sources that I think are really useful for people interested in China and learning Chinese. If there is a good source I’ve left out from this list, please let me know and I’ll update it.

Without further ado – here are some really useful sources for learning more about China and Chinese on Twitter:

@socialmandarin is the official twitter feed of socialmandarin.com – a really useful site for language learners. The twitter feed keeps you in the loop for what’s popular on the site.

@nciku is the official twitter feed of nciku.com – probably the best online dictionary site I’ve found for English<-->Chinese translations. They post a word of the day sort of thing, and other useful info too.

@ChineseHacks is Dave of ChineseHacks.com fame. He posts links to all his blog articles, interesting retweets, and other random information about China/Taiwan. Very interesting.

@HaoHaoReport is a great source of all kinds of articles related to China based on popular stories from their site HaoHaoReport.com. They have a wide array of articles – more for China watchers than learners.

@ChineseADay is a reposting of bilingual sentences from tatoeba.org. It’s a really good feed to follow to get some useful Chinese words into your daily social media diet.

@chinaSMACK are all of the popular posts from chinaSMACK.com. They translate popular articles from the Chinese web into English, and have loads of funny stuff on their site. A good way to see life in China flow by.

@ChineseTeachers post all sorts of new words and sentences on a fairly regular basis. Another useful one to follow just to get a few extra words into your daily diet.

@ChinaTweep posts news and information about China, and it’s happenings. I think it’s written a Chinese person, so a slightly different perspective on things too.

@SinoSplice is a combination of reposts from SinoSplice.com and ramblings from John (the author of that site) – there is a whole combination of stuff, from info for learners to life in China. Great stuff.

@ChinesePod posts a word of the day, and other links – mainly from their site at ChinesePod.com – a very useful site for language learners. Another good one to follow to keep your mind ticking over.

@ciaocibai – OK, it’s actually my twitter feed – I post the occasional interesting article I find, and talk about geeky things and politics with friends. Worth a follow? Yup, according to my highly biased opinion at least.

This is just a selection of useful sources I’ve found on Twitter – I’ve actually created a list over on twitter at http://twitter.com/#/list/ciaocibai/chinese with a few more in it that I plan to regularly update, so be sure to check that out as well.

Are there any great Twitter-ers that I forgot? Who else would you like to see on this list? Be sure to let me know in the comments, and if there are some good ones I’ll definitely update it.

Thanks for dropping by!

Another few juicy links this time round, some really cool vocab lists and ways to join your conversations, a new TV show and more. Sounds great, right? Well, it’s even better than it sounds!
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Following on from politics vocab I thought I’d move onto another topic of great interest to me, and one that seems to be very topical lately – green technology.

I think this is a really rising area in China, and after the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (thanks BP!), it seems like something more and more people around the world are looking into. So lets learn how to talk about it in Chinese (.pdf version | Google Docs):
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When we are learning Chinese, everyone has a different endgame, but I guess the ultimate goal for most is fluency. How to prove that fluency? The HSK (汉语水平考试) is the Chinese governments answer – more or less like IELTS for Chinese learners. They have recently reworked the test into a more sensible sounding 6 level system, and each of the levels tests different facets of your Chinese language abilities.

Of course, as with all of these things, finding information about it is a bit harder than I think it should be, but after some searching I’ve found a lot of useful resources to help determine my language abilities, and help me to decide what level of the HSK to focus on. In fact, even if you aren’t interested in the HSK it’s kind of nice to see where your abilities fit into the mix.

Test your character knowledge

OK, so now I know that for level 6 I should know 5000+ characters (I think it’s characters and not words) for the test. How on earth do I know how many characters I can recognise?… Well, it just so happens the fine folks over at Clavis Sinica have created a test applet to do just that: http://www.clavisinica.com/character-test-applet.html.

Now, I don’t think testing your knowledge of single characters is the best way to go about testing your knowledge of the language, but it’s certainly better than nothing, and you get some interesting results. I just took the advanced skill level – 36 character test, and it concluded that I know around 2500 characters – placing me around level 5 on the HSK test, which is about where I think I fit in anyway. Pretty handy.

Practice tests

Of course, it would be nice to be able to take some practice tests too – and after some searching I’ve come across practice tests for each of the six levels, and the audio to go with them for listening practice too – please note you can find the answers at the end of each booklet:

• Level 1 test | Level 1 audio
• Level 2 test | Level 2 audio
• Level 3 test | Level 3 audio
• Level 4 test | Level 4 audio
• Level 5 test | Level 5 audio
• Level 6 test | Level 6 audio

Hanban, the people who administer the HSK have also created some online practice tests to try your skills out on – unfortunately featuring only reading and writing (阅读和书写), but these tests are also pretty useful, and it’s nice to see a real score at the end of it. You can check them out on their website.

The verdict

Hopefully you can find where you fit in to the grand scheme of the HSK, and have a rough idea of where you are at, and where you are headed. I personally find it really nice to have some idea of where my hard work is taking me, and hopefully you all feel the same way too. Learning Chinese is a big challenge, but it really is worth it.

Was the post helpful you? What else would you like to know about the HSK or other Chinese language tests? Do you have any useful tips, tricks or resources to share? Please let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed to get updates as quickly as they come.

Thanks for dropping by!

This time I have another great collection of resources, with study tips, vocab lists, an interesting movie and more. Sounds exciting right? Make sure to scroll down to the movie preview – it’s well worth it: Continue Reading

Lately I’ve seen a bunch of useful posts with great vocab in Chinese such as this on here on buying computers and this one here on social media. Both of these topics are really interesting to me, and very helpful to my learning, and so I thought I might share some vocab on another topic I’m particularly interested in, but often at loss for useful words for in Chinese: Politics.

These words aren’t targeted at any specific political situation, merely to give you some useful words if and when a debate pops up. Please note, the words are in English alphabetical order for no better reason than it was the simplest way I could think to categorise them. This list is also available in .PDF (88KB), PlecoDict Flashcards (16KB) and as a Google Doc. Without further ado:
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In my recent travels across the internet I came across this article on ConfusedLaowai.com. Neil raises some really interesting points, firstly about motivation (which I’ve addressed here) and also about study habits and methods which I’d like to talk about now.

Of course, everyone goes about study in their own manner; some people can study for hours and days on end (NOT me), and some people struggle to put 5 minutes of solid study together. Some people seem to like noisy classrooms, and some seem to like solitude while studying. The point is, everyone is different and there is no wrong way to go about it (well, other than not studying), but it’s often useful to have an insight into what other people are doing, and so I thought I’d share a few of the methods that have worked for me and others that I’ve known – maybe you’ll be able to find a useful tip too. Continue Reading

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” Zig Ziglar

No matter what we do in life, there is always one thing we have to overcome, and that is motivation. I guess there are some people who stroll through life, and never have any issues motivating themselves, but I’m definitely not one of them. It feels like each day and each task is a new struggle for me. Not a huge struggle most of the time, and I guess things mostly get done, but it’s always hard working up that head of steam to get started, and get down to business.

When you are learning a language like Chinese, a pretty daunting undertaking, motivation can be even harder to come by. What kind of fool would start learning a language where you need to be able to read several thousand distinct characters just to be able to read a newspaper? Of course,  just a few thousand characters isn’t enough by itself, you also need to know all the possible word combinations that those characters can form, and add to that the fact that many of the characters can have multiple pronunciations. Looking fun now? This isn’t really what I signed up for!

Luckily I sometimes don’t look that far ahead, and hence I missed out that big picture of a huge daunting language to study, and just started breaking it off in bite size pieces, which is a pretty useful motivation technique itself I guess. There are a few other useful techniques which I’ve learnt down the line, and so I thought I’d share them with you here.

1. Just start: Sounds easy and straight forward, but often the biggest stumbling block is just getting started. If you say, I’ll just begin working for a couple of minutes, it seems really easy to achieve, and you can probably convince your lazy self to get going. Before you know it, you’re actually getting work done and getting somewhere.
2. Misery loves company: You’re probably not the only one who is trying to achieve the impossible, and I’m sure somewhere around the place there are other people trying to achieve the same goal as you, or just trying to study in general. Find them, study with them, and motivate each other. For Chinese learners, there are a lot of forums around, get on them and share your experiences, the highs and lows, and learn from each other.
3. Remember why: I’m sure somewhere in the back of your head, there is a reason why you want to take on a language, why you want to try something new. For me, learning Chinese just started off as a way to further my career while experiencing a new culture at the same time. Now I have a lot of good Chinese friends, and friends of friends. Speaking Chinese means I can actually talk with them without other people to translate for me. It’s pretty satisfying.
4. Bite size pieces: OK, I already suggested this one, but I think it’s a really useful way to approach things. Learning a language is a huge task, and can be really daunting. I remember when I first started learning Chinese, and I’d forget the words and characters I’d just learnt in seconds – no exaggeration. When I started to break the task down in to smaller parts, for example, just being able to ask the price of something, being able to read a short passage, talking with my friends parents, friends or whatever, things felt a lot more achievable, and I actually got somewhere.
5. Remember the successes/credit where credit is due: Learning is hard, even for smart people (hey, I should know!) – when you make progress, be proud of yourself. I remember the first time I was able to travel around in Wuhan without needing a piece to show a taxi driver the address to my place again, because I’d actually learnt to say it. It sounds simple, but I was really happy with the achievement. I remember making my first halfway decent joke in Chinese when we were learning sentences with the 越来越 structure – everyone else was deadly serious, and I said since I found a girlfriend, 我的钱包越来越空. I know it’s not that funny, but I was still pretty happy.
6. Set Goals: Yeah, I know, everyone says this, but that probably just means it’s good advice. My kind of crazy goal at this stage is to buy a van and drive all around China, and then make a book (and maybe a video) about it. I probably need pretty good Chinese to achieve that. Actually, at the moment, I’m sure I could manage it, but I want to have real in depth conversations with the people I meet. And I’m also planning to apply for a scholarship from the Confucius Institute to study for another year at university in China.

That’s what’s driving me. What’s driving you? Any great motivation ideas? I’d love to hear them.

I spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, and not nearly enough studying Chinese. Occasionally however, these two worlds come together, and I find a great way to study at the same time as enjoying the internet. chinaSMACK is one of the places where I can go to learn and enjoy at the same time.

Now, there are several different methods to this; through their amazing technical wizardry, they have made it so when you hover over translated text, you can see the Chinese version too. For short passages, I find this is a really great way to study. For longer passages however, it can get a bit troublesome, and it also means you can’t use handy browser plugins like Zhongwen for Chrome or Chinese Perakun for Firefox. In this case, you can always follow the links which they kindly provide in their articles/translations to the places where they originally came from. There are a variety of Chinese BBS which they frequently mention, and they are full of real Chinese which is a great place to start learning.

However, in the assorted BBS you will inevitably encounter a lot of different words that even the smartest dictionaries won’t translate, and that is where the chinaSMACK glossary comes in handy. Now next time someone calls you a 脑残, you’ll know exactly what they are talking about, and if you’ve studied hard, you might even have a few choice remarks to throw back at them. Wonderful.