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stuclyblrs · 6 years

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hi, would you have any tips on getting started with chinese? i would love to have a tutor and i think that would be the best way of learning but im completely broke, so which other ways would be good? i know its super difficult and im a complete beginner so i have no idea about pronunciation or symbols or anything so i need a good place to start. Thanks!

你好! so sorry about the late reply!! i started studying chinese with classes at uni so im not 100% the best person to ask about self-studying but i’ll do my best !!!

first learn pinyin and tones

pinyin actually isnt as hard as it seems tbh tones on the other hand are something i struggle a lot with even after a semester of college level chinese so dedicate a lot of time to this !! i recommend this playlist by yoyo chinese/yangyang chen. the first several videos cover tones which is followed by pinyin itself. i also recommend this video by her as more pinyin review (its very lengthy so i recommend watching it in chunks) and this video by her for tone practice. she also has a pinyin chart which is soooooo helpful! it has audio recordings of each syllable w/ the 4 tones + quick videos for the harder syllables (strongly recommend her youtube channel in general)

writing/learning characters

this basically comes down to practice practice practice !!! when ever you learn a new character look up the stroke order and only write it that way. it will make your characters look nicer and if you write the same way every time you’ll build muscle memory making it much easier to remember (writing characters that you’ve studied will come naturally this way) i use this website to look up stroke order for each character (you can look up the rules for stroke order but tbh i dont understand them so i just look up for each character). i suggest learning the 40 most common radicals first. understanding these will make learning meanings of new characters easier.

in terms of actually practicing i strongly do not recommend flashcards. i think flashcards are great for vocab in any other language but not chinese. they’ll help you recognize characters and associate them with meaning and pronunciation but when you go to write you’ll blank out (if you only look at the pinyin/meaning side and write the characters i think they’re okay but its kind of a lot of work) when i learn new words, i would write out about two lines worth of the character over and over again (i usually used printer paper rather than lined cause some characters are big and its kind of a squeeze - many people use hanzi grids to write). once i did that for every character in the lesson, i would write out the dialogue once or twice. after this i would look at the pinyin for the dialogue (covering the characters) and write it out again a few times until i made sure that i remembered every character. i like doing this because it ensure that i actually know the character and then im learning it in context rather than just knowing meaning. i also then look at the dialogue and write the whole thing in pinyin (covering the pinyin and looking at the characters) just to make sure i remember that too!

textbooks

for self studying i think getting a textbook and following it is one of the best ways to learn. it will have vocab and grammar that goes with it and will allow you to stick to a more precise learning schedule rather than getting lost on what you should study and what order to learn things. there are a lot of different books so i would look at ones that interest you and read reviews/watch video reviews on youtube to determine which is the best to use

the only textbook ive used is integrated chinese since thats what we used in class and i believe its a very popular one to use but i havent used anything else so i dont have anything to compare it to. there is a pdf of the third version here (dont think there are major differences between the third and fourth tho) i have seen people say that its not super good w/out a teacher but idk :// i feel like how my professor taught class wasnt completely based on the book - more her taking the vocab/grammar in each lesson and then making her own explanations/lessons based on that

other textbooks that i have pdfs on (have never used so cant give opinion on)

modern mandarin chinese grammar and a workbook (original post)

folder with a lot of stuff (original post)

another folder with a lot of books (original post)

helpful apps

pleco - dictionary app that includes simplified and traditional, example sentences and audio recordings of the words

hellotalk - im using this for korean rn and have had a general positive experience with it ! you can talk to native speakers learning english w/ the chat function and post “moments” publicly for others to correct. its super easy to correct sentences w/in the app (some people have had issues w/ this app in terms of people only contacting them to try and date but i havent encountered that yet) i used the moments feature a lot to post scripts and other writings for class so someone can look over it before i handed it in :^)

chineseskill - i actually havent used this yet but pretty much every chinese langblr recommends it! chinese duolingo essentially

other

some various other things that might be helpful for studying !

if ur interested my general tag for chinese, vocab, and grammar

favorite blogs @liu-anhuaming and @langblog

making a langblr/studyblr !! its fun, theres lots of resources, vocab lists, other people learning on here and making ur own posts is helpful in seeing where you lack some understanding about certain topics and for learning new vocab

listen to music and watch tv shows/movies! its good for listening practice and lets you learn more in context

reading practice site - has different levels, you can hover over words for instant translation, and there is an explanation of more complex grammar

masterposts that i like (x) (x)

i hope this is helpful and if you have any more questions please feel free to message me again. good luck with your studies 加油！

#chinese #mandarin #chinese studyblr #mine:chinese #sspoons #asks

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