Being able to speak fluently and interact with native Chinese easily is the ultimate goal of many Chinese learners. However, it can also be seen as a great weakness. Based on my observation of students, the reasons were either they…
There have been many tips and articles on how and why you should learn Pinyin and how necessary it is to learn Chinese. To learn Pinyin is an unavoidable stage that cannot be skipped or ignored. For general learning of…
Listening skills are one of the most important elements in learning Chinese. It allows you to be able to actually communicate and make concrete interactions with Chinese people. To help smoothen your communication and improve your listening skills, here are…
Unlike English and some other languages, Chinese doesn’t have a specialized pattern of verb changes to indicate tenses. So how do the Chinese tell the different tenses apart? Well, we usually use time words to express different tenses, and these…
Chinese characters are complex and difficult to handle for beginners. Many educators choose to avoid them and teach pinyin instead. However, pinyin is only an auxiliary tool for denoting the pronunciations of the characters. It is not the Chinese language…
Why do we need to know how to read in Chinese? There are three main reasons: to be immersed in the country’s culture through Chinese books and newspapers; to be able to better communicate with the Chinese by enhancing your…
There are lots of awesome resources for learning Chinese This may surprise some people but the quality and variety of resources available to Mandarin learners are really high. With the constant improvements in technology, the amount of a language that…
‘好(hǎo)’ in its original definition means ‘good’, and when it’s used as a response or reply, it automatically transforms to mean ‘fine’, ‘sure’ or ‘ok’. Yet, with various words and interjections following ‘好hǎo’, it changes to show different emotions or…