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My Goal for 2012: 52 Weeks of Chinese
A new year gives us the chance to think about changes we want to make and ways we want to grow. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about my own Chinese. As time goes by, I’ve become less satisfied...
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Setting Goals for a year of Chinese
Creating goals is the first step to finishing 52 Weeks of Chinese. Goals are important, which is why I blog about them a lot. If you don’t set any goals, you probably won’t advance as mush as you want....
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How to Hack Chinese with Olle of Hacking Chinese
I first heard about Olle and Hacking Chinese a few months ago. Reading it made me a bit sad: Olle was writing about the same things that I want to write about (Learning how to learn Chinese), but he...
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A Simple Way to Track Your Progress
Seeing one’s progress is an essential part of learning Chinese. The lack of progress is one reason that people give up on their resolutions or stop in the middle of a study plan. Recently I thought of...
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Tips on Improving Your Chinese by Hugh (a.k.a 葛修远) of East Asia Student
Since I started blogging about learning Chinese, quite a few blogs have popped up, shown some promise, and then, to my dismay, disappeared. Thankfully, there are blogs like East Asia Student, by Hugh...
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There is No Such Thing as a Perfect Language Student
Sometimes I fear that my writings and suggestions make me seem like a super man, or seem like I do everything right. Other language blogs I read are often written by extremely motivated and...
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Learning to Read Chinese Faster: Week 4 of 52 weeks of Chinese
The first step to reading Chinese faster is to calculate your reading speed. How? It’s pretty simple. Time yourself while reading a few documents. Count the characters. Calculate your words/minute. If...
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Making Chinese Learning Easier One Hack at a Time with Dave of Chinese Hacks
The same week I started this blog, I noticed another new blog: Chinese Hacks. Dave of Chinese Hacks is one of the best language bloggers, period. He blogs consistently; his posts are useful, and he...
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Get Better Chinese with Reading Strategies
Learning to read Chinese isn’t as simple as learning a bunch of words on a page. If you want better reading skills and you want to improve in an efficient manner, you are going to need to understand...
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Why Chinese Dictionaries Make You Stupid
You don’t always need a dictionary. You can figure out the meaning of words more often than not. If you don’t understand 1 or 2 words in a sentence, don’t look them up, try to figure out what they mean...
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An Analytical Approach to Chinese: Interview with Chad of ZhToolKit
I’m a big fan of Chad’s website and blog, ZhToolKit. He’s programmer and a Chinese learner; his writings and tools a great combination of nerdy and informative. He doesn’t blog a huge amount, but it’s...
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How Fast can I Read Chinese?
At the beginning of the year, I set a few longer term goals for improving my Chinese. One of these was to read faster: 70% of my wife’s speed (she is a native Chinese speaker). In order to track my...
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My Language Study Journal
In a lot ways, studying languages is like a lot like eating/living healthy. Both are activities that take a lot of time, and focus. And often times, both seem like they are designed to go against our...
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Learning Chinese Require More than Willpower
If you muster up all your willpower to study Chinese, it won’t be enough. Learning Chinese requires more than willpower. The tides of willpower Willpower is like waves in the ocean. It ebbs, it flows....
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On breaking bad study habits
It’s easy to get stuck doing the wrong things. Sometimes you get in the habit of not studying Chinese. (Or you get into the habit of not blogging every week.) Good study habits are important for...
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Where to Find Interesting Chinese Articles?
It’s a problem a lot of people I talk to face: where can one find interesting articles in Chinese to read? Usually I tell them, “try Caixin!” But for some strange reason, not everyone likes reading a...
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Skritter goes Mobile, an Interview With Nick
Skritter. It is, without a doubt, one of the best Chinese online learning site out there. When I first tried it out in 2008, I was wowed by its simplicity and usefulness. I recently had the chance to...
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Benny’s Language Kung Fu, or What I learned from Benny’s 3 months of Chinese
[Authors Note: I'm not a Benny expert. The following is what I gleaned from only parts of Benny's Mission. If you want to understand his methods more, head to his site (link below)] Benny learned...
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How to Create a Habit
Most of us are bad at creating habits. I know I’m not great at it. I struggle to do many of the things I should. Eat right Diet Exercise Clean the kitty litter Blog Even study Chinese Why is getting...
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The Ultimate Email SRS
In order for an SRS (Spaced-Repetition System) to really work, you need cues to remind you to study (or at least most of us do). For me, that mean means setting up email cues. Before I explain how I...
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