Re: The Gift of Gab: All About Languages!
Posted: May 30, 2017 6:10 pm
It's hard for me to say what materials have been most helpful in my core Chinese learning because I've had private tutors and a lot of them made their own lessons, but I can tell you what standardized materials I have used and what I thought:
Practical Audio-Visual Chinese: This is a series of textbooks that is extremely popular among Chinese learners; I think it's the most common language learning resource here. It's a textbook with a DVD attached with video demonstrations of the dialogues, but you can actually find those videos online. Personally I haven't found the book that helpful but I think if you were learning Chinese on your own and needed dialogue examples, it would be useful. I guess it's popular for a reason?
Memrise: This is a flashcard website that is used for language learning (I'm sure a lot of you know about it) and I've recently started using it for Chinese vocab...it's been SUPER helpful. I've been going through the TOCFL Vocab banks (TOCFL is the name of the proficiency test I took a few weeks ago) and it was invaluable in helping me read and recognize more characters. Nice mix of listening, reading and definitions.
HelloChinese: iOS app that I LOVE. It's free and I like it because it teaches you a lot of grammar and sentences as well as vocab. More like a "game" but it has been extremely helpful for me. You can do it with pinyin or without, if you really want to practice your reading more.
StickyStudy: iOS flashcard app that I bought because of the TOCFL vocab word banks; it's really just a basic flashcard app but it had the Chinese already plugged in and it has a nice format. Good if you want to just drill vocab.
Pleco: This is a Chinese dictionary app that is SUPER helpful if you need to look up words on the go. Probably not the best for non-immersion learning but helpful if you are out and about and you see some Chinese on a sign that you want to translate. This is probably my most-used app but again I live in Taiwan so I'm actually having to look up words on a frequent basis to use.
Helpful tip; add the Chinese handwriting keyboard to your phone! I can't write at ALL but it's really helpful for when I see a character and want to translate it but I can't remember the word. I'll just copy the character on my phone and viola! Translation. Google Translate will also translate characters by pointing your phone's camera at it but that's cheating sometimes.
For Youtube channels, I like ChinesePod (https://www.youtube.com/user/ChinesePodTV) and Learn Chinese Now (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtjhXz ... txa7kkAH5Q).
Practical Audio-Visual Chinese: This is a series of textbooks that is extremely popular among Chinese learners; I think it's the most common language learning resource here. It's a textbook with a DVD attached with video demonstrations of the dialogues, but you can actually find those videos online. Personally I haven't found the book that helpful but I think if you were learning Chinese on your own and needed dialogue examples, it would be useful. I guess it's popular for a reason?
Memrise: This is a flashcard website that is used for language learning (I'm sure a lot of you know about it) and I've recently started using it for Chinese vocab...it's been SUPER helpful. I've been going through the TOCFL Vocab banks (TOCFL is the name of the proficiency test I took a few weeks ago) and it was invaluable in helping me read and recognize more characters. Nice mix of listening, reading and definitions.
HelloChinese: iOS app that I LOVE. It's free and I like it because it teaches you a lot of grammar and sentences as well as vocab. More like a "game" but it has been extremely helpful for me. You can do it with pinyin or without, if you really want to practice your reading more.
StickyStudy: iOS flashcard app that I bought because of the TOCFL vocab word banks; it's really just a basic flashcard app but it had the Chinese already plugged in and it has a nice format. Good if you want to just drill vocab.
Pleco: This is a Chinese dictionary app that is SUPER helpful if you need to look up words on the go. Probably not the best for non-immersion learning but helpful if you are out and about and you see some Chinese on a sign that you want to translate. This is probably my most-used app but again I live in Taiwan so I'm actually having to look up words on a frequent basis to use.
Helpful tip; add the Chinese handwriting keyboard to your phone! I can't write at ALL but it's really helpful for when I see a character and want to translate it but I can't remember the word. I'll just copy the character on my phone and viola! Translation. Google Translate will also translate characters by pointing your phone's camera at it but that's cheating sometimes.
For Youtube channels, I like ChinesePod (https://www.youtube.com/user/ChinesePodTV) and Learn Chinese Now (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtjhXz ... txa7kkAH5Q).