learning chinese

Last night at a language learners’ meeting some students — all in our first three years of Mandarin study — were asked to write down on big pieces of paper various techniques and strategies that we personally find helpful in different facets of language learning: Affective/Motivation, Social, Listening, Speaking, Reading & Writing, and Vocab & [...]
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In a previous a blog post I complained about how Chinese textbooks aimed at foreigners seem to have a rather incorrect idea about the life of the foreign students. In these books, Ai Mi, Bi De and Da Wei are constantly discussing school, Chinese food and tourist sights. Typical foreign students’ activities such as getting [...]
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Mouse over for pronunciation and meaning

Popup Chinese is a new Danwei partner.
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This morning it dawned on me that I could alter my daily routine and make time to have lunch on the corner with the bike repair crowd in our neighbourhood. The weeks are counting down until we take a hiatus in Canada for a few months, and recently I’ve been feeling more and more [...]
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The other day I was listening in on a class of Chinese students who were taking an evening course in my native language, Swedish. Their task for the day was to change nouns written in singular form to plural, (that is: “cat” to “cats”). This can be complicated enough in English: How do you now [...]
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YouTube - Link to video link

I was browsing youtube.com for some videos of people celebrating New Year’s Eve in China, but came up with this Chinese language lesson. It teaches you how to wish happy b-day, holidays, and new year in Chinese. It’s pretty simple but for all of you who aren’t in China, it could [...]
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