Hi there! I’m an ABC (American Born Chinese) and like many ABCs today, I’m embarking on the journey of “connecting with my roots”. Thought I share my experience with you all on how I approach learning Mandarin Chinese :). This is part 1 of my “ABC Learns Chinese” series. Check out part 2 on Listening and Speaking here!
My Background
I grew up speaking Cantonese at home. I would rate my oral Cantonese fluency an 8.5 out of 10. Like many of my fellow ABC peers, I spent my Saturdays at Chinese school. However, that only lasted a good 3 years. My parents have tried teaching me Chinese at home and I’ve attempted to self learn a few times in the past — both again, never lasted. But here I am, trying once again, and hopefully, the nth time is the charm.
My Learning Approach
My learning philosophy is that it has to be fun because there is no grade on the line or other pressing deadlines, but only my self will. Below details my current self-learning method to improving my Chinese reading and writing.
Choosing Vocabulary Words
Method 1:
This is where the fun part comes in. I chose characters that I WANT to learn. For example, if I’m obsessing over some Chinese celebrity, I’ll learn the characters that make up their name.
Ex: 肖战
肖 xiào — definition: resemble, be like, common surname
战 zhàn — definition: war, warfare, battle, fight
What better way to support your boo than learning their name. Language barrier who?
Other ways to pick fun characters to learn: names of Chinese dramas, movies, songs, Weibo posts from celebrities of your liking etc.
More often than not, characters chosen this way are also commonly used in other scenarios!
Method 2:
Choosing from HSK word lists. HSK is the chinese proficiency test for non-native speakers, so the vocabulary there are the basic must-knows. There are 6 levels of difficulty, with characters corresponding to each level. There are many websites online that have a list of characters for each level, like this one.
This method is less fun than the first, but still very important. I usually use a mix of both methods 1 and 2.
Definitions
I use two main sources for definitions:
This website gives you everything from definition, pinyin, to stroke order. I really like that there’s the common word pairings at the bottom.
Pleco is a Chinese-English dictionary that’s only available as a mobile app. It has a very easy to use interface, and provides many samples sentences. One key feature I like is how they break down each character by components. This makes it easy to remember the word, as well as learn additional similar characters.
Flashcards
I used to use good old-fashion Quizlet, but I realized it became inefficient when I grew my flashcards to a sizable deck, as it was time consuming to go through each card every time I studied. That’s when I found Anki.
Anki is a flashcard software that uses spaced-repetition. You will have cards that are “due” each day. After you review each card, Anki will ask how you feel about that card. If you can recall the definition pretty easily, then the card will reappear in the deck a couple days later. If you couldn’t recall the definition, then the card will reappear in the deck again, or one day later. This takes the burden off your shoulder of trying to determine which cards should be studied more or less.
Writing
I use two notebooks: one to keep track of all the characters I’ve picked up, and one with square quadrants called 田字拼音簿 to practice writing.
I personally think the notebook that documents all the vocab words is just for aesthetic/record keeping purposes — not really necessary to learning the characters itself.
I use the 田字拼音簿 to write the characters a few times and then switch over to regular paper (so technically, I use three notebooks total) for more practice. I bought my square quadrant booklets when I was in China, but you can easily find templates online to print out.
Summary
1. Find characters you want to learn. Jot them down on a notepad or something whenever you come across these characters.
2. Look up the definitions.
3. Make flashcards.
4. Practice writing and keep track of new characters in notebook.
5. Keep on adding to your flashcard deck and practicing!
So yeah, that’s about it! Learning Chinese or any foreign language is not a one-size-fits all type of deal, so implement anything above you think best fits your learning style :)
Check out part 2 on my take of Reading and Writing in Chinese here!
Cheers ~
