The unstoppable progress of today’s technology has been the source of significant advances in language learning, and Chinese is no exception.
Both mobile apps and online resources have led to many possibilities for improving the effectiveness of studying. However, in this article, we are going to focus on individual lessons online, which constitute a veritable revolution, as they permit access to good teachers regardless of where you are.
Skritter is, in my opinion, the best way to learn how to write Chinese characters.
I used it ten minutes per day for about one year and I managed to learn how to write more than 1,000 characters (all the charactares on the HK4 list, to be precise). Also, I learned the meaning and pronunciation of those characters.
If you watched the video at the beginning of this post you already know that the software is pretty cool.
But the real reason for using Skritter is the algorithm behind the software, which allows you to remember more than the 90% of the characters that you are studying (in the photo below you can see that in 30 days I was able to remember the 92.9% of the characters that I studied, [Read more…]
Peking University (Beida)
If you are planning to study Mandarin Chinese in China, you probably thought about coming to Beijing. The goal of this article is to help you to understand whether Beijing is the right destination for you or not. You’ll find out:
If you’re interested in a more general overview, you can read Studying Chinese in China: What’s the best choice for you? [Read more…]
Welcome to SDC’s Chinese level test. Before you start, it’s important that you read the instructions closely so that the test is as accurate as possible.
Either if you live in Guangzhou and want to study Chinese or you’re thinking about moving to Guangzhou to study Chinese, this article will help you before making a decision.
This article’s goal is to analyze the best public and private educational establishments for studying Chinese in Guangzhou. In addition, we will go over the pros and cons of studying Chinese in Guangzhou.
You can click on the links below to skip directly to the section that interests you the most:
If you’re interested in a more general overview of studying Chinese in China, you can read this article.
Sun Yat-sen University is considered the best university in southern China. It’s among the top ten universities in the country and tends to appear quite high in global rankings. The university was founded in 1924 by Sun Yat-sen and currently has more than 50,000 students, more than 3,000 of which are foreigners.
Sun Yat-sen University has a Chinese language and culture center at its School of Foreign Languages, where it offers Chinese classes to foreign students. The classes that it offers last for one semester (seventeen weeks) and all levels are available, from beginner to the most advanced. You can apply for classes online by following this link. The School of Foreign Languages is located at its campus in the Haizhu district.
Given the prestige of this university, studying here is always a good option despite the fact that the campus is a little far away from downtown.
Jinan University was founded in 1906 and is one of the oldest universities in China and one of the most prestigious universities in the city. It has more than 50,000 students, almost 14,000 of which aren’t from mainland China. Jinan University was the first university in China to accept foreign students and is currently the university with the highest percentage of foreign students.
Jinan University’s School of Chinese Language and Culture is responsible for training future Chinese teachers and also teaches language courses to non-native speakers. The school offers a broad range of semester courses: regular courses for all levels, business Chinese courses, preparation for HSK exams, Cantonese courses, and two courses the contents of which aren’t very clear (Crash Chinese Course, Spare-time Chinese Language Class).
Registration for these classes tends to open between October and January for the first semester, and between April and June for the second semester. In addition to semester courses, the university also offers short-term courses that you can register for during the whole year (although groups are only opened up if there are at least ten students).
One of the main advantages of studying at this university is that it’s more or less located downtown in the Tianhe district. In addition to its location, the university is prestigious and very international, which makes it a good option for studying Chinese quite comfortably.
Coming soon….
We are currently analyzing the offering of Chinese classes in the city of Guangzhou to recommend a few private establishments. If you have a suggestion for a school, please leave us a comment in the comments section below.
[Photo Credits (Creative Commons CC2.0): www.flickr.com/photos/mark-meng/]
This article is intended for people that live in Shenzhen or are thinking about moving there and want to study Chinese. We will analyze the best public and private schools for studying Chinese in the city. Plus, we will go over the pros and cons of studying Chinese in Shenzhen.
You can click below to skip directly to reading the section you’re most interested in:
If you want a more general overview of studying Chinese in China, I recommend that you read this article first.
[Read more…]
New York is probably one of the best places to study Chinese outside of China, as it has a large number of establishments that teach the language as well as an abundant Chinese community with a high level of education. In this article, we are going to analyze where to study Chinese in New York and what to keep in mind when doing so.
New York is considered the city with the largest number of residents of Chinese origin outside of China, with more than 800,000 people, and contains at least 6 “Chinatowns.” Its Chinese communities are very diverse. While historically, they mainly came from the rural areas of Fujian and Zhejian, with a limited knowledge of Mandarin, over the past years, many Chinese people from different areas with high levels of education have established themselves in the city. Because of this, today, New York is one of the best places to find quality native Mandarin teachers.
The Confucius Institute is the institution that represents the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (Hanban), an institution within the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and which is responsible for promoting Chinese language and culture across the globe. The Confucius Institute collaborates with different universities in New York, such as Pace University, SUNY College of Optometry and The State University of New York. At these centers, you will be able to find Chinese lessons taught by the Confucius Institute.
The China Institute was founded in 1926 to promote intercultural collaboration between the United States and China, and is the oldest educational institution of its type in the United States. Since 2006, the China Institute and Hanban have been collaborating, thus creating the first Confucius Institute in the city. Its institution offers all sorts of culture and language classes as well as workshops intended both for native and non-native speakers.
Mandarin House is an educational establishment specialized in teaching Chinese, with multiple branches in China as well as in the city of New York. It is certified by the Hanban, which means that its students have the possibility of writing official HSK, BCT and YCT exams at its centers. It offers a multitude of courses for adults, children and professionals, as well as both individual and group lessons. Its lessons use its own materials and its teachers hold degrees in teaching Chinese. It also offers the possibility of going to China to study while living with a local family. Without a doubt, this is an establishment to consider, although its price is quite high.
Fast Learning Chinese is a small private school located in Manhattan with more than 10 years of experience teaching Chinese. Fast Learning Chinese has a very good reputation and is an ideal option for people looking for more personalized teaching and more close-up treatment. The groups are small and classes have a good price. It is also possible to try out the first lesson for free before signing up for the course.
There is no doubt that the previous list is missing many schools that also offer quality courses. Even so, there are a few things that you should keep in mind before choosing a center to study Chinese. Below, I list the most common problems that people run into with respect to courses available in the city, and which have a decisive effect on quality.
One of the main problems that many language academies have is the inability to assess the quality of Chinese teachers. Finding good Chinese teachers in New York can be a bit complicated at times.
As opposed to what happens with native speakers of other languages, Chinese people residing abroad largely tend to come from rural areas, where dialects very different from standard Mandarin are spoken, such as from the provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian. Being Chinese does not mean that someone is a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, and even less so that they know how to teach.
The fact that a school teaches multiple languages does not qualify it to teach Chinese, especially if it doesn’t have a person who is capable of evaluating the teacher’s level of skill in the language. Because of this, I recommend that before choosing a course, you ask yourself: Who chooses the teachers?
Chinese is a language that is very different from Western languages, which means that to learn it, you can’t use the same system as for other languages. One of the common problems that educational centers have is copying study programs that have given good results for other languages like French or Spanish.
If you combine this with the fact that the majority of Chinese teachers have not been trained in teaching Chinese to non-native speakers, it’s very likely that they won’t have a teaching method and will follow the school’s study program, designed by someone who doesn’t even know how to speak Chinese.
There is a predominant idea that Chinese people don’t mind working for low wages. However, highly-educated Chinese people that therefore have the ability to be good teachers will not be happy with just any salary.
Therefore, before choosing a cheap course with small groups, I recommend that you ask yourself how much they could be paying the teacher. If the salary has to be really low for the school to be able to make a profit, don’t expect the teacher to be very committed to their work, as they won’t care about losing their job at all.
[Photo Credits (Creative Commons License): www.flickr.com/photos/romankphoto/]
Fudan University
Are you thinking about studying Mandarin in Shanghai but you aren’t quite sure whether it is the right city for you or not?
Conversely, are you already living in Shanghai and would like to start taking Chinese classes but you don’t know what school to choose?
In this article you’ll find:
P.s. If you’re interested in a more general overview of studying Chinese in China, such as the difference between studying Mandarin at a university or a private school, click here. [Read more…]
This article is dedicated to analyzing the best public and private educational establishments for studying Chinese in Guilin and Yangshuo, two incredible places to live in the Guangxi province. In addition, we will analyze the pros and cons of studying Chinese in these two places.
If you’re interested in a more general overview of studying Chinese in China, you can read
this article.
Today we interview Reuven Lerner, founder of Mandarin Weekly, a website (and weekly newsletter) that provides you the last news and tools for learning Chinese online.
I discovered Mandarin Weekly years ago, while I was researching new Chinese learning tools for updating our articles on “Free Resources to Learn Chinese Online“. I’m a subscriber since then.
But let’s get started!
Reuven, thank you for accepting this interview. Can you tell us something about your background and how you got into Chinese language?
I have been a software consultant with my own business since 1995. Over the last decade, most of my work has been as a trainer, going to high-tech companies and teaching their programmers the tools and technologies that I know well – Python, Git, and data science. (If you don’t know what those are, that’s fine!).
About five years ago, a training company based in China asked me to come and teach some courses at their clients’ offices. The courses went well, and I’ve been traveling to China 3-5 times each year ever since. I mostly go to Beijing and Shanghai, but was fortunate enough to go to Nanjing about two years ago, too.
Before my first trip, I asked several friends what I should expect. Two of them said that I should learn some Chinese. That, of course, sounded like crazy talk – after all, we know that Chinese is impossible to learn, right? The friends told me that the language isn’t so bad, and that learning at least a few words would be useful. [Read more…]