China is a rapidly developing nation whose growing economy has placed it among the world’s leading superpowers. But it is also a nation with a rich, vibrant history and a fascinating language. As Chinese is being offered in more and more high schools across the United States, it’s clear that American students can greatly benefit from learning the language that has the most speakers on the planet. Here are some tips to make mastering that process a little easier.
1. Don’t be intimidated
For many students, learning Chinese seems like a daunting task because of its dissimilarity with English. Those of you thinking about taking Chinese should not be deterred by the fact that it is a non-Romanized language. Spanish and French may seem easier and, therefore, might be more appealing at first, but Chinese is actually not that difficult to learn once you can make it over the mental barrier of abandoning the alphabet.
2.Remember your tones
Chinese is a tonal language, which can be a strange concept for English speakers to grasp. There are four tones, and a single word, such as ‘ma’ will have completely different meanings depending on the tone used. For example, ‘ma’ in the first tone means mother, but ‘ma’ in the third tone means horse. Obviously, mastery of tones is critical to speaking good Chinese and not insulting your mother.
3.Be vocal
When you’re in class, participate! Part of learning a language is engaging with it, so don’t be afraid to speak up. The best help you can give yourself is to try out new grammar or vocabulary in class, where your teacher can help you along and correct you. Also, the more you use your Chinese, the better your pronunciation will be, which is crucial when you’re starting to learn a language with pronunciations such as zhong or qiu.
4.Practice your characters
One of the most intimidating things about learning Chinese is figuring out the writing system. Characters are a beautiful representation of Chinese culture. There are characters inscribed inside bronze vessels dating back to the Shang Dynasty, which ruled China from 1600BC to 1050BC. Many of these characters are so similar to modern characters that they can be easily read, making Chinese the language with the oldest continually used writing system.
There is a formula for writing characters, but it’s quite different from writing using an alphabet. Sounding out how to write a character is very tricky, so instead, new Chinese students truly need to dedicate themselves to memorizing characters at first to form a good basis for understanding the written language.
5.Go to China
As with all foreign languages, the best way to cement your language skills is to go to the source. Find out about high school exchange programs in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, or Taipei. Does your high school not offer these programs? Don’t sweat it. You will most likely have the opportunity to study abroad during college, and even if your college doesn’t have an affiliation with a program in China, you can apply to independent study abroad programs.
With these tips in mind, stride bravely forward into learning Chinese. It’s a skill whose value extends outside the classroom, never becomes obsolete, and has the ability to enrich your life in ways you have yet to imagine.
Anna Katten holds a BA in East Asian Studies, concentrating in Chinese language and literature, from Wesleyan University. She is currently working on translating her second Chinese novel into English and is also a Chinese and ESL tutor.
Did you find these Chinese Language tips helpful? Have you considered learning to speak Chinese?
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As Chinese is the language that is becoming globally accepted every one is showing their interest in learning this language….i thank u for the above informations…
My grandchildren and I have been using Rosetta Stone to learn Chinese and we have all found it easy and effective to use.
I really didn’t learn Spanish until I traveled to Spain. After 9 months of living in Seville, I started speaking like a Spaniard.
Nice article, thanks for posting, Anna. I immensely enjoyed learning Chinese for about 3 years but have not studied for the last year, I guess I got tired finally.
I have some tips too:
1. Get somebody on Skype (or similar) in China to talk and video chat with. Visit ExchangesConnect.com or Verbling, that’s where I met somebody.
1.5 Read Chinese online by searching Chinese after setting up your keyboard with it.
2. Rosetta Stone: my opinion is that it teaches you up to the point of a 3 year old in that it uses lots of pictures; but it may not be the best immersive experience– which leads to:
3. Learn things in context. Like Anna said, talking and being involved is essential; and having stuff to read that is somehow relevant to you like news, or is more than vocabulary and grammar structure will immerse you faster and keep your attention.
4. http://www.slow-chinese.com/ I use this website. It is contextual and you can translate what he’s saying while seeing it written in Hanxie.
Good luck and have fun.