Online Chinese learning

There are many benefits to figuring out the fastest way to learn Chinese, and the importance of learning Chinese cannot be overstated. Proficiency in Mandarin, an important dialect of China, has become a highly valued skill for professionals, and more and more international businesses are requiring their executives to master both Mandarin and English.  

There are many reasons why Mandarin is one of the best business languages to learn:

• It has 1.1 billion native speakers, making it the most spoken language in the world.

• China’s middle class grew from just 4 percent of urban households in 2000 to 68 percent in 2012.

• Mandarin is the official language of Taiwan, Singapore and the United Nations.  

While the complexity of Mandarin, the multitude of Chinese characters, and the different subdialects can be daunting for new learners, figuring out how to learn Chinese also brings many personal benefits.  

You’ll gain insight into Chinese culture, especially its rich traditions, arts, and philosophies, which date back to around 500 BC to around 1000 AD, when Middle Chinese was already spoken.  

Modern Mandarin developed from Middle Chinese. Despite being simpler and having a more regular sound system, it is still one of the most difficult languages to learn.  

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks in Mandarin, he often mispronounces many words. For example, in a 20-minute speech in Mandarin at Tsinghua University in 2015, he confused the tone of “heart” to make it sound more like “faith.”  

But despite these mistakes, he persevered, as did Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk and Rose’s leather company’s marketing director Billy Ball. These entrepreneurs know the value of learning Mandarin.

So, what’s the fastest way to learn Chinese? Let’s take a look together!  

1. Make friends with Chinese One of the most effective ways to learn Chinese is to make friends with native Chinese speakers. This will not only improve your language skills, but also give you an insight into Chinese culture. With leisure activities such as eating together, going to a bar, or exploring China together, you can learn the language easily and naturally.  

Choosing to live with a Chinese family through homestay arrangements can help with this and help you build lasting friendships. Chinese is known for its hospitality. To speed up your language learning process, find someone who regularly talks about everyday life in the language. Real-world conversations are invaluable for sounding natural and fluent.

2. Immerse yourself in the culture If you have a tight schedule and assume you’re going to China to study and need to learn the language, immersing yourself in the local culture is the best thing you can do.

By exposing yourself to Mandarin through movies, songs, and books, you can grasp the nuances that online courses and other materials may not offer. Knowing cultural history can enhance your appreciation of the language and motivate you to learn more.  

3. Set realistic goals The speed at which you learn Mandarin depends on your goals. If your goal is to acquire enough language skills during a short trip, a few months of specialized study may be enough.  

However, becoming fluent and mastering the language as a native speaker can take years of sustained effort. Recognize the challenges of learning Mandarin and set realistic and achievable goals. As a beginner, you can start by challenging yourself to learn five new words a day. This goal is not only easy to achieve, but it also helps you build your vocabulary.  

There are many fastest way to learn Chinese, and the most important thing is to choose the right one for yourself! Interested children can learn more, walk behind the history of Chinese, and let us learn and grow together!      

The study found that contemporary Chinese courses, as one of the compulsory courses for foreign children, are also the cultural courses that they focus on learning. Based on this background, in order to create a good learning and further study environment, we will increase the intensity of innovation in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

I believe that integrating cultural teaching into the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is conducive to improving the effectiveness of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and can strengthen the communication and interaction between language and culture.

For a long time, cultural teaching has occupied a leading core position in China’s education and teaching process. In the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language, cultural teaching plays a huge positive role.

Chinese as a foreign language is mainly for foreign learners, and because the environment of foreign students is different from China, its regional culture is quite different from China. Therefore, when learning the Chinese language, we must first do a good job in cultural teaching and master the foundation and characteristics of cultural teaching.

The significance of Chinese teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is reflected in the following three aspects:

(1) It is conducive to the organic unity of language and culture

In the process of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, teachers can help students master the basic knowledge of Chinese as a foreign language through effective language transmission. On the other hand, it can lead students to appreciate Chinese culture and feel the true charm of Chinese language in the cultural background.

Chinese culture has a long history, contains the diligence and wisdom of people of all ethnic groups, and reflects the thinking and soul of the Chinese working people.  

Therefore, effectively integrating cultural teaching into the process of teaching Chinese as a foreign language can obviously deepen students’ understanding of Chinese and improve their ability to understand culture to a certain extent.  

It can be said that the Chinese teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is conducive to the organic unity of language and culture, and finally realizes the dual education mode of language education and cultural education, so that children can master Chinese language knowledge while having a deep and comprehensive understanding of Chinese culture.

(2) It is conducive to the improvement of students’ Chinese language comprehension

In the process of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, effectively integrating cultural teaching and realizing the organic unity of language and culture can improve children’s understanding and mastery ability to a certain extent, which is conducive to children’s in-depth understanding of Chinese knowledge and Chinese culture.

At the same time, through the continuous penetration of cultural teaching, it can improve children’s Chinese language cognition, which is conducive to the cultivation of children’s strong interest in learning Chinese knowledge and understanding Chinese traditional culture.

Since the main learning subjects of contemporary Chinese courses are foreign children, these children do not know much about Chinese culture, so in the process of teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

If teachers can integrate cultural teaching thinking and start from the level of Chinese culture to guide children to understand and master Chinese as a foreign language, then substantial results will be achieved, which is conducive to the improvement of children’s interest and learning ability in learning Chinese as a foreign language, and finally can achieve the expected learning goals.

(3)It is conducive to the cultivation of students’ practical communication skills

The main learning object of this course is foreign students who come to study and further study, because foreign children do not know much about Chinese language knowledge and culture, and often communicate in their mother tongue.  

Therefore, in the process of learning, it is inevitable that it will be interfered and influenced by the mother tongue, which will bring certain difficulties to learning Chinese knowledge and seriously affect the ability to understand Chinese knowledge.  

At the same time, because foreign children come from different countries and regions, there are certain differences in their ability to learn Chinese knowledge, and some children do not even know what Chinese culture is and the inevitable connection between Chinese culture and Chinese language.  

Therefore, cultural teaching needs to be integrated into the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language, and through cultural teaching, it can accelerate the mastery of Chinese culture by children, realize the docking, exchange and interaction between the two cultures, and then improve the cross-Chinese communication ability and Chinese language practice ability.

As a systematic and complex teaching work, contemporary Chinese courses must be closely integrated with cultural teaching in the actual teaching process to realize the dual education teaching mode in order to meet the real needs of teaching Chinese as a foreign language.  

If it is only simple Chinese teaching, it does not organically combine Chinese teaching with cultural teaching, that is, ignores cultural teaching, this teaching method is obviously unreasonable and unscientific.

Flash cards, everyone should listen more. For example, children’s memory training, brain neuroscience, sensory integration, etc., are more or less linked to flashcards. So what exactly is a flashcard? Let’s talk about the role of Chinese flashcards today.

🍩What is a flash card?

Flash cards are a very common learning tool in American classrooms, such as the word game that my child just played two days ago, and flashcards appear on the wall of the class. Flash cards have been popular for decades because they are a proven method in the field of teaching and can help improve students’ memory and comprehension of concepts.

Flash cards are suitable for a wide range of ages, and can be used as parent-child games in the enlightenment stage of young children, can also be used as auxiliary props for children to learn at home, and can also be teaching aids for interacting with children in the classroom to improve learning ability.  

Of course, it also applies to adults, so if you want to take any exam, the design strategies and principles of the flash card can be used, which will make you more effective with half the test.  

The principle behind this strategy is to help us use “active recall” to improve learning, “active recall” refers to providing some clues, tools or trigger points to help children better grasp knowledge, interact with knowledge, so as to remember, digest and absorb knowledge.  

If you don’t mind the amount of work, the flashcards can be made by yourself, which is really not a secret, and the design logic is like this: prepare a card with a question or a word as a “trigger” on the front, and the answer you want to remember on the other side.

The reason why the flash card is a classic active recall tool is because its trigger point is very clear, when you use the flash card, pick up the side, you will know if you have this knowledge.  

There is no shortcut to it, when we pick up the flashcard and see the first side of the card, we either know the “answer”, or we don’t know the “answer”, there is no way to cheat, so when we don’t know the answer, it will remind us to keep practicing.

🍩The use of flashcards is strategy-oriented

 The disadvantages of flashcards are also obvious, first, it takes a long time to prepare, the “trigger point” of flashcards needs to be triggered randomly, not that we prepare a card for the child, hand it to the child, you can complete the entire active learning process, but at least prepare dozens and hundreds of cards in front, so that the child can be within reach of what needs to be remembered, in order to achieve random, interesting, efficient learning effects, which is why the use of flashcards in classroom teaching is actually “appearing in groups”.  

However, if the child learns more independently, the applicable logic and use of the flash card are also clear, of course, you can encourage the child to DIY their own word card Oh, this can be a good way to improve the child’s interest in learning and strengthen the consolidation of the child’s learning effect.  

Second, the flashcard is just a tool, it focuses on the use of strategies, and we need to flexibly combine a variety of flashcard teaching strategies to use. In the process of using flashcards, you can learn from the learning advice I provided and do it with children at different ages and stages:  

★ Less than one year old: can introduce flashcards, can also be parent-child reading, it is not a necessary thing to buy, our mentality is to take flashcards as a parent-child reading way, and usually at home to do parent-child reading, reading books and reading pictures is not much different, do not carry out flashcard memory exercises or games for children, more as family reading input and environmental training.  

★ 1~3 years old: encourage the introduction of parent-child flashcard games, the focus of this stage is parent-child interactive gameplay, because flashcards can help children into words, words, is a good tool for children to be curious about words, a variety of parent-child games related to “words”, “words”, “stories”, can be done at this stage.  

But the focus of this stage is on the sense of participation of parent-child interaction, the key is play and interactivity, and there is no need to have too many expectations or requirements for answers or effects.  

★ 3 years old +: You can combine flashcards, do memory games with children, and add some quizzes, such as letting children look at positive words and say the meaning of words.  

If the child is zero-based and has not played flashcard parent-child games before, then you can combine the game of 1~3 years old and the game of 3 years old, starting from the simplest words, step by step to advance the combination to play, “play learning, consolidation in learning” can be done.  

Chinese flashcards itself is just a tool, not a product with magical power, with proper use, children can better play the role of the flash card, become a very good helper for children to assist learning, and can even continue to the adult stage of learning, any want to know the knowledge point.  

Children who want to learn Chinese can also make Chinese flashcards of knowledge, which is easier to remember.