how do you improve chinese vocabulary?

Question

i'm trying to improve my chinese (mandarin) speaking and writing skills. i'm probably at level 2 or 3 following a 4 level chinese proficiency bar.

i can't read the chinese dailies yet, news on tv is a challenge.

i want to find software, online reading materials, as well as any practices you might want to share.

i don't have the time nor the resources to find and watch chinese programs. but if you insist, please do suggest particular shows. i'll try and find them over my vacations.

Answer 1

I run a Chinese school with my mother so I can provide you some tips.

First of all, that whole level system differs unless you're able to say what grade level in China's school system you are at. (So, first grade? second grade?)

1. Review vocabulary and grammar right before you go to sleep and right after you wake up (like, looking at a textbook while I eat breakfast or brush my teeth). It helps you remember better.

2. Repetition. Keep looking at the book :/.

3. Listening to things in that language. Find Chinese music (with singing) and listen to them while you're on the go on your mp3 player if you have one. Try to figure out what they're saying. And if you're doing that, I do not suggest Jay Chou; he mumbles.

Also, if you do find time, see if you can find Chinese-dubbed American movies. I suggest a movie that's easier to follow and with more simple dialogues.

There are tons of websites, blogs, and forums where people upload entire albums for strangers to download. If you're not against downloading, I can point you out to some of them and artists that are more easily understood.

4. Labelling. Label things around the house that you know. And when ever you use it, take five seconds to look at the label you've written. First start with pinyin, and then once you've remembered the word, replace them with characters.

5. Make Chinese-speaking friends :). And speak with them. Plus, it's always nice to have more friends. It gets you better acquainted with the culture too.

6. Children's books. Some of the libraries where I live carry children's picture books in other languages. I know Barnes & Nobles used to have a collection. They're not hard to find either on-line.

7. If you've achieved a certain level, try to find good translations of your favorite (easy) books. Holes is pretty good. Harry Potter if you're up for a challenge (the names of people and spells is hard for many).

8. I'm learning Arabic right now so I respond to my mother and close friends in Arabic when I can, even though they don't know what I"m saying.

9. Take advantage of every opportunity. For example, when you go to Chinese restaurants, talk to the people in Chinese. Most people who run Chinese restaurants can speak Chinese and are friendly to those studying it.

10. For Chinese software, I really haven't seen any that I felt where very useful. You could try to find electronic games made for Chinese kids though. They're pretty popular among Chinese-learning foreignors.

11. For online reading materials, there isn't much. There are translation programs however that can help you read Chinese articles online. I know Firefox has one of those modules you can download for free. If you turn it on, it has a window that will show the definition when you move your mouse over a character. There's also the NJ Star Communicator which is a word processor with the same idea as Firefox.

I know of programs made for Chinese people to learn English. It comes with audio and everything so you can point to an English word and the program will teach you how to say it and what it means. Maybe you can find a Chinese version of it?

Good luck! I hope that helped.

Answer 2

I'm in the same boat brother. It's the same as every language. Practice^3. News is one of the hardest things to understand - it's fast and technical.

I would recommend you read some on-line Chinese news - this will allow you to easily look up words you don't know (use a yahoo Chinese site!). Write them down several times and review what you wrote a few days later. You'll eventually get all the common words.

You should watch some Chinese programming! Just watch the best movies several times, pausing everytime you don't know a word. Repeat until you can easily understand it without subtitles.

Obviously knowing your characters helps. You can transalte most Western terms into Chinese really easily E.g., "nationalism" = guojia + zhuyi etc.

This will help for the vocab - for conversation, you'll have to find someone to talk to - there's no other way, sorry!

Ciao, good luck!

Answer 3

As a Chinese language teacher, here are my suggestions to maximum your effectiveness, minimize the time spent, and make learning new vocab easier:

1. Relate new information to material already learned. This is sometimes called “scaffolding.” There are many ways to integrate new items with familiar material. The more connections you can make, the stronger your foundation.
* Create either a concept map or a table to analyze parts of characters or group similar characters together. The key is to make the clusters meaningful. Some ideas for creating clusters include
* Words that fit into the same pattern
* Words sharing the same root
* Words sharing the same phonetic component (similar pronunciation)
* Words sharing any other component
* Words or characters with a shared idea (such as “places,” “colors,” “activities involved in studying,” “polite language,” etc.)
* Create a top-down hierarchical chart breaking a complex words into smaller, meaningful components.
* Create mnemonic devices to remember harder words.

2. Review within the first 15 minutes after learning something new. Studies have shown that students have much greater retention of learned material if they review briefly right after.

3. Read your study material out loud, rather than silently in your head. This way you can get the feel for the words on your tongue and find words you haven’t quite mastered yet.

4. Studying a little every day is more effective than studying for a long period. It’s impossible to learn a language by studying only once a week, even if the study period is very long. Studying one to two hours each day will make it easy for you to memorize more efficiently, instead of cramming hundreds of words in every day to speed through the process.

5. To learn new vocabulary, using several short sessions (a few minutes at a time) is more effective than using one long session. You can use the time while riding the bus, eating breakfast, waiting for class to begin, waiting in line at the grocery store, and even walking across campus, to review new words.

6. The only way to learn words are to memorize them. Writing will enable you to use motor memory for recall; otherwise words can be quickly forgotten. Rather than writing one word many times before doing the next one, write each word once or twice then go through the whole list again until you’ve done the required number of repetitions. This will put the new words more firmly in your memory.

7. Make vocabulary flashcards. The physical act of writing reinforces words in your memory and the cards let you test your knowledge at any time. Code cards for word class (verb, noun, etc.) and carry them with you for review during spare minutes. Play on-line games to reinforce word recognition.

8. Make a 2-column vocabulary sheet with words and their definitions. Fold the paper so only one column is
showing and take practice quizzes.

9. Some find that a 5-minute review before going to sleep enhances memory. The review should be short, and not so late at night that your brain has already gone to sleep, even though your body seems to be awake.

10. Try to use whatever new words you've learned as you go about the day. Slip them into sentences as naturally as possible, that way you'll know you've got not only the definition but different uses of it down. Writing them into journal entries at the end of the day is also a good tactic--hand-eye memory is a great tool.

--- These are basic memorization techniques. The trick is to keep trying new things until you find one that works, because different people learn in different ways.

Check out eChineseLearning.com for vocabulary words and Chinese cultural facts.

Answer 4

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Chinese is not only in studying, but needed more practices, without practicing, you still can be bored. I suggest you that finding some friends who can speak chinese fluently. And try to speak whole day. BUt don't be forgot your english too, THE most IMPORTANT is how are you going to manage to speak language..for example, you can choose some elder to speak chinese, and for english, you can speak with youngster and adult..that's all

Answer 5

my god, i find chinese hard too. i was about to suggest watching chinese shows... but i read your question. so anyway, i'm also trying to improve my chinese... and found that listening to chinese songs are a good way to improve my chinese. you should try those old-style chinese songs which will include some hard words and a beautiful usage of words. but i know that is so hard to find. right now, i'll suggest jay chou's fa ru xue (hair like snow) and ju hua tai... it's very old-style chinese and very beautiful. also, listen to all his songs.

Answer 6

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Answer 8

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Answer 9

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