Aaaahhhh, study chinese, best challenge EVER. Wanting to learn a little bit more or lost in materials? Maybe this can help you.
I am writing this section in English as most of the Chinese learning material for occidental people is based on English translations. There are many Chinese-Spanish books and apps starting to work, but is still a reduced minority. Hope you find this helpful and if any contributions, please let me know.
I am writing this section in English as most of the Chinese learning material for occidental people is based on English translations. There are many Chinese-Spanish books and apps starting to work, but is still a reduced minority. Hope you find this helpful and if any contributions, please let me know.
Basic Books
I have used several books during this year, these are the only two I can say were most useful:
1.Short term Spoken Chinese. Teaches basic grammars and basic vocabulary, but in my opinion, at least in the beginning you need an additional characters book, as only the first two ones have pinyin. It took me a full year to go over the first four books (I would not recommend the last two ones). Details
2.Boya Chinese. Is a good book on intermediate levels because the vocabulary is quite advanced and the texts are more interesting in my opinion. Details
3.Road to success. More or less for the same reason as Boya Chinese. They offer good materials to read and do not have one lesson-one theme (so you can avoid "lesson1: sports"> Chinese learners you totally get this sometimes is sooo boring). These books are also edited by the BLCU as the Short term Spoken Chinese. To give you an idea, I am still using the elementary level to reinforce my reading skills, although in the rest of the books I am on Intermediate levels. Details
4.Conversational Chinese 301 Maybe good for really beginners but light in content.
Grammar Books
To be honest, I did not use any specific grammar book, and everything I studied comes from the Short term Spoken Chinese. But if you do not have a tutor or go to class maybe you may fins this book useful:
1.Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammars. It doesn't have exercises, it is a reference book, but really helpful because it has tons of examples.Details
2.Intermediate Chinese: Grammar and Workbook. I have not tried it, but was recommended by a friend and has exercises.Details
Characters Books
I believe these books are essential at the beginning. I agree that if you just want to learn Chinese in order to talk with the taxi driver, go to a restaurant or defend yourself in the street is ok just to know pinyin. But that learning process has a ceiling. Plus, characters get more and more interesting as you study them. I used the first and second volume of:
1.Learning Chinese characters from Ms Zhang. I used the first two books, not sure if they have more. They study characters grouped by radical significance. also have some tips on the evolution on shape for some of them, to help remembering them. Details
Reading Books
It comes a time when you need to read. And you are sick of class books. So you need more texts, but with an adequate level for you.
1.Chinese Breeze Series. For beginners and intermediate levels. Details
2.Graded Chinese Reader. A series of three books i will strongly recommend for preparing HSK 5 and over. Details
3.In mellamomali blog you can find other options by levels
Audio Books
1.Short term Listening Chinese. But only for high levels (purple book). On basic levels I found it slow and quite useless if you have a tutor. Details
2.Road to success (listening book). I would strongly NOT recommend it.
Podcasts
There is an interesting web with lots of online free podcasts ordered by level here
HSK Books
Learn the vocabulary list+do as many mock exams as you can+increase your reading speed as much as possible. There are many books you can buy to train the exam, you can download the vocabulary texts, but in high levels, it is a difficult exam you need time to prepare.
Even if you have the level, you can fail if you do not prepare your exam skills properly. So 加油！
Even if you have the level, you can fail if you do not prepare your exam skills properly. So 加油！
(I will make a list of good habits and exam tips next month)
Traditional Characters
If you are a Chinese student most probably you are learning simplified Chinese. But we can not forget that Taiwan and the South of China continue to use the traditional characters and that they are the originals before the 70´s reform. I think once you have learned some simplified hanzi you should take a look to this site: traditional characters learning
I also think there is no specif or fast way to "translate" between the two systems because the simplification was not carried out homogeneously, so I would advise you to go one by one and RRR (repeat, repeat, repeat).
Others
1.Flashcards. If you have PLECO app full version (yes, it is a little bit expensive but YOU NEED IT if studying chinese). You can download the flashcards by level of HSK (1 to 6) and test in several ways, even if you have the free app. If acquiring the full version, tests are much more complete and they keep record os your statistics.
2.TRAINCHINESE is an app similar to pleco that uses other languages as Spanish or German for the translations. Really useful from my point of view for adverbs
Other option to study flashcards is MEMRISE.
2.TRAINCHINESE is an app similar to pleco that uses other languages as Spanish or German for the translations. Really useful from my point of view for adverbs
Other option to study flashcards is MEMRISE.
3.News. Start reading news little by little. You will need to do a kind of test first and then you can start reading directly. Strongly recommended. For more info click here
4.TV Series. Chinese fiction for us is still quite focused in marriage or dynasties. Find something outside that is quite complex. For those of you living in Mainland China, you need to exploit youku and baidu tv programming. I have just been able to finish two (and they are both about love, marriage and kids):
- 咱们结婚吧 (zanmen jiehun ba)
- 最美的时光 (zuimei de shiguang)
