Learn Chinese
How I Learned Chinese
I was 27 years old before I learned a word of Chinese. Now I speak it quite fluently. If I can do it, so can you.
I studied Spanish in college but my Chinese is much better than my Spanish. I was able to achieve this by modifying my study method.
In the beginning months of studying Chinese, my Chinese teacher would criticize me because my pronunciation and ability to read the text was poor. She was an old traditional Chinese woman. I would stumble and stammer. My mouth would hurt and it refused to cooperate. I made one change in my study habits and my Chinese began to improve immediately. Here's what I did.
It was 1996 and I was living in China. I didn't have much technology at my disposal to help me study. I did have a cassette tape of the texts in the textbook and a double cassette recorder. So I put these to use.
I took a blank cassette and recorded the first sentence of the text for the current chapter I was working on. I recorded it three times in a row with about 5 to 10 seconds in between the recording of each sentence. For example, if the first sentence was Ni Hao, then the recording was: ni hao..... ni hao..... ni hao....
Then I recorded the second sentence the same way, and the third, and so on until I had recorded each sentence three times in a row. Then for the whole week I carried my walkman around with me following along with the tape repeating what I heard.
The tape would play the first sentence. I would struggle to repeat it as fluently as I could. The sentence would play a second then a third time. By the third time I was able to say the sentence quite well. If I couldn't, then I would rewind the tape and play the sentence sequence again until it sounded fluent. Once it sounded ok, I would go on to the next sentence. I continued in this way until I could read every sentence clearly, rapidly and fluently.
The very next week, I blew my Chinese teacher away. She was flabbergasted! She asked me to read the text for that chapter. I flawlessly read through the whole text with ease and fluency, pausing in all the right places and putting emphasis where it should be. She couldn't believe it.
Now, this was before the days of iPods and Chinese language software. I'm working on putting together some mp3 lessons in the way described above for my Chinese students. I now teach Chinese to college students. Fill out the form on this page and I will send it to you when I’m done.
I have found some Learn Chinese Software that provides learning tools that can get you similar results as my primitive method with cassette tapes achieved for me back in 1996. I would highly suggest you give it a try. It could really bring your Chinese to the next level. It’s even good for beginners. You can read about it here.