You don’t have to travel to learn a new language. Honestly, you don’t even need to put on pants! I’ve studied several languages from home over the last decade. Not that I don't love travel and living …
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How to Use Chinese Social Media Apps to Learn Chinese
When I found out I was going to move back to China, I knew it was finally time to familiarize myself with Chinese social media. Back in 2008, when I spent my first summer in Beijing, these …
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How To Learn Chinese Characters On Your Own
UPDATED April 2020: I’ve just spent the last two months working on improving my Chinese handwriting with an online tutor, and I’ve learned so much more in the process! I’ve added to the below section on Learning …
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Should You Learn to Read and Write Chinese Characters?
This is not going to be a post about how “Chinese characters are easier than you think!” I’ll give it to you straight. Learning to read and write in Mandarin is a serious undertaking. It might not …
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Mandarin Tones Are Not As Hard As You Think
Mandarin tones do take some getting used to, but they are not as complicated as you might think! I have noticed that language learners often decide not to try learning Mandarin because they are daunted by the …
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Shadowing: This Exercise Will Make You Sound Like a Native
Since I posted my blog post on the importance of prosody, many of you wrote to ask for more explanation of how my shadowing exercise works. It is a very powerful exercise and has helped me immeasurably. …
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Why You Should Learn Chinese
Someone on Quora Français recently asked me, “why should I learn Chinese?” (This post was originally written in French for Quora. Lisez son original en français) My opinion? There are several reasons why you’ll want to choose …
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