Getting serious

As the time approaching quickly I feel the need the be more serious about learning Chinese. (I have my one way ticket to China for 25 January.) So, I started to learn characters again. For a while I was concentrating only on pinyin and correct pronunciation. I must be able to communicate by January.

A very useful website

I already put this site under the useful tools. You can download worksheets, learn a character everyday, learn correct pronunciation and so on.

a confession

I am a so to say lazy learner. I have no patient to follow through language books or boring courses. All of these makes it difficult to learn a language like Chinese. But I am determined to do it. At the moment the most useful tool in my case is attending meetings - discussions in Chinese language. I admit I don't understand everything that I hear there. But hearing the same words more than once definitely helps.

Something new?

I don't think I can say anything new about learning languages. Many books exists on this subject. How to learn Chinese? I didn't meet a book with this title (maybe exist). Here are some basic things I find very useful.

1. use what you learnt immediately
   
2. ask your friends to test your knowledge (it helps you to remember the new words better)
3. mix with native speakers

These are only a few basic steps. It proved helpful when i was learning Spanish.

PinYin abc

Check out this site . You can practice the pronunciation too.

Chinese Grammar

When I started to learn Chinese I read in some language books and heard from others that Chinese grammar is a peace of cake. Some said there is no grammar and that is the easiest part of the learning. As a beginner I thought they are right. Soon I had to realize that Chinese grammar is not a piece of cake. Every language has grammar, maybe not as complicated as some.

Just an example, this book is full of difficult phrases and language structures which I cannot comprehend yet. In my experience, as you progress in your knowledge you better understand the grammar. To start with the grammar probably not the wisest decision in any language. To speak correctly from the beginning is important, however not the most important when you just start to learn a language.

first post

I decided long time ago to start a blog about the adventure of learning Chinese. But somehow I always postponed it.

I started to learn Chinese about 6 months ago. In the first two months I studied with 200% effort.
Then I got disillusioned because I didn't make as fast progress as I thought I should. I even paid for a private teacher.

Now I study at a slow pace. How successful I really don't know.
I welcome every comment and advise!