Learn Mandarin Newsletter 5
Learn Mandarin Newsletter 5
The Slightly Late Edition
In case you missed the previous newsletters: Newsletter 1 | Newsletter 2 | Newsletter 3 | Newsletter 4
你好 (NiHao!) and welcome to the Fifth Edition of the Learn Mandarin Newsletter.
This week at the home of Learn Mandarin:
How has your stay at home week been?
If you’ve purchased the Hattie book, the audio is now available here:
Mandarin Conversation Week 5
你是做什么的？ Ni Shi Zuo Shenme De? What do you do? 👷♂️
我是学生。🧑🎓 Wo Shi XueSheng? I’m a student 👩💻
你在学什么？✍️ Ni Zai Xue ShenMe? What are you studying? 🗒️
我在学汉语？🇨🇳 Wo Zai Xue HanYu. I’m studying Chinese. 中文
你在哪儿学习？🌏 Ni Zai Nar XueXi? Where are you studying? 🌐
在清华大学。🧑🏾🎓 Zai Tsinghua DaXue。 At Tsinghua University。🎓
你为什么要学汉语？🇨🇳 Ni WeiShenMe Yao Xue HanYu? Why are you studying Chinese? 中文
因为我有一个中国女朋友！💃 YinWei Wo You Yi Ge ZhongGuo Nǚ PengYou! Because I have a Chinese girlfriend! 💞
Chinese Language Note
In the conversation above, note the “r” in 哪儿 which I referred to in the last Newsletter. Also note that 女 (Nǚ) means woman and 男 (Nán) means man. Finally, Tsinghua is considered one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Learn more here.
Cool Language App
Chinese Flashcards — The University of Texas created this fun and free flashcard game to practice your Chinese. It’s available for different Chinese levels including beginners.
Book of the Week
This week I listened to Peter Brown’s book, Make It Stick on Scribd. The book’s ultimate aim is to teach readers how they can learn better and remember longer. The main takeaways from the book can certainly be applied to Learning Chinese 中文. The most effective learning methods are: 1) Active Retrieval 2) Spaced Repetition and 3) Interleaving.
How do we use these methods in our Mandarin Course?
1) Active Retrieval — We have practice quizzes for each lesson and a lesson worksheet (you can use this same worksheet for the Newsletter lessons too) to cement your learning. You can revisit both the quiz and the worksheet later on and re-take lessons where you fall short on the test.
2) Spaced Repetition — We have Anki tutorials on the Member Dashboard to supplement your Mandarin studies.
3) Interleaving — The evidence for whether interleaving is effective for language learners is still out but it seems more effective for those that have a fundamental grasp of the second language already. The Learn Mandarin flagship course is designed to take non-Chinese speakers from zero to conversational Mandarin. After that, we have Chinese songs, Chinese movies, Chinese stories and more to enable interleaving.
Article of the Week
How To Read Better — Since we’re all staying at home, I thought I’d write an article about tactics we can use to improve our reading. One of them involves spaced repetition.
If you have any comments or questions, please email me on support @ learnmandarin.com.au. I’d love to hear from you.
Stay safe and healthy until next time!
Zai Jian,
Rui
LearnMandarin.com.au