These Flashcards Might Help You Learn Chinese
If you’re learning Chinese, then there is almost no way to avoid flashcards short of enrolling yourself in an extremely rural elementary school and starting from scratch. You need some…
Tones Prefer Company! Part II – An exciting new audio-visual way to practice Mandarin tones
My last Digmandarin article “Tones Prefer Company!“ generated a lot of interest, prompting me to pen this follow-up. The idea that tones should not be studied in isolation, and the…
A Fun Tip to Master Chinese Characters Smoothly
Since I have a long history of learning Chinese, I can offer some of my own learning methods as tips on how to overcome the more difficult aspects of the…
Greetings other than 你好 (nǐ hǎo)
One of the first things that any Chinese lesson, book, or teacher will teach you is “你好 (nǐ hǎo).” 你好 translates into “Hello.” Funny enough, native Chinese speakers rarely use…
The Marvelous World of Chinese Metaphor — When you can’t see the point, and all compasses point north
In my posts, I’ve touched before on how important it is to approach language as a structure, not as a laundry list. When you learn phrases and sentences, rather than piecemeal words,…
The Chinese Way to Use ‘make’
When I learned English, ‘make’ was a verb, which always confused me. For me, there are too many meanings of ‘make’ and some of them are quite different in Chinese…
How to Find a Really Good Approach to Guide Your Chinese Learning
Hello, Mandarin diggers! This is Frank Geng and I hope my articles, How to Find a Really Good Chinese Teacher to Guide Your Learning and How to Find a Really…
Essential Phrases for your Online Chinese Class
For most of us, a driving motivation to learn spoken Mandarin is its practical application. During a Chinese class, we typically want to focus on language we can actually use…
Magikid Nian: Guaranteed Spring Festival Fun for kids
Hey everyone! 新春快乐！The Chinese New Year is upon us, bringing in the Year of the Goat and its time to celebrate with other Mandarin learners, including the little ones. Here…