5 DON’TS in Chinese Learning

 

Don’t waste your life on trying some so-called “fancy” learning methods and strategies and ignore the basic language learning approach – repetition.

“Repetition” is the golden rule. There is no tricks or shortcuts in language learning. I know “repetition” is somewhat, or pretty much, boring and time-consuming. And sometimes you can’t even feel your progress. However, I can guarantee you nothing but that you will make it to a higher level after you survive every bottleneck period.

 “Practice makes perfect” is cliché. But the saying sells itself.

 

Don’t measure What U Learn with How Fast U Learn.

Learning speed varies among different age groups, between different genders, and among an individual’s different time periods of the day.

Don’t get too excited when you finish a day’s learning within half of the time as usual.

Don’t get too frustrated sometime when you can’t go on with the day’s learning.

Everything will be fine as long as you stick onto the learning and never give up!

 

Don’t lose your perseverance when intimidated by the pop-up learning barriers.

Language learning is not done within one day or a short period of time. Monster difficulties will company you every day during your learning. You’ll always have to keep that in mind.

You may burn the roof of your house before you learn to cook.

You may fall off your bike millions of times before you learn how to ride it.

…

You will have a long way to go before you master a new skill, from which you will benefit instead of really getting hurt.

Well. Here’s another cozy choice — simply stop reading this post, close the tab and go out have fun. I guess that might not be your choice, is it?

 

Don’t merely learn rather than putting what you learn into practice.

The purpose why we learn a language is to master it, use it and communicate with it. So it is necessary and best to figure out how to learn and use it under practical settings.

We have a phrase for some English learners in China, “dumb English”, which refers to the phenomenon that a lot of English learners are pretty good at reading and writing, however, without the ability to SPEAK, just like a “dumb” person.

I guess you don’t want to be a dumb Chinese speaker. Am I right？

  

Don’t forget about the power of listening practice.

We are born with ears, and that’s one of the many ways languages make their first debut around us.

Will you be curious when you hear people around you speak another language?

Have you ever tried to decipher the “code” and figure out what they are talking about?

You hear Chinese even before you learn it, and you can learn faster as you listen more. Try some Chinese audio/video podcasts, Chinese pop songs, Chinese movies (you can hide the subtitles if you’d like) and keep this as a everyday tradition. I don’t think there’s a necessity for me to tell you what will happen.

Now can you hear the sound you speaking fluent Chinese haunting around your head?