20 Tips for Self learning Chinese - Youtube - Cchatty

Vloger, Amy from Australia! She has been traveling around China on and off for the last 5 years now, there, she shared some fantastic advice for learning Chinese.

Subscribe to her Youtube channel to know more Interesting China. 

Video scripts:

So I arrived back in Australia about three months ago and immediately went into this period of lockdown or self-isolation that I'm sure most of us can relate to, and early on I decided that I wanted to make the most of my time here back home to do something productive.  

So I came to the conclusion that this is my year that I am going to start studying Chinese again. It's actually something that I've been procrastinating for a really long time. And I haven't actually actively studied Chinese. Probably since 2017 when I was doing my intensive language course back at some high University in Beijing.

But once you're out of that classroom environment and you're no longer being you know motivated and challenged in that environment. It can be quite hard to stay on track and keep self-studying Chinese on your own.

For me as soon as I finished my intensive language course I kind of said bye-bye to setting aside part of my day to learning Chinese, and keeping up my Chinese learning progress. It kind of just stopped there. I did manage to maintain this level of Chinese that I had acquired through my studies by frequent trips to China and chatting with locals and friends. And you know it helped my Chinese not get too rusty.  

你是我的朋友吗？

Now I'm in a situation where I'm probably not going to be in China for a while, so I really need to do something now if I want to hold on to this skill that's taken me eight years to build up. So it's been almost three months now since I've started studying Chinese again and using the method that I'm about to share with you guys. I've actually managed to learn a thousand new vocabulary words, as well as make a significant improvement in my Chinese skills at that time.

So here is my video where I'm going to be sharing some of my Mandarin study hacks, but before we get into it I would love if you could like and comment and subscribe to my channel make sure you turn on those bill notifications, so you can be notified whenever I have a new fun video, that's just come out.

Okay first things, first when you're starting to put in that time towards learning Mandarin or really any language for that matter you want to, make sure that you (Tip#1) have a goal or enough motivation to make all that time and effort and hours spend in two the language worthwhile.

It can be anything I once knew a guy who was studying in China to be able to have a good conversation with his girlfriend's family who were all Chinese. Maybe your goal is to pass the HSK exam, HSK stands for Hanyu Shuipin Kaoshi, which basically means Chinese Level Test, so it basically tests your level of Chinese. And there's an HSK 1 up to HSK 6, with HSK 1 being the simplest and HSK 6 being the hardest.

The furthest that I got in this HSK testing scheme was HSK 5, and I don't know whether I'll have the guts to actually try for HSK 6. I hear that that's really really really hard. Personally my motivation for studying Chinese at the moment is to be able to communicate more fluently with locals in China, and thereby conduct more interesting and in-depth interviews for my videos.  

But whatever your goal is just make sure that you have one, because whether you're studying Chinese from scratch or you're reciting Chinese like me, you're gonna need to have that goal in your mind. So that you can keep going and pushing yourself when things get hard.

My second piece of advice and this is important to try to find a way that you can (Tip#2) do a little bit of Chinese every day. 

In order to make any kind of progress with such a complex language like Chinese, you can have to find some way to listen or speak or just practice it a little bit every day for some. You'll be in China and that makes it super easy just (Tip#3) go to your local tea shop, personally, that's my favorite place to go and have a good Chinese conversation, literally going to any tea shop you come across, ask if you can try some tape by asking 能不能喝茶? And then sit down have some delicious tea, and basically, tell your life story to this random tea vendor. I particularly love this method because not only are you practicing your Chinese, you get to drink a whole lot of delicious free tea.

The next best way of practicing your Chinese if you're already in China is to (Tip#4) talk to your taxi driver.

If you're not already doing this, you're missing out on a huge free Chinese tutor opportunity, well, of course, you have to pay for the taxi, but get your money's worth most taxi drivers are super curious to learn more about you, especially if you're a foreigner. So 9 times out of 10, if you break the ice you're going to get a really good Chinese conversation.

If you're looking for ways to break the ice and you're not really sure how to start that conversation, how about you try asking them if they're a local of that city, you can ask them 你是当地人吗？then they'll proceed to tell you where they're from, they'll probably ask you where you're from, and what you're doing in China? And you'll start having that really nice basic Chinese conversation. And yeah it's really it's a great way to firm up those basic conversational Chinese skills.

I credit a huge portion of my basic conversational Mandarin skills to tea sellers and taxi drivers, and I developed a love of Chinese tea in the process.

For some, you may not be in China but you might have a Chinese boyfriend or girlfriend. I've been told by a billion, kajillion trillion people that the quickest and best way to learn Chinese is (Tip#5) by getting a Chinese boyfriend. So if you've got one, put them to work for me. I'm neither in China, I'll have a Chinese boyfriend. So how do I go about putting as much Chinese into my daily life as possible, the answer is actually very simple. I watch a whole lot of Chinese TV.

In my humble opinion, (Tip#6) watching Chinese TV is the best way of keeping your Chinese fresh if you're not in China. Bear with me, once a day I'll go up to my room, close my door and make a vow to myself not to check social media for the next hour. Then I'll turn on a TV show.  

Right now, I'm watching a fun little series called accidentally in love it's on Netflix, so let me show you what I do. I play the episode until I find a word I don't recognize, I pause look up the mystery character in plaque, oh my go-to Chinese dictionary app.  

If you've got an iPhone I'd recommend you (Tip#7) add a Chinese simplified handwriting keyboard in settings, that way if you don't know what the word is you can just write it out like this, yes I know my stroke order is terrible. And then write down the new character in my vocab book.

My logic is if you do this every time you come across a new word, eventually you'll know all the words. People have asked me in the past whether it's super annoying to be pausing and stopping the show all the time, but yes it is but keeps in mind that you're doing this to learn not for pure enjoyment.

So I watch until I have about two pages worth of new vocab that's about 20 words or so, when I reach that point I just watch the rest of the show without pausing and just enjoy letting it flow. But for some people, 20 words a day is going to be way too much and for some people, 20 words a day might be not enough at all, just (TIP#8) set a comfortable manageable amount, don't drown yourself in your vocab, and discourage yourself from this process, whether you're learning 20 words a day 10 words a day 2 words a day, you're still improving.  

And even if you did learn two words a day for a year, you would increase your vocabulary arsenal by 700 words, which could make the huge difference between being a beginner level of Chinese to an intermediate or conversational level of Chinese.  

Trust me if I didn't have all this free time on my hands I wasn't spending all this time at home, if I had a full-time job if I had children if I had responsibilities, no way would I be doing 20 words a day. So set a limit that you're comfortable with and that is manageable for you.

So after the episode is over I want to make sure that I go ahead and actually memorize all of that new yummy vocabulary. For me personally, the best way to (TIP#9) memorize new vocab is by flashcards. I'm a bit old school I like to write them out and cut them out by hand, but there are a lot of apps that you can use that do that for you, and you can just do it through your phone. One of the ones that a lot of my friends use is called Anki, and it helps you make flashcards for Chinese learning. So that's a good resource that you can check out if you want. But basically, I will just go through those Chinese flashcards until I'm super super comfortable with every single word. And yeah it usually takes about 10 to 20 minutes to memorize that, and then I am done for the day.  

But the next day I'll start my (TIP#10) practice by going over the words that I learned the day before, and even the day before that. This is a super important step to ensure you don't forget all of the new words that you've learned and the hard work you've put into learning them.  

Trust me if you keep revisiting your vocab before your daily lesson or your daily TV watching, the words will stick. So yeah that's the basic structure of my Chinese practice recently: revised, watch, learn, memorize.  

See what your TV show you've learned some new vocab, you've even memorized that vocabulary. But I'm very sorry to say that all that hard work will be for nothing unless you actually (TIP#11) know how to use that vocabulary in the sentence.  

So the next step is to actually find some sentences that incorporate your new vocab. So I tend to do this about once a week. I go through the vocab list from the week before and kind of just pick out any vocab that I'm not too sure how to use or how to how to use in a sentence and I'll just kind of put them aside, and then the next step is to actually find those sentences that incorporate your vocab because you can't just come up with these sentences on the top of your head because most likely they're going to be wrong.  

So I have three main ways of finding these sentences. Option one of course is to just use the sentence in the Chinese TV show that your vocab item comes up in, so if it's a particularly good sentence that you can see yourself using in the future. Sometimes I'll just pause the program and not just write down the vocab itself but also a sentence that it appears in, and that's nice and useful.  

The second way is to use Pleco, the dictionary app that I showed you guys before. When you type in a word in Pleco it often has like three or four example sentences so you can go in there and just see if there's a sentence that you like to look up. And you can record that.

So maybe you've gone to Pleco and there aren't any examples there or you don't like any of the sentences they've used the third way is to actually go to Bing dictionary online. It's a free resource as is Pleco, of course, and you just type in the word that you're looking for in the sentence, and it'll actually come up with pages and pages and pages of how to use that character in a sentence. Some of them will be useful, some of them will not be, just choose the one that works for you. 

So once you've gone through your vocab lists, you've made sentences for some of the vocab, that you're unsure about you've written them down maybe, it's on a piece of paper maybe it's in a note on your phone memorize them. I know it sounds like a lot of extra work, but trust me it will make so much of a difference when you (TIP#12) memorize the sentence, not just the vocab. You actually know where that piece of the book have really fitted into everything else, and you're going to be much more likely to actually use it in your day to day life in China or when you're chatting to a Chinese friend. So trust me just try and memorize even if it's just two or even one.

So I would say that this method of learning Chinese is pretty much suitable for every level of Chinese learner, the only group I would exclude from that list is complete beginners.

By all means, if you're a complete beginner and you've never had a Chinese class in your life watch Chinese TV in conjunction with your Chinese classes that are run by a certified tutor or someone who really knows what they're talking about how to teach you Chinese.  

I think it's gonna be really hard for you to teach yourself Chinese from scratch using this method, but as I said watch it in conjunction but of course when you're using this method of learning Chinese, you want to make sure that you're (TIP#13) watching TV shows that are appropriate to your level of Chinese for your convenience.

I've actually compiled a list of some of the best TV shows to watch by the level of Chinese in the description below, so you can check that out whenever you want. But I'm also going to go through my absolute favorite ones, per category per level Chinese right now.

LIST OF TV SHOWS (by level of chinese)

Beginner

- Peppa pig (in chinese)

- Chinese cartoons

- 爸爸去哪儿 Dad where are we going

Intermediate  

- 惹上冷殿下 Accidentally in love

- 绅探 Detective L

- 我的前半生 the first half of my life  

- 欢乐颂 ode to joy  

- 爱情公寓 iPartment  

- 下一站是幸福 Find yourself  

- 我只喜欢你  Le Coup De Foudre

- 世界青年说  

- 奔跑吧兄弟 running man  

Advanced

- 铁齿铜牙纪晓岚  

- 雍正王朝  

- 走向共和

- 人民的名义

- 江山风雨情

- 精英律师

- 都挺好

Okay, first off for those who are at a beginner Chinese level these are my tips for you if you're gonna be using this method to study Chinese as a beginner, you want to be watching the absolute simplest stuff out there.  

So for that reason, I would suggest you get into (TIP#14) watching Chinese cartoons that are aimed at kids. So actually a really fabulous option for this is Peppa Pig in Chinese. And it's really simple to access that as well, you can just go onto YouTube type in Peppa Pig in Chinese, and there you go you'll have a huge amount of content about Peppa Pig. If you've got something against talking pigs, I don't know maybe you do you can always just type in Chinese cartoons and it'll come up with thousands of hours of content for you.  

The only downside with this method is you might go absolutely crazy watching hours of Chinese baby cartoons, so when you're getting to that stage I have another show that I think will be great for you.

One of the first-ever TV shows I watched in Chinese is called Dad Where Are We Going 爸爸去哪儿. It's basically a reality show where dads are traveling with their kids， so for the most part the vocab is also pretty simple because you know it's the kid–dad communication line, and therefore it's actually really good for Chinese beginners to intermediate learners. It's also super entertaining, you'll actually see a lot about China, you'll learn a lot about China. And I think in general is probably one of the best shows for Chinese learners out there, if you are thinking about starting to watch Dad Where Are We Going, I personally would like to suggest season three because I think that Liuye is super super 帅 (handsome).  

And I almost forgot to say that of course Dad Where Are We Going is also available on YouTube just type in Dad Where Are We Going season three and there you'll have it.

Okay moving on now to that intermediate level of Chinese learners. I would refer to myself as intermediate level because you know I can communicate but not perfectly, there are a lot of words that I should know, but I don't, and I still stumble a lot in general conversation.  

So when I'm looking for shows for watching Chinese, I like to look for ones that have a very simple storyline and not too complicated levels of Chinese because I don't use English subtitles anymore only Chinese. So for that reason, (TIP#15) Rom-Coms and romantic dramas often fall into that category.  

As I mentioned I'm watching a TV show at the moment called Accidentally in Love it's on Netflix, you can find it there. And it's absolutely perfect for my level, it's slightly overacted as a lot of Rom-Coms are in China and so I find it really easy to follow along, and because of the subject matter, it's basically about a university young people are studying there. They're talking about food, they're talking about dating, they're talking about life. I find that there are a lot of sentences in there that I can really use in my day to day life, it's an appropriate level for my Chinese.

I also found the series 欢乐颂 as well as 我的前半生 very useful for this intermediate level, and yeah good choice.

Previous to accidentally in love, I was watching a fabulous TV show called Detective L (绅探), you can find it on YouTube. It's basically this murder mystery, it's super engaging, I absolutely loved it. And I was so excited to sit down and watch an episode every day, I was really sad when it finished.

But the only downside to watching that TV show is that I learned some pretty gnarly vocabulary because it's a murder mystery I was learning stuff like manslaughter blood-stained, blackmail what else have I got here, murder weapon, a missing person, you know. I can't see myself using that vocabulary anytime soon, but awesome cave a shark.

Before we move on to the advanced TV shows I just have a little word of advice for the intermediate and beginner learners. When you're using this method make sure that you're (TIP#16) learning the right words, there might be three or four words in a sentence that you don't recognize, but make sure that you learn the word in that sentence. That's going to be most useful to you at this point in time, for example, don't go ahead and learn the word for cardiac arrest if you don't know how to say heart first. Eventually, you're gonna learn more and more words and everything will start to make a lot more sense, but in the beginning, if you're gonna pause it every single sentence and write down three or four new vocabulary words, you're gonna drive yourself crazy. And this method will never work for you so just be smart about what vocabulary you choose to learn.

Okay on to the Advanced Learners of Chinese now. I would classify an advanced learner of Chinese as someone who is completely fluent in day-to-day conversations in Chinese, and who's probably looking for some subject matter that's gonna push you closer to a native level of Chinese.

So for that reason, I would suggest that you (TIP#17) watch some Chinese historical dramas. That are using more of that flowery poetic language you'll probably learn a lot of 成语 if you don't 成语, the four-character Chinese idioms that can tell like a huge story in four characters.

Whenever I've tried to watch one of those Chinese historical dramas, I really struggle I find it really hard to follow along. And the level of Chinese is just way over my head, so it's probably gonna be more suitable for those Advanced Learners.

So in my description below I have a list of some historical dramas that Advanced Learner's might be interested in, as well as some other TV shows with the more difficult subject matter, like the very famous political drama 人民的名义. I tried watching that and I gave up after half an episode because the chat was just way, way too difficult, not only hard Chinese but also political topics. It was really hard to follow.

TV shows are so good for practicing Chinese because you're training so many different areas of the language. You're practicing you're listening, of course, by listening to the show. You're practicing your pronunciation if you repeat what the actors say in the show. You're practicing your 口语 and learning what is slang and what's not slang. You're also practicing your reading, by reading the subtitles. But I have to say this isn't a foolproof, method of learning Chinese there are two areas that you're really not training at all by using this method. And that is conversationally spoken Chinese and freighting.

Okay first, let's talk about writing, for me learning to physically (TIP#18) write Chinese characters is no longer a priority. I'm not planning on sitting any Chinese exams anytime soon, and as long as I can look at a character and recognize it when it comes on my TV screen, or on my phone when I'm reading something online, that's enough. But maybe you are a Chinese language student, and you do need to focus on writing Chinese characters because you're going to be taking some Chinese exams. If you fall into that category I would really strongly recommend an app called Skritter, Skritter is the best app that I've come across, that helps with learning to write those Chinese characters, and really getting that stroke order in your head. I used to use it all the time when I was back at Tsinghua when I was studying Chinese back at the University. It's really really really useful, and if you are interested in trying out screening for yourself, if you use the link in my description you're actually going to get a 15-day free trial as opposed to the normal 7-day free trial. Ha and also if you decide to slant sign up, you will get a good little discount on that as well so if you're interested in trying screwed up click on that link below. (advertising)

The other area that watching Chinese TV shows doesn't really help you improve is conversational speaking Chinese practice which is an area that I very much care about arguably more than all of the other areas.

This is something that could be very easily fixed by just going online and (TIP#19) getting an online Chinese teacher, there are heaps of them that just conduct their lessons through Skype. I think it just comes down to the fact that I'm pretty lazy but it's something. I definitely need to get on because yesterday I was taking a walk in the park and I ran into a lovely Chinese couple that I haven't seen in a year or so and while my listening skills were perfect. My spoken Chinese was absolutely horrific, so yeah something I really need to address soon.

I'm actually thinking that when restrictions ease up a bit I'm gonna start a Chinese corner and encourage Chinese learners from around Sydney to come and meet up and we can all chat together, and I think it would be a nice little social activity, and also help us with that Chinese.

I hope this video was useful for you guys this is how I've been studying Chinese in the last few months and I've really enjoyed it. I find it a really engaging way of learning the language because you know you actually enjoy watching the TV show as opposed to leafing through pages and pages of boring textbooks being of course when practicing this method just (TIP#20) keep your goal in mind, think about how great it's gonna feel to pass that HSK test or to speak to your in-laws in Chinese or whatever your goal is just to make sure that it's at the top of your brain, yeah thanks for watching guys don't forget to like subscribe comment, do all the things love you for life, bye.