Extramural Chinese Studies

Note:
I do not claim to be any expert in any way, shape, or form when it comes to the Chinese language. I do however know of a few useful websites and tips that I can give to others if they wish to go beyond the classroom and learn Chinese on their own. Please feel free to share thoughts and recommendations about this list, and I will update in the future.

Tip 1: In order to learn anything new, you must be willing to put in the time. What that means is, make time every single day to focus on what you would like to learn or study; even if its just 15 minutes a day, it will be much better than spending an hour one day and then taking the next few days off from study. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Spending time in this manner allows the brain to understand and reinforce the knowledge that we take in. The more the brain sees the topic you are trying to learn, the more focus it will put on retaining this information.

Tip 2: If you are the type of person who really likes to get down and study your heart out, please do so with caution! Over studying can have a similar effect as not working on something at all; most of what you study will be lost very quickly. Work on something for an hour and then take a break. After you have had time to let the information sink in, go back and review. The more times in a day you see the same information the more your brain will try to understand and keep the information.

Okay, now that I have gone over two basic tips for learning anything lets get down to the nitty gritty. I will break down a couple of sites that you can visit to learn Chinese on your own. Each site will have its pros and cons. Find what works best for you by exploring them all.

Site One:
Chinesepod.com
website: www.chinesepod.com

ChinesePod is a great website for beginners and advanced Chinese students alike. It has a very nice interface both online and via iTunes that allows you to receive a new lesson in Chinese every single day of the week. Let me say that again incase it didn't sink in; you get a new lesson in Chinese EVERY SINGLE DAY. The website/ podcast is free for basic users and also offers a membership package that is reasonable in cost. The lesson's they offer are split into Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, and Advanced.

Pros: First off, ChinesePod has about 700 lessons available online, and they are all free! The lessons often run about 15 minutes in length and are perfect for a daily commute to work or school. ChinesePod has many things going for it. They use modern slang that is found all over the mainland and do a fair job of explaining how words work together to form ideas and sentence patterns. The lessons are all spoken to you by native speakers, and that makes for good accent and pronunciation practice. The fact that they offer many different lesson levels also makes it great for all users. It gives you a chance to go back and cover the basics, and also gives much room to grow for more experienced Chinese students.

Cons: ChinesePod for the most part focused on spoken Chinese. The dialogues are viewable but you must be a member or ChinesePod (which means spending money) to actually get the characters and pinyin. The other downside is that not all lesson are geared for your learning level which means some days you will not really be able to do the lesson, but like I said before they have plenty of old lessons that you can always go over. The biggest con is that in order to really use ChinesePod to the fullest, you have got to pay money, but all in all this website rocks even for non paying members.

Site Two:
XueZhongWen.net
website: www.mdbg.net

Xuezhongwen.net is a great online dictionary that anyone can use. It is totally free and has thousands upon thousands of Chinese words at your fingertips. It is a must have for online Chinese learning.

Pros: It is a free dictionary, need I say more? Okay, I will anyways just becasue I want to outline a few of the nice features. When you get online to this website you have the option or searching for words in English, Chinese (both simplified and traditional) and also pinyin. So you can take a Chinese character and plug it into the website and understand the meaning within moments. After searching for a word the website allows you to see a few things
1) How the character is written (this is done by clicking on the magnifying glass near the character)
2) It will show you multiple meanings of the word if they are available, as well as slang terms the word may be used for.
3) By clicking on the pinyin of the word a javabox will appear and give you the pronunciation of the word, a very cool feature for new words and characters.

Cons: Sometimes you will search for a word and get tons of examples or translations of the word, which can be rather frustrating for a beginner. General rule of thumb in this instance is to choose the Chinese words that are near the top of the search results. The other con of this website is that it is online. If you don't have the Internet in front of you then you can't access it. My final complaint is that there translation program they have listed on the site is horrible. Use with caution and don't rely on the English translation of anything they give.

Site 3:
Rutgers Multimedia Chinese Teaching System
website: http://chinese.rutgers.edu/

This is the Rutgers Chinese teaching system that they use in school, and it is available online for all to see and use. If you want to learn Chinese in a way that is similar to being in a classroom then this is the site for you. They have four different levels starting with the most basic and going to the most advanced.

Pros: This is a full course in Chinese; it goes over grammar points, vocab, pinyin and characters. It has everything and is structured like a classroom lecture system. It rocks check it out!

Cons: It is structured like a classroom lecture. While this is a pro, it is also a con. If you need help understand a grammar point or anything else they are covering in the lesson you have nowhere to turn. I would recommend this site after you have done at least a little bit of Chinese study at another site.


Site 4:
YouTube

YouTube has everything, try searching for Chinese anything and it will come up. Great for testing your new Chinese that you have learned. Watch TV shows, Commercials, Lectures, and other Chinese students as they speak this wonderful language. YouTube makes learning Chinese fun because while it is entertaining it is also very helpful for solidifying your listening skills. Seriously everything is on YouTube, it makes learning fun!


As I have said before this is not by any means a comprehenssive list. But it does point out some websites that I an other use on a regular basis to solidify what we learn in the classroom.

Good Luck in Your Language Studies,
Gao Jian