• Study Chinese

    I started studying Chinese in Autumn 2008 and enrolled a beginner Chinese course at my university in Finland. 1,5 years later I made the decision to move to China. First I studied Chinese as en exchange student at Guanghou University, but then decided to make Chinese my major. I’m doing my undergraduate degree in Chinese Language at the Sun Yat-Sen University.

    When I decided to make my hobby a major, suddenly it wasn’t all fun and easy anymore. Studying Chinese requires some hard work! But luckily there are lots of different kind of tools to help us.

    Notice! This page includes affiliate links, which means that if you decide to buy, then I get a small share. But remember that I will only recommend learning tools I sincerely think can help you to study Chinese. Those small commissions I might make are used to pay my tuition fees (or more like a tiny fraction of them). Thank you!

    Skritter

    Want to learn how to write Chinese or Japanese? Want a tool to help you keep all the vocabulary in your head? Want a tool to decide for you what you have to review and when? If yes, then Skritter is for you!

    If you are new to Skritter, then read this post first: Why I use Skritter to to learn to write Chinese and why you should too

    And here is a post about how I connect my university classes with Skritter: Intensive course

    I’m trying to make a habit to use Skritter 15 minutes a day: My Chinese learning goals for 2012: Skritter

    Making something into a habit is a hard thing for me, but because I know that Skritter is the best option for me, I’m doing my best with my goal. The most important thing when learning a language is to find the method that works for you and use that.

    ChinesePod

    I found ChinesePod when I was still back in Finland. It was great listening resource for me because I still couldn’t understand native material like television shows or songs. The beginner podcasts are quite fun too! You can decide if you just listen and relax, or if you want to work more with it and get the transcripts. Recently peckishlaowai wrote a great blog post about how she is using ChinesePod to learn Chinese. p.s. I really like her blog!

    Last Autumn (2011) I started listening to ChinesePod’s upper-intermediate podcasts and I still have few of them on my mp3 player. But then my lazy side got the better of me and I haven’t listened them for a while. At this level I’m ready to watch Chinese TV shows and understand most of what they are saying (depending on the show), so I prefer native material from now on. But I wouldn’t be at this level if I hadn’t used ChinesePod when I was still a beginner or on an elementary level!