Learning Chinese to Study or Work in China
With the HSK as your goal, you can easily learn chinese online. On the HSK, students are tested on their listening, reading and writing. Passing this test is both challenging and rewarding. The challenge lies in that Chinese is hard. The reward comes in the form of a sense of accomplishment AND the ability to study or work in China.
When you begin to study, have a clear goal of what you want. If your goal is to learn how to speak mandarin, the HSK exam should encourage you to deepen your understanding of the language, as it is the very depth and structure of Chinese that is being tested in the HSK. And once you meet your goal, you’l have another: If you pass one HSK test, there’s another waiting for you, with six levels total. Even passing the final level does not mean you have mastered Chinese and cannot learn anymore. Even I, a professional translator, have to reach for my dictionary sometimes. Use the HSK as a way to learn. It’s a goal — not a definitive assessment of your Chinese ability.
The main problem in learning Chinese is the vocabulary, I’ll admit. But vocabulary is the root of a language. If you want an idea of how many words you’ll need to be fluent enough for a decent conversation in Chinese, I’d say the answer is 5,000. The problem is, memorizing 5,000 words via the standard method will take you years. But if you learn the secret to memorizing them, which we explain in our guide — and I will explain in this post again, briefly, for those who don’t have our guides — is learning Chinese characters via patterns, called radicals. This will save you much time, as every Chinese character is composed of radicals. If you memorize the radicals, you don’t need to memorize a whole character; you only need to memorize how to piece the character together via radicals. For example, the character for “criticize” is a combination of the radicals for “hand” and “compare.” Easy, right?
If you have any questions, please download our guides. They will give you the low-down on the best methods to learn Chinese and pass the HSK. If you are super poor and need a vocabulary lists, please email me; I don’t mind giving some stuff out. Also, if you have a suggestion for the website, please let me know. Our goal here is to help you learn Chinese effectively and efficiently.
Get started today! Please choose the “study guides” section at the top of this page and a level from the list to get a guide suitabel for your current level.
