Hello! I am currently an incoming freshman in college and also majoring in Chinese Studies. Are there things that I should know, or handy tips I could use (esp. in learning Mandarin, although the question could be answered in general as well)? Thank you so much in advance. ♡
Hmm, I thought about it for a little while, and I have a few general tips I think is very useful for when you start learning Chinese in a professional environment;
- Chinese is a very difficult language to learn, especially if your mother’s tongue is a European language. This means it’s essential that you dedicate A LOT of time in the beginning of learning Chinese to studying and doing homework. It’s crazy how many of my classmates have fallen behind on Chinese, because they didn’t study hard enough - they got lost, a lot dropped out because they couldn’t understand the professors anymore. Do yourself a favour and give it all you’ve got from the beginning, so you don’t fall behind.
- I use Pleco for individual word translations, and Baidu translate 百度翻译 for sentence translations. It’s the best translators I know. Pleco is amazing, because it can do so much, like show the stroke order of many simple characters, accurately translate 成语 phrases, shows you how a character is built up, etc. Baidu translate is the most accurate translater for Chinese that I know of, I use it when I have many many pages to translate and need a quick overview of what the text is about, then use Pleco for individual words that I’m unsure of what means or to check if the Baidu translation is correct.
- I don’t know how you will be taught, but my professor made us have tests every week to write down pinyin and hanzi that we had learned that week. If your professor does not do that, I suggest you try and write down all words you’ve learned every week. That helped me tremendously when I first started learning Chinese. Just take a paper, write all the characters down that you learned, then either have someone (like a a classmate) read it out loud to you, so you write it down from memory, or see if you can remember them yourself from memory. You could also record yourself saying the characters and then play the recording and write them down.
- Don’t be shy to speak when you are learning Chinese. If you don’t use the language, you will learn it slower. I have classmates who still cannot pronounce shi ci zi xi sounds, even after so many years. It’s crucial to learn the correct pronounciation, otherwise native Chinese will have no idea what you are saying. So practice practice practice whenever you get the chance.
That’s the most fundamental tips I have for starting your Chinese learning. Of course there are other excellent things you can do, like find a 语半, but I don’t think that’s necessary until you’ve at least learned the basics of Chinese. Try your best to be diligent student, don’t fall behind or it’ll come back to bite your butt.
如果你想学好中文，你必须努力学习！
Good luck! Chinese is a very rewarding and beautiful language, if you appreciate it well, you won’t fall behind as easily!