Video conferencing isn’t only for
formal lessons. If you already have a
smattering of language and just want
to brush up your skills, you could
join an online language exchange,
where, you’ll (hopefully!) meet Chinese
speakers interested in learning your
native tongue. You can ask questions
about grammar or pronunciation, or
just chat or email. You will both be
improving your language skills for free.
In-betweeners
Many Mandarin students sit in
their lessons, dutifully repeat new
words or phrases, get the tone and
pronunciation right, then go home
and completely forget what they
have learned, making it impossible
to practise in between lessons. They
may have the words written down,
but seeing a word written, either in
characters or in pinyin, might not
provide clues to pronunciation to a
mouth unaccustomed to recreating
some of the sounds in the Mandarin
language. Regular practice is crucial,
according to languages teacher
Rhian Harley. She says “With
languages, the key is ‘little and
often’. You have to keep speaking
or listening to the language as
often as possible, ideally every day.
Otherwise, you lose that spontaneous
recall and when you go back to it, the
hard work starts all over again.” With
technology, the student no longer has
to wait until their next lesson to jog
their memories. There are all sorts of
online tools to help.
The most useful online tool is the
Mandarin dictionary, and with the
advent of iPhones, iPads, androids and
tablets, dictionaries have become more
portable and accessible than ever.
Just download your chosen dictionary
as an app, and as soon as you come
across a word you don’t recognise,
you can look it up straight away –
some allow you to look up words in
Chinese characters, in Pinyin (with
or without tones), or in a combination
of characters and Pinyin, and some
let you hear the word you have looked
up spoken by a native-speaker. There
are lots of online dictionaries available
(
including, for example, Pleco,
Qingwen, and DianHua) at different
price ranges, and some are even free.
Some offer add-ons, such as a Chinese
handwriting recogniser, where you can
draw the character and the dictionary
will look it up, or the ability to point
your camera at a printed Chinese word
and get the meaning immediately on a
live camera video feed – you don’t even
need to take a picture.
Access to YouTube can also
be a useful – and free! – tool for a
Mandarin student looking to either
jog their memories of lessons and
vocabulary they have already learnt,
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