Choose the best way to learn Chinese

As we know, the Chinese language is rated as one of the most difficult language to learn on the earth, so learning Mandarin Chinese can really be daunting for beginners. We have being found several ways of learning Mandarin Chinese, but which one is the best way to learn Mandarin Chinese?

In the most cases, in order to learn a language well, one must take as take into consideration and attention in 5 language areas - speaking, listening, reading comprehension, writing, and grammar. Nevertheless, we should know that some things are much more important to focus on than others when learning Chinese for use in the real world. The difficulties of learning Chinese can be attributed to a newbies' lack of knowledge on what learning strategy to tackle for them to learn Mandarin Chinese.

To getting with Chinese language, we need to understand the backgrounds of Mandarin Chinese firstly.

1. Mandarin is called Putonghua, which as the official language, but there are many dialects specifically for different city, town, province of China.
2. Pinyin is the key to speaking any dialect of Chinese, there are four tones in the Pinyin, please refer to the chart.
   Four tones of mardarin Chinese

   Mandarin has four distinct tones, and a "toneless" tone,

   * high level – first tone
   * rising – second tone
   * falling rising – third tone
   * falling – fourth tone

   Please refer to these articles to get more information about the tones,
   http://chinesepod.com/resources/pronunciation/section/17
   http://www.chinasageconsultants.com/html/pronunciation.html

3. After learning the tones of Mandarin and getting to know how to speak, it is better to learn individual characters. In the primary school, the pupil is starting to learn individual characters from the first grade In China, so it is very important to know characters, at least the 3000 or so most commonly used characters.
4. When you understood the most commonly characters, make sentences using them. Unlike English (which, thanks largely to its many permutations and non-native speakers, can usually be understood no matter how badly one messes up sentence order & grammar), Chinese is a language where sentence order, just like tones, must be correct to be quickly and easily understood.
5. At last, but the most important is to practice, reading, writing, and communication with the native speakers in Chinese. You can find many native Chinese online, such as on Yahoo! Group, Google Groups, as well there are many online Chinese courses and videos on the internet, most of which are free.

Finally, when we got all of the above, what we need to do is to practice and keep doing.
Thinking is easier than doing, in many cases, the learners gave up or discontinued.

As Einstein said, "the interest is best teacher", so we need to find the interest in learning Chinese. I suggest to read short funny jokes in Chinese , and communicate with others in Chinese.

Never stop, communication and the fun is the best way to learn Chinese. So make sure to understand the basic knowledge on above, and then look for the interests or fun in learning Chinese.

Such as

Funny Chinese jokes
Short Funny Jokes & Learn Chinese

Chinese history
Learning Chinese history

The three kingdoms of China
http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Division/sanguo.html

Or travel in China, you can search it by Google,
http://www.google.com/search?q=travel+in+china

What is your suggestions?
Please let me know your suggestions, you can send email to me robbin.joe(at)gmail.com

Read more, basic knowledge in speaking Chinese:
The four tones and five tones in speaking Chinese

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