Lion Dance, Ruins of St. Paul, Macau
Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world and is an increasingly useful asset to pick up. Although I had taken 10 years of Chinese Saturday schools and a year of Chinese at UCLA, my writing and reading skills are still subpar. When I worked at the Taiwan Think Tank, there was an initial struggle of trying to translate policy papers, polls and editorials from Chinese into English. My goal is to improve my Chinese enough so that I can read a newspaper and write with strong proficiency. Here are some steps outlying how to improve one’s Chinese ( assuming one already has a background in Mandarin Chinese).
1. Use Xuezhongwen.com- This is an excellent free online resource that allows one to directly copy and paste Chinese sentences and break them down and translate them into Chinese. Note that the translation will not create a coherent word for word translation such as those found from Google Translator or Babelfish. Instead, one can use the translated pinyin and to understand the words that make up the sentence. I find this helpful in understanding new terms that I commonly see but have never fully learned. This website can also function as a dictionary for Chinese-English translations and vice versa.
Coupled with websites that have Chinese articles such as Yahoo! Taiwan Xuezhongwen becomes a powerful resource. One would look up interesting articles on any subject- politics, sports, etc. in Chinese and try to read it over and skip words that cannot be understood. Afterwards, copy and paste the entire section into the translator and look over those offending words. Write them down and memorize them so that they won’t be forgotten next time. With due time there should be a sharp increase in Chinese reading proficiency.
Another great way to learn Chinese is to watch soap operas online. By listening to collaquial Chinese one can increase speaking fluency. A great site for Chinese/Taiwanese dramas and movies can be found in Crunchyroll or Mysoju.
Finally, one last option is to study abroad or go to a country that uses Mandarin Chinese and learn it there! By forcing yourself to use it everyday your Chinese will improve in no time.
