Mastering the art of learning how to learn a language

This little story is going to be about how I struggled with learning Chinese to the extend that I spent more time learning how to learn than to actually learn. I hope by this little short story I can help some other fellow learners how to quickly get started in learning instead of spending their time learning to learn.

I targeted at learning Chinese so parts of this story will be targeted towards Chinese learners, but I hope some of the tools I present can be helpful in general. So I decided to divide this into two sections: “General Learning” and “Tips and Tricks studying Chinese”.

General Learning

First up tools. Tools tools tools are the most important thing for effective learning (opinion). Today, there is an ocean of fantastic apps for easier remembering words, and I’m going to name my favorite:

• RainUp — Vocabulary Manager
• (Alternatively) Anki
• Duolingo

I suppose most people have heard of Duolingo. It is an app with predefined lessons for learning a language. It is a great starting point, where you can get a good introduction to a language's basic grammar, words, and sounds. While an effective starting I personally feel I spend a lot of time believing I learn while end up not knowing that much after all. The problem is that it is possible to answer questions by knowing what is not true. And in real life, you will hardly ever be in such a position.

Now, how do I recommend you do? A spaced repetition software mixed with TV series and books! And that is what RainUp — Vocabulary Manager and Anki are (pick your favorite). Anki is a well established (open source) spaced repetition software with a large community, while RainUp is based on Anki but with a niche for language. RainUp has a few features which can come in handy when dealing with language learning but have as of now a small community, so don’t expect to be able to download someone else's vocabulary. Nonetheless, it is an excellent tool for managing your vocabulary. I would recommend you to try both and see what you prefer! :)

So what to do?

1. Get your favorite spaced repetition software.
2. Get Duolingo
3. Start training using Duolingo (but add the words you want to remember into your spaced repetition software).
4. Once you start getting a hang of the language, start reading! Excellent for getting a better understanding of how you can form sentences and increase your vocabulary (remember to add the words you don't know to your spaced repetition software).
5. Find series (with subtitles) and start listening (study the series by writing down the subtitles, translate and rewatch. And again put the words you don’t know into your spaced repetition software.

Now you are off to a good start, but now you might wonder, what about speaking? This one is trickier as you need a fellow friend of some sort to practice with. So try and find peers who also study the language and meet regularly to share what you learn and make basic conversations. Speaking should be added asap in your training process as you will practice all of the parts (vocabulary, hearing, and forming sentences). Don’t underestimate this part, it will haunt you later. And besides, you are learning a language to be able to use it by speaking, right?

Tips and Tricks studying Chinese

Chinese is one heck of a difficult language to learn. Those who haven’t started their journey has yet to experience tones. The reason why you in Chinese might say something totally different from what you believe you are saying.

So what to do about it? The key is talk talk talk and listen listen listen. You have to be exposed to it in order to learn it. (opinion) Children learn quickly as they cannot take short paths. They cannot fall back on English or translators. And neither should you! So most important, find a Chinese friend to study with! A lot of Chinese people want to improve their English so there are more than enough people for you to practice with so do your best to find someone (at least if you are a native English speaker)!

TOOLS, GIVE ME TOOLS! … Yes, yes yes, of course. I’m going to give you my absolute favorite tools for learning Chinese (excluding the previously mentioned tools).

• HSKX apps (HSK1 app Google Play) (wiki HSK). Super professional apps with very useful words and it's a great tool for learning. (But use in combination with spaced repetition software).
• HanziCraft, your ultimate guide to Chinese characters.
• HackingChinese (blog(ish) with great information).
• Microsoft translator (most accurate so far according to my Chinese friends).
• HSK storybooks (you can read a preview with Amazon Kindle to see if you like it or not).
• Movie: Mr. Donkey

How to remember the ridiculous number of characters?

RainUp + Gboard with handwriting recognition (or some other handwriting recognition keyboard)+ HanziCraft raising their hands 🙋‍♀️🙋🙋‍♂️. Below is a little quick demonstration of a learning session:

If you wonder how to actually write a character, that is where Hanzi comes into play. It gives you all the information you wanna know about a character.

That is all my tips for now. Happy language learning!