Introduction I’ve been learning Chinese for 2+ years. My method of studying it is somewhat unorthodox. Rather than textbooks, Duolingo, or private lessons, I’ve been following a different approach: learning every single word from a TV show about a board game. Why do this? Has it worked? Read along and find out! My approach I quite enjoy playing the board game 围棋 (Weiqi, or Go). I wanted to watch the TV show 棋魂 (Qi Hun), which is a drama about a kid possessed by a 1000-year old ghost. It features Weiqi quite heavily—the ghost turns out to be the best Go player of his time, and persuades the kid to take up the game. ...
The Math Behind Hanzimatic's Vocabulary Test
Introduction Hanzimatic is a Mandarin learning website. It keeps track of the words that you know, and can generate flashcards suited for you by teaching you new sentences containing only one unknown word. I made Hanzimatic primarily for my own Chinese studies, but would love for others to use it! In order to do this, Hanzimatic needs a quick way to estimate the words that new users already know, so they can jump in to using the site. I wanted to make a test for folks to get started. Ideally, this test would be: ...