Learning Mandarin In a Private Chinese Language School

Learning Standard Mandarin can be made a lot easier than mainstream opinion holds it today. The first thing you should do is naturally to come to China. The reason that being China is absolutely necessary is that even though there are ways to make learning Standard mandarin easier, it is never going to become a walk in the park. You need to be here, on the ground, and experience the language in its natural setting in order to be successful. I have written a previous article for this web site where I clank down on studying the standard mandarin language in a university class size. I mentioned then that the two largest obstacles that you will be unable to tackle in an efficient manner in large class size in pronunciation and the Chinese writing system. This remains true.

These obstacles are very hard to get used to and each person will struggle with different aspects of the curriculum. This necessitates a smaller class size, as one teacher can never hope to address the individual concerns of thirty students. This fact feeds heavily into the point of this article.

As already noted, I claim that learning Standard Mandarin in a country that is not China is all but impossible. If you come to China for language studies a university is a good place to start learning right? Wrong: First of all foreigners will surround you and you will not actually need to speak Chinese to go about your day-to-day activities. Countless people have failed to capitalize on their in China for this reason. Secondly, the most important aspect of applying the language in natural communication is having access to the section of the Mandarin language that matter for you own individual hobbies and ambitions.

Say that you are interested in skydiving and that you want to go jumping out of a Chinese airplane. Because the odds that an entire class will share your ambition to do this are non-existent, you will never find a class curriculum where thirty students are taught the necessary terminology. Furthermore, the teacher can simply not create the necessary tailor made content without having access to an entire staff of administrative staff, which would really make the university into a very large private school. The reason that private Mandarin language schools in China are more expensive is of course that they have a much higher staff to student ratio. But what you get for that money is not really something you can compare to being force-fed a deluge of vocabulary from pulpit, especially taking into consideration that the flood of new information is not relevant its entirety.

For to discuss an optimal way of learning Mandarin we need to involve components that can only be derived directly from individual attention. In order these components are individual questions and answers, attention to pronunciation on a personal basis, attention to individual methods of writing, which means both stroke order and awareness of stroke radicals. Furthermore, a small class size, or at least a much higher staff to student ratio, means that it is possible to address the individual goals of students Mandarin studies. Ultimately a private Mandarin language school, as opposed to a public university, is a business and is therefore much more aware of competitive factors. For mandarin language studies these factors make a world of difference.

To conclude: learning Mandarin is difficult. It is essential to be in China to succeed in your studies. The first two major difficulties that you will face in your Mandarin language studies are pronunciation and the Chinese writing system. These barriers are difficult to negotiate in classroom where there are too many students per teacher for the teacher to address your individual questions. Furthermore, a large class size, like the ones in a Chinese university, rules out the possibility of creating the content you need to as an individual target the most important aspects of your Chinese studies.

Rui Ming works for a Chinese Language School that is a great option for those that want to learn Mandarin in China.

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Learn Mandarin Online - The Cheap Way to Learn Mandarin

So you'd like to learn Mandarin Chinese... how will you go about it? Have you thought of using the internet? There are many good reasons to learn Mandarin online. For one thing, there's the obvious issue of cost, but there is also the issue of cost effectiveness.

What do I mean?

Consider this... attending a class is not cheap. One-on-one learning is even less so, for about $40 per hour, and you won't get your education tailored to your specific needs in a class, as you would if you learn Mandarin online.

For example, one teacher directs his attention to a classroom full of people. One student has some difficulty in pronunciation, another in sentence structure, another in verb conjugation, and so on. Can one teacher fulfill every student's individual needs while teaching a class as a whole? The teacher may offer advice after class, if there is time in the student's busy schedule... but is that enough?

Out of the whole class at course's end, how many will speak fluently? How many will speak fairly well? How many will barely be able to carry on the simplest of intelligible conversations?

How many will have given up?

Now consider this... if you learn Mandarin online, you have the ability to tailor the learning experience to conform to your certain needs with better focus, and at your own pace. Using all sorts of multimedia resources available to enhance your learning experience, you can learn Mandarin online quickly and effectively.

With the internet, you can download audio, video, worksheets, tests, interactive lessons, there's one-on-one support and forums for advice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all at your leisure. Multimedia packages usually cost under $100 for everything you need to learn Mandarin online, with all the resources mentioned above and more. Certainly, it's much more cost effective and beneficial to learn Mandarin online. Why not start now?

Check out Rocket Chinese for the best way to learn Mandarin online. For a full review of Rocket-Chinese Click Here

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Ways You Can Learn Mandarin

Being able to speak more than one language is great way to open your eyes to different cultures and customs. If you have always dreamed that someday you would learn Mandarin, your chance is now. Why wait for that someday when you could be speaking another language tomorrow?

Some languages like Spanish and French are so popular that books about learning those languages are falling off the bookshelves at stores. Though it is true there are not as many resources on how to speak Mandarin, there are enough to make learning the language just as simple as the other languages. Even a friend that speaks Mandarin can be a resource for you.

Your friend can help you to find the best book or class to take to learn Mandarin. They can also help with your class assignments if you need someone to practice talking with someone who will be able to correct you if you have your words mixed up. Maybe you could take them out to dinner and practice talking in Mandarin.

To find that perfect language class for you, you may have to do some research. If you live in a rather rural area, finding a Mandarin class could be difficult. Call your local community college or check out their website to see what language classes they offer to the public. Attending an actually attending a class will make learning easier for some, while learning on your own may work better for others.

Since not everyone has access to a community class because of location or time, there are other ways of learning Mandarin. Almost everyone today has a way to access the internet so take advantage of this great resource. You may even be lucky enough to stumble across a site that will offer a free trial of a class so you can make sure you really want to devote your time to learning this specific language.

Public libraries are also great places to learn about all kind of things. Look at the online catalog for your local library to see what books they have available for you to check out. Even if you find a book at an online bookstore that you plan to buy, see if your library has it so you can look through it before buying.

Learning a new language will take time so be patient with yourself and work hard. A good study area is also a great idea. There are usually many distractions for someone studying at home, so find a different location if you need to.

If you need to set goals for yourself in order to get things done, a deadline by which to learn Mandarin online may be a good idea. Maybe you could plan a trip to China so you are motivated to finish your book or class before you go. Remember you will also learn a lot on your trip that you cannot possibly learn from a book or class. Culture has a lot to do with language so bring your notebook and pen and keep on learning while on your trip. Grammar lessons should be included in any lessons you take.

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Learning Mandarin - An Interconnected Learning Process

When discussing mandarin studies I often focus on the holistic nature of a good curriculum. Learning Mandarin can be very difficult if the learning process lack one of three key aspects. Studying something as complicated and the Standard Mandarin language must be interesting, it must be efficient and it must be focused. I consider this to be a holistic approach because there is a great deal of synergy inherent in each of these qualities. For something to be interesting it should be focused on what you are interested in and it must be dealt with in an efficient manner, or you will loose motivation before you reached the target of your studies. Conversely, for something to be efficient it must be targeted, almost per definition. There simply is no point in pursuing a target of little concern to you. As a parallel argument, for something to be efficient, it needs to be target, as I just noted, and if it is targeted. Lastly, and for the same reason, for mandarin language studies to become targeted they must be interesting and furthermore, the language studies are then, per definition, efficient.

So, the holistic approach is really just common sense. To make learning interesting, efficient and targeted is not exactly a Nobel Prize winning theory. However, it is my opinion that most schools still manage to evade on corner of this triangle. I think that this is the reason that learning mandarin has a reputation as very difficult. I remember a fire safety seminar back in Pre School where a really cool fireman came in and explained to us what fire really is. The exothermal process needs three elements: fuel, air and heat. Take out one and you kill the fire. The same applies to the triangle I just discussed, remove one of these components and a student's motivation just dies.

So: how do we make sure that the necessary ingredients for superb mandarin studies are all there? Because they are all interlinked, the solution to this conundrum is also interlinked. It begins with a reasonable class size. I don't really know what a principal is thinking when he decides that 1 teacher can simultaneously teach 30 students Mandarin. Standard Mandarin pronunciation is less complicated than Chinese Cantonese, for example, but it is still complicated and it is initially difficult for students to wrap the tongues around the tones. However, putting students and teachers in a situation where individual pointers are just not feasible, as they are not in a classroom with 30 students per teacher, one makes learning mandarin a insurmountable task.

This pronunciation issue highlights the holistic nature of language studies. With out being able to properly speak people are handicapped in every way. The studies are not, therefore, efficient; they are also not interesting as they are only about reading about the language, not about using it. Furthermore, as students are unable to speak independently, in their life outside school, there is no room for targeting the things that matter most to them. That makes the language student completely unable to control and focus their efforts in the direction of their own aims.

The pronunciation alone is not the whole issue with large class sizes either. There are many ways in which Chinese language studies become very difficult without individual attention and personal interaction between teacher and students. However, these reasons are not either the entire issue here. On an interpersonal level it is very hard for students to feel that they are being helped when the teacher don't know ones full name. The lack of sense of personal attention also kills motivation as progress cannot be commented on or even encouraged effectively.

In the end, a small class size is not going to lead to a perfect environment alone, other facets are without a doubt key points to consider when aiming for an optimal service. It is however the area in which most schools fail atrociously and it is therefore an area that is easiest to fix.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin language Academy in Beijing that is a great option for those that want to learn Standard Mandarin. If you are interested in more information about learning Mandarin in Beijing, please consult the website of Beijing Gateway Academy.

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Learning Mandarin and Class Sizes

Like most instances of learning, Standard Mandarin, the lingua franca of contemporary China, is imparted in a large classroom environment. A university class typically holds no less than thirty students per teacher. This is not optimal for most students, as those that desire to learn Mandarin are most often not familiar with the tonal nature of the language or the concept of character, as opposed to an alphabet.

Education, regardless if it takes place in a public or private institution, is a service. It is something of value that is imparted by one party onto another party without goods changing hands. It is the small things that make the big difference, in life, in products and in services. The difference between a manufactured product and an experienced service is this; in manufacturing, attention to details means that every product that is produced is identical, in services attention to details means that every experience is unique. So why should we not teach in a matter that reflects the service nature of education?

The answer to this is simple. There is a great social force that comes from how we are taught as children, which is a reflection of how our parents were taught, which go back until the public school systems around the world was formed. During most of this time, and still today in the vast majority of instances, there were not, and are not, sufficient resources in place to impart education as an optimal service. However, that is not to say that there have not been instances, and still are instances, where it is not possible.

Today the world is rich. By any possible standard we are wealthy. Even the poor are rich by the standards set for most of humanities time on earth. With the advent of computing, we took another step into the future. We made the first tool that did not make manual labor simpler, but actually made thinking simpler. With all this change, there should be sufficient resources, and new types of resources to reach for an excellent service in education in more instances.

Mandarin studies should be such an area. The relative wage difference between western countries and China should allow for students to gain access to a much smaller class size than they are able to today. The benefits of a smaller class size are those that can be harnessed from more attention from the teacher. Those benefits can be divided into two categories.

The first of these categories is communication elicited by the teacher. In mandarin language studies such benefits will be mainly oriented to correction of pronunciation, which can be very difficult indeed. Not only is the Romanization of mandarin, called pinyin, in many sets of sounds, directly counter institutive. There is also an added dimension to pronunciation dealing with the pitch of words. There are four categories of words that even thought they are made up of the same letters, have different, and multiple, meanings.

The second of these categories is communication elicited by the students. This is especially interesting for language studies in general, and therefore also by the subset of Mandarin language studies, because the individual ambitions each students have. A person will be interested in a small proportion of the language that other people will not care on iota about. This interest cannot be addressed in a large class size, as it would take up much more time than a teacher has available. But in a smaller class size this interest can be addressed and used by the teacher to impart more sections of the language.

The argument is dead simple. It should be possible, to a much larger extent than is done today, for a teacher to be alone with 5 to 10 students at a time. Especially for language studies in China. Standard mandarin is difficult to learn. This action could be taken today and should be taken by private language schools, which have the resources to be able to teach in this way.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin language Academy in Beijing that is a great option for those that want to learn mandarin in China. If you are interested in more information about the Academy's program, please the course page: learn mandarin in China.

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Learning Mandarin

There are many reasons to learn mandarin, and there are many ways to do it. The best way that I have found, and believe me, I have looked around, is a way of studying that directly targets your reason for wanting to learn the language. For example, take my girlfriend. I met her in China, while we were both learning Mandarin. She is a Brazilian movie producer and she had come to China in order to work with film. We were both studying with the same language academy in Beijing at the time. At that academy there was a method they called personal content, which in my mind is the perfect way of tackling a language. Before my girlfriend arrived in China she had given details about why she wanted to learn the language. Together with the admission officer in charge of her application she formulated a new study plan. When she arrived a personal textbook had been created for her that contained all the jargon and terminology of cinematography.

I will now try to outline what I think a good language curriculum is, then I will explain why I think personal content fulfill these criteria perfectly. Finally I will wrap this up by telling you a little about my girl's experience in China.

A good language curriculum is highly relevant and it is fun. Relevance in this context really only means one thing: you can relate to the content you are learning and therefore you are able to pick it up faster, which makes your studies go much faster. Relevance in education is the ultimate kicker. If a student finds something to be relevant, their mind will gobble up the syntax and vocabulary like it was ice cream and they were a fat kid. I don't know why it is that relevant material is so important, but the way that our brains are wired just makes it the absolute best way to let someone succeed in mandarin language studies. Example of something that is very relevant to a lot of young western people: how to order a beer, you tell someone how to do it once and they never seem to forget it. Example of something that makes this demographic groups brain go to sleep: how to find their way to the library.

The second aspect, which makes a good curriculum good, is fun. Life is short and learning a language like mandarin takes time for anyone. If you don't enjoy your studies they will take much longer and you may even give up before you reach your goal.

The reason that Personal content is amazing is that it solves this equation and it does so effortlessly and almost per definition. My girl, who is sitting next to me right now, reading over my shoulder, agrees. Learning Mandarin can be tedious but when you are learning the stuff that is directly relevant to the reason you are learning in the first place, that feeling melts away. Within months of starting studying she was able to on a basic level, do her job increasingly more and more in Chinese as opposed to English. This allowed her to practice the stuff she was learning immediately, but not only that - she was also able to practice the nuts and bolts of the language, the peripheral content that holds together the language. When she said (in Chinese): please pass me the camera, she practiced the terminology of filmmaking but also the grammatical structure of a polite request. Furthermore, part of making something fun is showing a person that they are actually progressing at a satisfactory rate. When you target the stuff that you really need to use later in life this effect is more visible and the rate you re progressing is faster.

All this pretty much makes a curriculum that contains an element of personal content, the very definition of a very good mandarin language curriculum.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin Language School in China that is a great option for those that want to learn mandarin, the lingua franca of the middle kingdom. See the program overview page for more information about learning Mandarin in China.

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How to Learn Mandarin - Learn Mandarin Online

If you're wondering how to learn Mandarin, look at what you're doing right now. You're on the computer, right? You already have the best tool you could possibly use right in front of you... and with the fully equipped software packages available today, you could be learning quite a lot, and in little time. Will you learn how to speak Mandarin overnight? No, of course not, but on average, a person can learn one to two years of collegiate level second language learning inside of three or four months, providing diligence.

But it really isn't as difficult as one may think. The fact of the matter is, that with the vast amount of multimedia resources readily available, it's just a very efficient and effective way of learning. This is why so many thousands of people use software and the internet as a means of how to learn Mandarin today.

For example, some of the resources available include video presentation. This is very helpful in learning things like cultural points, and comes in good use for learning to recognize all the characters of the Chinese ideographic script, and how to write them. Another example is all of the audio files to use for developing speech and intonation.

Is this how to learn Mandarin? Well, there's more; tons of vocabulary lists, conjugation charts, and the many printable items like grammar and writing practice sheets, to name a few. But if you really want to know how to learn Mandarin, it's in the interactivity. With the online forums, any hour of the day or night, you can gain experience speaking with others learning like you. You'll even find those with more skill, and even native speakers, who are eager to guide you through any difficulties you may have. With all that's waiting for you to access, just a mouse click away, this clearly is how to learn Mandarin.

For more information about learning mandarin Chinese online, check out the top-rated Rocket Chinese. For a review of Rocket Chinese and to get a free 6 day course go to www.squidoo.com/learn-mandarin-online

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Best Way to Learn Mandarin Chinese - Learn Mandarin Chinese Online

Learning Mandarin Chinese can be intimidating for beginners. This is a normal perception as the Chinese language is rated as one of the most difficult languages to learn. The difficulty is due to the fact that beginners are confused on what learning approaches they will take for them to learn Mandarin Chinese the fast and easy way. The best way to learn Mandarin Chinese is by availing the Chinese courses online.

Why learn Mandarin Chinese online? There are four major advantages that beginners should look into.

1. Cost - A quality Mandarin Chinese course online can cost less than a hundred bucks compared to the cost of a formal language class. It will also be cheaper since you will save on gas and other transportation costs as you do not need to go out of your home.

2. Convenience - You will be learning Mandarin Chinese right at the comforts of your own home.

3. Learn at your own pace - When you are enrolled in a formal language class, there is a standard pace that everyone follows. You do not need to wait for others or be left behind as you dictate your own pace. You can stop and continue at your own convenient time.

4. Comprehensive Lessons - Mandarin Chinese online courses are comprehensive as it was designed that beginners will be able to learn the Chinese language fast and easy while focusing in real-world situations. There are even other online courses that will teach you how to write Chinese words.

Learning through online courses is the best way to learn Mandarin Chinese especially for beginners. Beginners can successfully learn Mandarin Chinese at a minimal cost, at the convenient of their own homes and at their own learning pace.

Now that you know the best way to learn Mandarin Chinese, the next thing you need to focus on is what to look for in a Mandarin Chinese course online. Visit my Chinese course online site and discover how you can select the best available in the market.

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Learn Mandarin Software - Learning Mandarin With Software

What can one expect from a learn Mandarin software package? The resources are quite numerous. When using the internet, they can be nearly boundless, and with our busy daily schedules, it's simply a breeze to be able to go to the computer in the comfort of your own home at any particular hour that you have free to expand your education.

When using learn Mandarin software, we can have access to many tools to use; video presentations to go over points of culture, audio files to learn and test pronunciation as well as intonation, there are vocabulary lists a mile long for your studies, and games and activities for you to learn them all.

There are also printable items to bolster your studies, as well as tests and quizzes to see how well you score in your learning. But perhaps one of the greatest things is the support you have while you use learn Mandarin software, which is readily available, 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week. The forums are simply superb at this.

On the forums, at any given moment, around the clock, there are hundreds, even thousands of your fellow students online to help you. You can test out your Mandarin speaking skills amongst your peers, or you might find those more skilled than yourself to seek mentoring... or if you are doing quite well, you might even help out another in the areas they may have difficulties - which is a great way to boost your confidence in your language skills and gain experience while being an active member in the Mandarin speaking community. Hands-on learning and experience is what you gain from your peers in the forums, when you use learn Mandarin software.

When you use learn Mandarin software, you are not alone. You share a world with others ready to help you, and you can gain valuable language learning experiences.

For more information check out my review of Rocket Chinese - the top-rated learn mandarin software from the 'Rocket' range. Go to www.squidoo.com/learn-mandarin-online

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Learn Mandarin Chinese the Easy Way!

Ni hao! That means "Hello!" in Mandarin Chinese. Did you know that more people speak Mandarin Chinese than any other language in the world? That's right. Even more people speak Mandarin than English.

That's kind of neat, when you think about it. Mandarin Chinese is a beautiful language. It's one of the most sought-after languages to learn in the world. Why? Because it's hard to learn just by listening.

Unlike Spanish and French, which largely use the English alphabet as the source of their letters, Mandarin Chinese requires a whole new alphabet filled with thousands of pictographs, or picture-words. Even Asian people find this alphabet hard to learn!

So if you want to learn Mandarin Chinese, what do you do? Well, you've got a couple of options. Here are a few of the most popular:

1. Take a six-week class at a local community college. You might learn from a teacher who has never been to China or isn't a native Chinese speaker.

2. Pick up a book from your local Barnes and Noble or Borders. You might learn the picture alphabet, and you might learn how to spell a few of the transliterated words, but you certainly won't pick up the accent you need to pronounce your words correctly.

3. Rent some learning language CD's from your local library. They might be scratched up and dinged so they don't play in the player of your car, and they might be missing several pages from that handy-dandy study guide.

4. Visit China yourself and immerse yourself in the language for two months. That would be really cool, but very few people can afford this, especially in a bad economy.

Do any of these options sound like a good idea? Not really. And do you know why? Because none of these will successfully teach you Mandarin Chinese!

You'll only learn bits and pieces - but never the accent, the alphabet, AND the language!

That's why I bought a learn Mandarin Chinese program. It's so, so, SO much easier to learn from real, native Mandarin Chinese speakers who have a clue what they're talking about.

Plus, I can do it on my own time. I tried taking a learning language class at a community college one time. Sure, it was fun, but I had to make a weekly commitment to drive there - at night, no less. It was far from convenient.

But with my learn Mandarin Chinese program, I can sit down whenever I want and learn in small portions. I can follow along in the study guide if I need to and take notes at my own pace.

Doesn't that sound like a much better option? You bet it does!

But you can't just buy ANY Mandarin Chinese program out there. They're not all worth the money. And some of them cost an arm and a leg! That's why I highly recommend the programs found here at http://www.squidoo.com/how-do-i-learn-chinese. They're inexpensive and really, really easy to learn from. If you visit this Mandarin Chinese site, I'll tell you even more about how to learn this difficult language easily!

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Learning Mandarin Language - Study Abroad in China

Studying Chinese languages getting progressively more popular among foreigners. Every year many foreign students are showing great eagerness to make their way to China for learning Mandarin. Mandarin, which is commonly speech as 'Putonghua' is becoming more attractive to them. Interest in studying Mandarin is growing dramatically. Record number of students are coming from America to China only for learning mandarin.

Mandarin, the official language of China is also the most extensively spoken language in the world. One fifth of the world population speaks some form of Chinese language where Mandarin is one of the certified languages of United Nation. For political purposes and international business also learning Mandarin language is getting more significant.

After opening its door for the foreign investment China is swiftly becoming a world financial power where more than 874 million people use Mandarin as their first language. What about the history of Mandarin? In nineteenth century the language was used mainly in court and also by the people of upper class. Then in Beijing it has concentrated largely. Now the people of China are progressively more conscious of the need to learn Mandarin as the language is quite important for getting many jobs and also for different studies where work is reasonably concentrated. Students are coming from other countries with eagerness to study abroad in China as learning Mandarin has loads of profession opportunities. One who can speak mandarin has high demand both in Government and private sectors. For international business purpose Mandarin speaking people are getting more advantages than others. For teaching, healthcare and social services, journalism and many more other jobs Mandarin knowing people are getting more rewards.

In China there are many language institutes with highly organized study abroad programs for the foreigners who are interested to learn Chinese languages. There are many reputed Chinese Universities and Schools with inexpensive Chinese language program. Beijing, Hong Kong, Kunming and also other parts of China has many known Chinese language schools with highly structured study abroad programs particularly for the foreign students who are having interest in Chinese language study.

Learning Mandarin in China is undeniably a great experience for the students as they are free to travel around many places and can also learn more about Chinese culture and economy.

Sujoy Chakravarty is contributing the article for http://www.mindsabroad.com/

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Learning Mandarin - What a Modern Curriculum Needs

Learning Mandarin is not the as hard as most people will tell you. I know because I have done it. The people that say it is near impossible have failed, not because it is impossible, but perhaps because they thought it was impossible, or perhaps because the way that they tried to learn Mandarin was too boring, too inefficient or too unfocused. I will now identify the three greatest barriers to making learning Mandarin interesting, efficient and targeted, and explain my view on how to overcome each.

To illustrate my point I would like to make an analogy to modern medicine. Twenty to thirty years ago doctors used to only treat the stomach if a patient complained about stomach pains. Today there is not partition of systems when treating a patient. Medicine has recognized that the body is interconnected in a way that pure determinism can never hope to capture. If a patient comes in today and complains of stomach pains, one of the first five questions a doctor asks is whether they are busy at work, the reason being that the number one cause of stomach problems

The nature of your studies needs to be similarly holistic. The best way to make your studies interesting is to make them efficient and targeted, because it is progress that makes your learning process feel meaningful. For your mandarin studies to become efficient, you must enjoy you studies, so that you are able to work hard, and they need to be properly target, otherwise you are working hard in a direction that you are not aiming to go. Lastly the very definition of targeted mandarin studies is a process in which you peruse this goal by focusing on relevant content in a structured way.

Now, the three top killers of the kind of holistic process that I am describing above is, in order, bad pronunciation, a flood of generally relevant content, as opposed to personally relevant content, and lastly lack of teacher to student face-to-face time. Now that we have identified the illness we should discuss a remedy. I propose a three-thronged approach.

The first thing we should fix is class size. During the major rise of crime in The United States during the 70's, 80's and 90's the best and the brightest minds of the government wrestled with solutions to crime prevention. Fantastically complex technology was devised and far reaching and multi-complex sociological systems were researched but at the end of the day, one thing stood out as more important than any other. The amount of cops on the street is the only variable that has direct correlation. Twice as many cops leads to twice the ability to police. The key to making mandarin studies interesting therefore starts with this first, one truth. More teachers make for better result in any classroom.

The second thing we should fix is the focus on testable results. What people score on a test is not a perfect measure of success and it should never be put before actual progress because good tests score looks good. That is a pretty bold statement, but it is true in my mind that there is a trade off between HSK performance and actual mandarin usability. Instead of targeting HSK tests, classes should be focused on making students ready to leave the nest and start communicating by them selves. For this, class time should be more devoted on bettering student's pronunciation than it is in most schools today. The aim should be to get people speaking quickly. A small class size, which inherently is a much better environment for individual pointers, holds the key to accomplishing the switch from result oriented to success oriented curricula.

Lastly, we should give students the ability to not only be learning mandarin as a general topic but also be learning the aspects mandarin that suits them most. This, however, is a science by itself and the prescribed length of this entry cannot really survive a detailed discussing on this complex topic.

Instead, to conclude - learning mandarin not easy but it is far far from impossible. The only people that will tell you that is impossible is either people that have not tried, or people that have tried in a way that does not lead to motivation and relevant and interesting real life results.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin language Academy in Beijing that is a great option for those that want to learn Chinese. If you are interested in more information about learning Chinese in China, please consult the website of Beijing Gateway Academy.

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Learning Mandarin - Why and How

To learn Mandarin, the lingua franca of the rising Middle Kingdom, is a better idea today than it has ever been before. For starters, Mandarin, or Standard Mandarin, as it is actually more correctly known as, is the only real gateway to China. There are over 50 linguistically divided cultural groups in China which all share but one common language. Secondly, China has never been more interesting.

That is quite a statement given that China has existed for over 5000 years, but lets examine the idea further. For 99% of that time China has been large enough to only be occupied with itself. China's isolationism is probably the most successful time of introspection in the history of mankind, given that it existed for almost 3000 years before the British blew that notion to smithereens in the 17th century. After that, China was really, in one way or another, under the constant boot of other people. Today, however, that has changed.

It did not happened overnight but China is a growing superpower that will influence the future in a way that is very hard to even imagine today. The Washington consensus has been the order of the day for most of currently alive people's memory. To see a balance between east and west is a very strange notion, but a notion that is coming lightning fast. The change is of course also due to India, but there is no doubt to which the crown of the Asian reemerging markets needs to be given. The next decades will see a continuous shift from a Washington consensus to a G2, bi-polar, world order. The future is also likely to see an increasingly Beijing dominated agenda.

But we get ahead of ourselves, that future is still far ahead of us. Let us instead talk about how we will see a more multi-polar world in the medium term. China does hold the world record for isolationism in the past; today it holds the record for globalization. China's amazing economy shows the strongest growth figures in the world. In 2010 Chinese growth will account for more than one fourth of total global increases. Economist today are not focusing on the west in the same sense that they have for the last... However long economists have existed.

There has been a change. Today the words are: emerging markets. The benefits of pure (ish) capitalism were severally punched in the face during the last economic crisis. While financial markets literally collapsed and Wall Street was busy playing bail out galore, China was steaming ahead at full speed towards better and bigger things. Today, as global markets are still recuperating, China's trajectory is bound for the stratosphere.

That takes care of why. Now to define how. Firstly, your studies should be in China. Not only is it much easier to learn any a language in the country in which it is spoken, for Mandarin these benefits are much bigger than for other language. The reason that practicing mandarin in a native environment is so beneficial is that Mandarin is very different from most other languages that you probably have come into contact with. For some people this seems to make Mandarin inherently much more difficult, but I think that this statement is in massive need of qualification. It makes it harder, yes, but if you live in China and you hear and see Chinese Mandarin every day, this element is reduced to a much smaller obstacle.

Secondly, you should focus on personal content. By personal content I mean the stuff that would enable you to practice mandarin. Sure, learning how to order food in a restaurant offers one way of doing this but it will never take you beyond basic grammar. But if you acquire the language skills specifically needed for you hobbies or work, you will take your studies to a whole new level. The key to China is Mandarin. The key to Mandarin is going to China and enabling yourself to practice speaking the language in a setting that matters for your own objectives for wanting to learn the language.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin academy that is a great option for those that want to learn Chinese. If you are interested in more information about learning Chinese in China, please consult the website of Beijing Gateway Academy.

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Learning Mandarin and Pronunciation

Learning to communicate in Mandarin is more popular today than it has ever been before. Today, globally, roughly 1 million people are trying to learn the lingua franca of contemporary China. The figure keeps rising every year and it is not difficult to make an educated guess as to why people all of a sudden have become so interested. The last twenty years has been incredible for China. Annual growth rates at around 10% has seen the Chinese economy grow threefold, market liberalization has allowed ordinary people to control their property and increased global attention on China has put the huge country in the east right in the living room of most western households. All this and hundreds of other changes in the middle kingdom have made China's future seem very bright indeed and people have come to see what they can do about sharing some of the benefits. So what about learning this language? The one language that holds the key to perhaps the greatest paradigm shift of our time. Practice makes perfect in most aspects of human endeavor and the same applies to mandarin language studies. Practice in terms of language studies really means just one thing: speaking Mandarin, and in terms of possible places where this can be done - they are pretty much limited to China. So the first step to learn Mandarin is getting on an eastbound plane. The second step is to find a place to learn the language in a structured way. Because, although learning Mandarin is best done by speaking, you will need to start somewhere. That somewhere is most likely a place with the following characteristic: a very small class s size.

Class size - matters more than anything else when it comes to learning to speak a language quickly. The reason for this is especially important for Mandarin language studies: pronunciation is key to get to grips with enough basics to start using the language, and for mandarin, this is no easy task. In fact, it is much much harder than it is for a Germanic or Latin language speaker to learn a second language from one of these two groups. The reason for this being the case is that Mandarin is not only, of course, completely different in its syllable mark up compared to these language, as they have no common ancestry, there is also the fact that there is an additional dimension to Mandarin pronunciation that you will never have encountered before. The concept is called tones, but these tones are not like the tones you can get out of a musical instrument such as A-minor or G-flat, they are pitch modulation. So a syllable pronounced with a high and extended pitch means something different from a syllable pronounced with a sharp falling pitch. For example: the syllable that means to buy: mai, can also mean to sell if modulated differently. Mai, with an initially slightly falling pitch and then a rising pitch means to buy. Mai, with a sharp falling pitch, means to sell.

This may seem like a really difficult task to get used to, and it is. However, it does not really make learning Mandarin any harder or easier. In the long run it takes at least a year or two to learn a new language. You will, if properly instructed, clear this first hurdle within weeks. That does however need to be qualified in the sense that class size will play a crucial role in making it true. If you are in a class room of thirty students, for example, you are going to get roughly 0 time with the teacher's undivided attention and so you are never really going to be able to get past the first obstacle.

But, in the end one thing matters above all: that you enjoy your time learning the language. As I said, it does take time, and life is very short. Don't waste it learning Mandarin in a way does not suit your taste, you will not be happy and you will not do as well as you have if you were in a place that catered to your personality.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin Language School in China that is a great option for those that want to learn mandarin, the lingua franca of contemporary China. See the program overview page for more information about studying Mandarin in China.

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Learning Mandarin - 3 Steps To Fluency

I am going to assume that you speak English, as you are able to read this. Now to learn Standard Mandarin you will require at least two things. The first is determination. The second is a Chinese visa. Learning to speak Chinese is a long-term project even for very talented people, and in my seasoned opinion, it is not even possible until you actually live in The Middle Kingdom. This statement does of course depend on how serious you are about studying Mandarin, but if we are talking fluency, we are talking boots on the ground. The reason that being in China is not only a huge help, but a prerequisite, is the fact that Standard Mandarin is very different from the English language. I have never met anyone that has learned fluent-ish mandarin without being able to practice it every day, for at least a year.

For this reason, the three steps to learning Mandarin, is really the three steps to being able to live in China, and communicate on a basic level so you can practice every day. To focus on learning Mandarin for those situations where you can use it, while living in China, is the fastest track to proficiency. However, before you are able to focus on complicated, situation specific, jargon and terminology you need to have command of the glue that controls the rest of the language.

The most basic, and most useful, skill is therefore pronunciation. This might seem like an obvious statement but for Chinese, intelligible pronunciation is not as straightforward as it is in, for example, English. English has syllables, end of story - if you learn to pronounce all syllables and you can pronounce every English word. Mandarin is a completely different story, in Chinese, tones matter in a way that is even hard to describe to a person that is not familiar with other tonal language. If you change the modulation of the pitch as you pronounce the word for buy, for example, you are actually saying sell. If you change the pitch when saying beautiful, you can end up saying the word for every, or the first character of America.

The second skill you need to become familiar with, to live and practice Chinese in China, is how Chinese people write and read. People tend to favor learning to simply speak but this is not enough to reach real fluency. It is not really evident at first when you start learning Chinese, but later, when you have identical 20 syllables in front of you, it is very difficult to remember them all without having a distinguishing aspect to focus on. Furthermore, to learn Mandarin in order to use it like a Chinese person means that you also need to learn how to write.

The third step is syntax. You need the grammar and idioms to succeed in this effort. Now, the best way to actually learn the grammar is not to focus on it. To instead go back to what we were talking about earlier: learning the stuff you need for the way you live your life. As soon as you have access to the basic grammar, the basic pronunciation and the basic writing system, learning more complicated syntax and words becomes a walk in the park, or a day at the office, or weekend diving. When you get over the hurdle of basic communication you have reached critical mass and from that point, further language acquisition is much much more easy, fun and targeted.

Let us speak a little about that last aspect, targeted. I don't speak Chinese like a Chinese person does, but I do speak Chinese. The difference between me and native people in my office, while in the office, is not that big. I am able to communicate anything I want without ever having to revert back to English. However, as soon as I leave the office and do something I have not done before in China, it is still a matter of learning. In this way, learning Chinese is a life long process, but to learn to speak fluent Chinese in the Chinese setting you will mostly use it in - easy.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin academy that is a great option for those that want to learn Chinese. If you are interested in more information about learning Chinese in China, please consult the website of Beijing Gateway Academy.

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Why Learn Mandarin?

Since China has continued to move up the economic ladder it only makes sense that their communication channels have opened up towards the economic community. This has made it necessary for people around the world to learn the Mandarin language to enhance their communication opportunities. In general; it is simply a great idea to learn a second language; whether it is for work or for play. Why learn Mandarin? Let's take at look at a few of the benefits.

1. Work or School - If you will be relocating to China; as part of your employment, than obviously it would be a great ideal to learn the Mandarin language. Speaking the language would make it much easier for you to communicate with the locals and find your way around. If you are traveling to China to continue your educational process; then learning Mandarin would be extremely helpful as well. The Mandarin dialect is not a breeze to pick up and retain; but it can be done when precise skill and determination are displayed.

2. Imports/Exports - If you are employed in the Imports/Exports business and deal with China; then this supports another great reason for learning the Mandarin language. Although the English language can obviously be spoken with Chinese businessmen; you might enhance your opportunities if you can speak to them in their own language. They will be impressed that you took the time to accomplish the task. The effort you have made may just provide your company with the competitive edge in vital trade talks.

3. Travel/Culture - The People's Republic of China has a wonderful history of culture that can only be enriched if you can learn it in Mandarin. If you plan to travel to China and explore the many wonders the country has to offer; than it would be a major asset if you could learn the Mandarin language before you go. The Mandarin language is quite special and because of China's overwhelming population; it is one of the most spoken languages in the world.

The Mandarin language is much easier to learn to speak than it is to read. There are plenty of options online; where an interested person can take Mandarin language classes. By utilizing an online service; you can take your time and learn it right. Why learn Mandarin? Because it is the key to success for those who may seek to travel, seek education or seek employment in the People's Republic of China.

Yamana likes to write on a broad array of subjects. Check out her latest article on Camping Folding Chair [http://campingfoldingchairguide.com/].

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The Best Ways to Learn Mandarin in China

Where you will study Mandarin is almost as important as how you will study Mandarin. Choosing a location that is not conducive to cultivating good language learning habits means you will spend much more time (actually, much less time) studying than you would like. In this section we will discuss learning Mandarin in and outside of China.

Learners who study Mandarin in China will find that they develop much faster than those who study in their home countries. This is because those in China are immersed in the language, meaning they not only have 24/7 access to the language via TV, radio, etc., but they also have countless opportunities to use the language in their day-to-day lives. It is quite common for someone who studies six months or less in China to surpass their counterparts who spend four years or longer learning at the university level.

Before we look at choosing a location within China, let's look at an example of how choosing one location over another will help you reach fluency much faster than choosing another. Caroline chooses to study in Harbin, Heilongjiang province at the Harbin Institution of Technology. Harbin is renowned for speaking with the most standard Mandarin in all of China. While a very large city, it has a very small native-English speaking community. Most Chinese locals in Harbin do not speak any English. James, on the other hand, chooses to study at Fudan University in Shanghai, where the Shanghaiese dialect is spoken alongside Mandarin. Both Shanghai and Fudan are known internationally. Shanghai is a very large city, with a massive native-English speaking community, and Fudan is a huge university with a large Mandarin-learning student body.

Imagine that these two students are studying the same amount of hours each week, using the same curriculum and have teachers who teach using the same teaching style. Let's also imagine that both students have similar personalities, learning styles, and study habits. Which student do you think will reach a higher level faster?

The answer: Caroline. Why? Three reasons: immersion, standard pronunciation, and student body. Let's examine these issues below.

Immersion

Know this early on: A classroom is merely a place where you are given the tools necessary to succeed. The best classrooms at the best universities with the best teachers cannot make you put into practice what you use in the classroom outside of the classroom. The more opportunity you have to practice outside the classroom, the greater the chances that you will succeed in reaching your language learning goals.

As Caroline lives in an area with a very small English-speaking community, she will practically be forced to speak Mandarin every day. Cities such as Harbin generally have very few English-speaking locals. This means that Caroline will have to speak Mandarin when she goes grocery shopping, visits restaurants, takes cab rides, etc. in order to communicate. There will also be fewer locals pressuring her into speaking English. It is also much more likely that most of her friends will be Chinese locals who cannot speak English.

By having no other choice than to speak Mandarin day in and day out, Caroline will very quickly learn to think in Mandarin. This will quicken her response time and make her sound more natural when she speaks as she will no longer need to translate back and forth from English to Mandarin.

Dialect and L1 interference

Harbin locals only speak Mandarin. Mandarin is their mother language. They do not speak any other "dialect" of Chinese. On the other hand, Shanghaiese is the mother language in Shanghai, not Mandarin. (Review our discussion above on the how "dialects" in China are actually mutually incomprehensible languages, and do not have much in common.) This means that most Shanghai locals grow up as children speaking Shanghaiese, and begin learning Mandarin once they start school.

In language learning, the most common source of errors for any learner is L1 interference. L1 simply means "language one", or mother language. For example, an American's L1 is English. A Russian's L1 is Russian. In China, a locals L1 is usually whatever local "dialect" is spoken. A local indigenous to Guangdong (the province bordering Hong Kong) will likely speak Cantonese as his or her L1. A local indigenous to Shanghai will likely speak Shanghaiese as his or her L1.

L1 interference is when a learner's mother language causes them to make an error in L2, or his or her second language. For example, a student whose L1 is Mandarin and L2 is English is likely to pronounce the word "volleyball" as "wolleyball", replacing the "v" with a "w". This is because the "v" sound does not exist in Mandarin. The student's brain and mouth makes up for the inability to produce a "v" sound by replacing it with the sound/mouth movement which most closely resembles that sound. In this case, "w" is closest to "v".

In Shanghai, many locals do not pronounce words ending in -g correctly, often times negating to pronounce the -g sound. For example, the word for "class" or "course", kecheng is often pronounced kechen. Many Chinese from the south also fail to correctly pronounce consonant + -h initials (e.g. sh, ch, zh).

How does this apply to you learning Mandarin in Shanghai? Well, if your teacher is a local from Shanghai, grew up speaking Shanghaiese, and learned Mandarin in school, she's learned Mandarin as an L2, and it is very likely she speaks Mandarin with a Shanghaiese accent. As you learn from this teacher, you'll be speaking your own foreign-accented Mandarin with a Shanghaiese accent. Essentially, you'll be speaking Mandarin with two accents. Starting to see the problem here?

With Mandarin already being a pronunciation-sensitive language, you want to speak with as standard as an accent as possible, meaning you want to sound like a Chinese from northeast China, not like someone from southern China.

To be fair, anyone teaching Mandarin at a university or public school, or anyone offering tutoring services in Mandarin, is likely to speak standard Mandarin (though not guaranteed). It is also likely that most big cities will be comprised of people who come from all parts of China, and communicate with one another using standard Mandarin. With that said, the majority of the population will be made up of locals, and remember what we said above? It is not just about having a good teacher with standard Mandarin. It is about having an environment in which you can immerse yourself in standard pronunciation. Having a teacher who speaks flawless Mandarin can be counterproductive if none of the locals do. It would be like learning American English in Scotland.

English speaking population

Being immersed in standard Mandarin is more than half the battle. However, another issue you should seriously consider is the native-English-speaking resident population and student body of the place you are choosing. Quite simply, the more English speakers a given location has, the more English will be spoken. Beijing Language and Culture University in Beijing, for example, is comprised largely of non-Chinese. This means that should you decide to attend BLCU, you could be tempted to speak more English and make more English-speaking friends than you would elsewhere.

It all comes back to immersion and opportunities to practice. If you are immersed in and speaking the language every day, your skills will develop quickly. If you are immersed, but hang out only with other English speakers, and spend little time actually using what you are learning in the classroom, your skills will not develop quickly.

If you plan on traveling to China to study a TESOL course, it's important that you are familiar with how best to learn Mandarin.

This article was written by Kyle E David, Dean of Studies of the Will-Excel TESOL Course.

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Learning Mandarin - 2 Reasons Why It's More Popular Today

Learning Mandarin in China becomes more popular as times passes. I think that there are two main reasons behind this development that are interlinked. The first of the reasons is that there has been an obvious and hefty increase in the benefits that come with Mandarin proficiency. China is a growing super power that will come to rival the powers that be today. Business and politics is starting to adjust to this more multi-polar world and this has created more instances where the West is in contact with The Middle Kingdom China.

This has of course resulted in many more well paid jobs where bilingual persons are justly rewarded for the difficult task of learning to speak Mandarin. The second reason that more people are interested in Mandarin language studies today than ever before is harder to pinpoint in terms of statistics and numbers, but nevertheless it is clear that the shift in demand for Mandarin courses has something to do with a parallel shift in popular awareness and culture regarding China. Never before has China been a household name in The West. I will now quickly outline what has actually happened in China over the last twenty years in terms of economic development and how this has raised China's profile worldwide.

Since Mao's passing a large-scale reform started in China that has affected almost every facet of Chinese society. These reforms were both economic and political and although they were far reaching even in the early days of these comprehensive policy changes the results where slow. But then again, compared to the changes that started in the 1990's so is everything. In 1990 China's first ever stock exchange opened in Shanghai. Later on this step towards more liberal markets was joined by a successful Chinese application for entry into the World Trade Organization and a freer rules regarding the transfer of foreign capital into and out of China. All this paved the way for what is today considered the most comprehensive period of economic development in history.

Annualized growth rates of around 10 percent has lifted 1 billion people out of poverty (1 sixth of mankind) in record time and seen China's economy grow by almost 300 percent in twenty year. Today China is mostly a so-called export led emerging market, meaning that the continued growth in domestic production is mostly gobbled up my foreign countries. This is however something that will not continue much longer. The next 5 years plan (the policy vehicle used my the Chinese central government to make large structural changes to the economy) is set to put a greater emphasis on domestic consumption in China. This change has been coming for a while without needing to be pushed on in some markets. Especially that of luxury consumption goods in which China has completely changed the playing field. China is on a per person basis supposed to have around 20 percent of this market. By 2025 China will account for about thirty percent, up from 1 percent only ten years ago.

This truly astounding pace of economic diversification and general improvement has paved way for the shift in popular culture. There as many examples of this but because of my rapidly diminishing word limit I will just give you the one that captures the essence of the shift. In 2010 the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps was released. This movie feature the first ever instance where China was treated as an equal, and perhaps as a factor of dominance, in an American blockbuster. The good-looking Wall Street top dog appeals to a Chinese business man to sponsor his project by speaking Mandarin and in line with flawless Chinese customs offers a bottle of Chinese Baijiu (extremely nice and expensive liquor). He closes the deal but remains dependent on the Chinese executive for continued business.

The awareness created by Hollywood and other sources of popular culture here and in a myriad of other examples cannot be discounted as a factor when discussing this matter, but regardless of the factors that underlie the massive increase in the number of people that come to China to study Mandarin, the increase is clear and the trend is here to stay.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin Language School in China that is a great option for those that want to start learning mandarin in China, the lingua franca of the growing economic powerhouse. See the program overview page for more information about learning Mandarin in China.

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Why Learn Mandarin - A Reason You Haven't Yet Heard

There are many reasons to learn a language like Mandarin. China's economy is booming for one. China is an incredibly different culture and Mandarin holds the key to exploring China on its own terms (for a second). One reason that is seldom mentioned is the effect a new language can have on a person's way of thinking. The argument goes something like this: the way we think is inherently linked to language, our thoughts are defined by the vocabulary that we know - the greater the scope and depth of our linguistic capabilities, the more complex and deep ideas can be articulated in our minds and to others. By learning more words within our mother tongue we can enhance our ability to analyze and understand the world around us. By learning words in a foreign language this effect can be increased many times over as the ideas and relationships described by an alien tongue are more different than those we have encountered in our own. I will now try to expand and exemplify this reasoning further and then explain how different Mandarin actually is from those languages that are derived from the Latin and Germanic branches of languages.

If we map every possible idea that we can have in the form of a circle we can visually explore how these ideas can be best thought of. In the center of the circle we put the absolute most basic ideas. The idea that eating solves the problem of hunger might be the idea at the very center. As we progress outwards in all directions ideas get more complicated. At the fringe of the circle we can probably find the general theory of relativity, slightly closer to the perimeter we would plot the special theory of relativity (which Einstein said only 6 of his contemporary people could understand) and at the very perimeter we have ideas no one has thought of yet. If a person understands complicated statistics and mathematics it would be much easier for them to learn Economics (for example) than if they did not. Therefore Economics should be placed between the areas that represent math and statistics. If one connects the dots of cyclical relationships in math (the sinus and co sinus curves are examples of this) and some basic statistical analysis of how the economy has fared over the last century, one would thought of the business cycle (for example) - which was exactly how that idea was modeled in the first place.

Now that we have that picture in mind: a great circle which represents every idea there is, and we have that example of how two dots were connected to create a new realization (there are natural periods of strong and weak growth in the economy) we can conclude this; if we can gain access to dots far from the ones we already have firmly in our mind, really great new concepts can be arrived at. What do we get if we mix a few art dots with a few dots pertaining to how people assimilate information? We probably invent typography, web design and newspaper layout in one fell swoop.

To learn Mandarin you are not only required to assimilate a host of new vocabulary and some grammar - you actually need to completely rethink the idea of language. Conceptually, both verbal and written Mandarin communication is foreign in ways that you are probably not able to imagine without studying Mandarin or another Asian language (which uses tones to differentiate between meanings and symbols to represent words (as opposed to an alphabet)). If you could increase your ability to think by learning more native words, and even more so by learning a new language like French or German, your brain is in for an absolute firework display of explosively colorful possibilities when you sit down and put some effort into Mandarin. This may not seem as reason enough to learn a complicated language. But coupled with the employment and cultural aspects that I started this article of with, it is one major kicker that can hardly be overstated in the context of added bonuses to learning a new language.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin Language School in China that is a great option for those that want to learn Mandarin, the lingua franca of the growing economic powerhouse. See the program overview page for more information about learning Mandarin in China.

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Dreamed About Learning Mandarin? Here Are Some Tips to Get Your Started

When people ask me if there was one language I would love to learn, my answer would probably be Mandarin. Not only is the whole Chinese culture fascinating and how the Chinese characters can be traced right back to the Han Dynasty in 206 BC, but also the amount of subfamilies within the language family that it encompasses from Tibetan to Karen. This language is ever expanding and evolving and is beautiful to listen to and to speak. Moreover, that is why I would love to learn Mandarin, speaking it confidently.

Well then, you want to know how to learn Mandarin? Well let me tell you something that you will be very glad to hear. That is Mandarin has one of the easiest and basic tone systems which consist of four basic tones. So before you become intimidated on how difficult this language can be, think of the positives and how beneficial it will be if you can master this language and complete your learn Mandarin course.

So how then can you learn Mandarin in an interactive way, as maybe you are a kinesthetic learner, so need your lessons to be more practical orientated? Let's go through a few steps that you can put into your learning time line on a website you choose to join up to.

Firstly, if you own an iPod, you can sign up to receive free podcasts from iTunes. You can also download lessons on the website in a video or audio form to your computer representing you with a tutor who trains you on how to say things. Also when you start to learn Mandarin make sure you look at the course outline so that you can see exactly what is taught in what stage of the learning process so that you do not start at a level which you are not ready for.

Secondly, you can go back to and assess new Chinese characters when you learn Mandarin or words and sentences you have learnt in an audio form. Also videos are great for this part. Make a mind map or take down notes, whichever you prefer, as you watch and listen to these helpful resources.

Finally, there are a few games and exercises when you learn Mandarin online. This is a practical way where you can look into what you're learning by challenging your increasing knowledge with missing sentences or flash cards which put your understanding of new words, phrases and tones to the test. This is a learning process so enjoy it and don't get to overwhelmed with heaps of learning but make use of the online resources, making the most out of your learning experience when you learn Mandarin for the first time.

Another great way to learn Mandarin is by attending a school or college that offers the course, maybe starting an evening class which will give you the key to accessing valuable books and materials that will give you effective guidance and help when you learn Mandarin.

Have you ever wanted to learn the Chinese language but have absolutely no idea how to go about it? Discover how anyone can learn Chinese with traditional methods using this step by step program http://www.learnchineselanguage.net/.

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Learning Mandarin With Fluenz Chinese

If you are interested in learning mandarin, then the Fluenz Chinese Language software is something that you should consider. Anyone who is familiar with the Fluenz language software products knows to expect an impressive multimedia learning experience that offers students as much learning as the desire at a pace that is challenging but interesting and engaging. Our previous reviews have given the Fluenz products good reviews and the Chinese version is no exception. It is an excellent product for anyone who wants to know how to learn Chinese.

The Format

For any age student, the Fluenz program is an appropriate way for learning mandarin. It uses a lot of video segments that are well edited and very engaging. The computer based lessons are broken up into manageable sections that allow you to complete the course on your own schedule. The computer style of learning will come easily to teenagers and young adults who are used to learning this way, but the interface is also very straightforward and will not be intimidating to older students who might not be as computer savvy.

Feedback from the first year of sales shows that customers are very happy with the layout of the segments and the choices they have in the timing and the structure of the course. Over all it was rated an excellent way of learning mandarin.

The Language

Learning mandarin is a very difficult task for a foreigner, even one with training because the language is complicated and nuanced; Figuring out how to learn Chinese can be a daunting task. This means a lot f work, but the rewards for this work are also potentially very high. The Chinese economy is growing like crazy and the Chinese consumer base is also expanding rapidly. This growth means a new marketplace and expanding opportunities for others who are learning mandarin and are ready to take their goods to market and speak the language to the marketplace.

The Focus

The hardest part of learning mandarin is learning to read and write it because you have to learn an entirely new alphabet. That is why the best way how to learn Chinese is to learn to speak it first. For beginning and intermediate students, the majority of their instruction is going to be in boring stretches and strength building exercises. The progress to fluency is slow. That is why it helps to focus in the beginning on the games that sport a lot of response. The idea is to learn to speak well enough to mingle with the native speakers. This is how business in China is done and that makes fluency a very valuable skill to have.

Conclusion

If you want to know how to learn Mandarin or more on Learning Chinese and are wondering which software package to buy, I would recommend the Fluenz system. It is an easy sell because it has everything you want and nothing that you don't.

Miriam Price has had a vast amount of knowledge and experience in different languages and programs. For more information on Learning Mandarin, check out her resource site today.

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To Learn Mandarin or Not To Learn Mandarin?

Why should we learn Mandarin? It is more difficult for a European or North American person to learn Chinese than it is to learn another Germanic or Latin language. The answer is of course that we should learn Mandarin just because it is much harder, and so much less people are bilingual in English, or their own mother tongue, and in Mandarin. Lets look at some rational economics, some statistics on proficiency and on what we conclude from these figures and facts.

It is nice to be special. In the social science of Economics there is a law that tells us why. The famous law of diminishing returns says that the first marginal increase in any resource is most important. It is most important because it contributes a great deal more leverage than the last one added. Like most economics, it is derived from common sense. It makes sense that the first ice cream tastes a lot better than the fifth. It makes sense that the first person that is put to work with a shovel to dig a hole gets more done the second person, which would be competing for the shovel. It is called a law because it applied to almost everything, from consumption of ice cream, to production of holes with one shovel and to the proportion of a population proficient in a given language.

The reason that you probably don't even want to eat that fifth ice cream is that you are full. The reason that the benefits of more communicative potential is subject to diminishing returns to marginal increases in people being able to speak both language, is the precisely the same. The potential of other things in society (such as the singular shovel, or the size of your stomach) is exhausted after a certain point. There are only so many Chinese people that need to trade with your home country. The first known European person to reach The Middle Kingdom, Marco Polo, was awarded a whole city by the Qin emperor.

Mr. Polo brought a great deal of new information to China that had never been there before; this gave him a great deal of potential leverage in other facets of society. Just by being in China, lots of other facets of society, that he had no direct influence on was enhanced. The same thing happened when the Shenzhen economic development zone was opened by Deng Xiaoping as a model for further economic de regularization elsewhere. There is a certain gun powder potential in everything that will lead to an explosion when it comes in touch with something else - as two things continue to meet the explosions will be smaller.

For English and for example Swedish this explosive nature is all but exhausted. Almost everyone in my generation of Swedish people speak English. Business is per usual - there are very few magically explosive connections to be made between Sweden and the English Speaking world. The same is true for other European languages. Close to 50% of Europe speak English. Close to 25% speak German and French. 12.5% speak Italian and Spanish. When the people that are in their twenties now reach retirement age you can bet that the pervasive nature of English proficiency will really have taken root. I would not at all be surprised if close to a 100% of European people speak fluent English at that point.

So then, what about Mandarin? I have looked everywhere online and I can't even find statistics for Mandarin - the reason probably being that the Pascal distribution that is used for such matters as this requires a proportion to be sufficiently large for it to show up in a meaningful way. Depending on how keen they are when gathering a sample group to ask, this means that the proportion of Europe that speak Mandarin is not even a fraction of a percentage point. What does this tell us about learning Mandarin? Probably that there are some pretty good explosive benefits waiting on the other side of proficiency.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin language Academy in Beijing that is a great option for those that want to learn mandarin in China. If you are interested in more information about the Academy's program, please the course page: learn mandarin in China.

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Learning Mandarin - A Long and Interesting Journey

What makes learning Mandarin so much more difficult than learning a different language? The answer is that Mandarin is not much more difficult to learn than for example Italian or German, even for a person that already speaks another derivative of the Latin or Germanic languages. Harder, yes, but not as hard as its reputation will tell you!

The source of the bad reputation is rather something more alike to differences. It is not that Chinese Mandarin is difficult to learn, it is that the language is just very very strange to a European or someone that speaks a language originating in Europe. These differences may look like major obstacles to learning the language, but they are not, and after a few months of learning Mandarin you will see why. They are rather basic concepts, the only thing that makes them seem complicated is the fact that you have not seen anything like them before, but as soon as you get used to them they appear to be much smaller hindrances on your road to proficiency. To put that little idea into its proper context; that road is pretty long regardless of which language you choose to study, if the first few miles are a bit bumpy it really wont matter much when you reach your destination.

So what do those bumps consist off? The first thing you will see as you enter China, cause trust me, you really need to be here to learn Chinese, is the written language. That looks complicated and it is a little bump on the road that you just need to get over. But don't worry too much; the pictures you see instead of an alphabet are not random thought they may seem like it at first. There is a major underlying structure that you will get to grips with in due time and once you have such concepts as stroke order and radical composition in your pocket, you will see into that structure and the bump will be gone. Easy cruising.

The second bump you will face is when you try to open your mouth. Spoken Chinese can be a female dog if you are not properly instructed. No fretting though, twenty to fifty hours with a teacher focusing on just your spoken word will let your tongue come to grips with the new syllables and the very new tones and that bump will also in your rearview mirror.

I will now use this slightly overused metaphor of a lonesome road one more time to impart one more little nugget of advice. Learn Mandarin a way that suits you. You will clear the two obstacles that I described above fairly quickly. Then begins your real journey, and that trip is going to take some time. Learning Mandarin in a way that suits you pretty much means that you are not only enduring overcoming the barriers, it means that you are able to enjoy your studies as well. Life is short and there is no sense in wasting 1 or 2 years of it by doing something you don't like.

Lastly I would like to say this: the decision to learn a language like Mandarin is never confined to the barriers that stand between a prospective student and finally achieving proficiency in the language. The decision is pretty much always relating to what people imagine speaking will be like. What do you think of when you envision learning Mandarin? No doubt it has something to do with a career. China is after all probably the hottest prospect in the world right now. It probably also has something to with exploring the country?

Keep the career in mind, it is what is going to justify coming to China, and it is what is going to let you stay. But beyond that I think you will find you life in the Middle Kingdom to be interesting and varied.

The road ahead of you will be really exiting.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin Language School in China that is a great option for those that want to learn mandarin, the Chinese lingua franca. See the program overview page for more information about learning Chinese in China.

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Learning Mandarin Versus Learning French or German

For westerners, learning Mandarin is different from learning other languages in a number of ways. One positive aspect we I will talk about today is the fact that learning Mandarin would make you comparatively unique than learning a different language. Although there are today more and more Chinese people that speak the western modern lingua franca English there are few westerners that can speak to Chinese people on their own terms. That may appear to be rather strange advantage; if communication is already possible, then surely the bridge is all ready there? Why build two bridges across the same river? The reasons that the second bridge is useful are actually plenty.

One reason that does not take into account the cultural effects that are more complicated to effectively communicate in this little article, is the fact that a western education is still vastly more regarded, and justifiably so, in comparison with a Chinese education. Another in the same vein of non-culturally dependent arguments is the fact that although China's elite speaks decent English, the vast majority of Chinese people do not speak very good English, certainly not sufficiently to marginalize the benefits experiences by a bilingual westerner living in China. In this same category of ideas we find an even more salient reason: just as there are differences between levels of proficiency in China, there are differences in how Chinese is going to be used by westerners today and in the future.

This trend, which will increase in scope and depth during the coming decade, is the process of shifting China from an export led economy to a balanced economy. Balance here basically means that Chinese people will need to stop saving so much and consumer more. That means that in part western people will need to stop buying so much from China and start selling more. For a western corporation to sell in China, the benefits of bilingual staff is much greater than for a corporation that mainly / just wants to buy. The onus for the communication of ideas is shifted onto the shoulders of the salesman. A westerner can of course still be able to act within a business setting using only English, as we noted, the elite speaks very good English, but the fact remains that the westerner that is able to speak also Mandarin is at an enormous competitive advantage in comparison to his monolingual counterparts.

That takes care of your Chinese opponents in the world of bridge building: you are clearly able to harness immense benefits from the China's bright future if you speak Mandarin even if there are many Chinese people also keen on learning you mother tongue. The other bridge builders that you are in direct competition with in terms of uniqueness on the labor market is the people on the same side of the river as you: the people that already speak English.

Europe is the continent that has had most linguistic influence elsewhere, so it makes sense for us to start there. If you are able to fight in the most competitive of arenas, you are also likely to be able to fight in less competitive ones. Almost 50 percent of Europe is fully proficient in English. That means that there are around 240 million Europeans that speak the language that I am writing in now. The second largest group is French and German speakers, each with a solid 20 percent of the population; 88 million in terms of absolute numbers. Learning one of these 2 languages would not make you very unique. The same applies to Spanish 10 percent - 44 million people. The remaining languages are smaller, but so are the benefits of learning them for another reason - the countries are simply not even close to having a small proportion of the weight that China does today and will have in the future. In contrast, there are actually no readily available statistics on how many Europeans speak Mandarin, but as a proportion it is smaller than a fraction of a percent.

There are many reasons that learning Mandarin is more interesting today than ever before. The ability to distinguish oneself on the labor market is just one of the foremost.

Rui Ming works for a Chinese language school in China that is a great option for those that want to learn Mandarin. See the program overview page for more information about learning Mandarin.

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