Chinese

How to Use Notion as Your Personal Chinese Handbook

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What if we had a handbook that we could search like a dictionary, add our own notes or pictures to, and adapt for our own uses?

The good news is, it’s not too hard to get Notion to act like this, and to set it up for ease of use on the go. In this article, I’ll walk you through how to set up Notion to act as your Chinese handbook. At the end, I’ll also tell you a bit about how I use Notion with my tutor and some software I use to make the process easier for both of us.

3 Reasons You Should Learn Zhuyin for Better Chinese

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Zhuyin (or Bopomofo) is the main phonetic writing system in Taiwan. But a lot of language schools in both Taiwan and the West don’t teach it. This is because Zhuyin is harder to learn for English speakers, and only used in Taiwan. Rather than being a reading and writing system for Chinese, Zhuyin is more similar to a phonetic alphabet: it transcribes the sounds of individual words really accurately, but is too verbose for daily reading and writing. So why should you bother to learn Zhuyin? Well, here are three reasons why Zhuyin is a great tool to add to your Chinese toolkit.

How to Study Chinese Characters With Anki

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I started using Anki not long after I moved to Taiwan, but it took a while to really click with me. In fact, I quit using Anki after a month because it was giving me too much stress. I was plugging away at Traditional Chinese characters (Hanzi) in most of my free time and it never stuck with me.
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Here’s a secret a lot of Anki enthusiasts won’t tell you: Anki works best as part of a balanced study routine. So here are some tips for using Anki to study Chinese characters and avoid repeating my mistakes.