Wanna Challenge Your Chinese?

oops, correction, it is "community" not "communication".^_^

casie: I would say: "Grade exams"

Cassie, thanks for challenge! This is a little out of my league however. I'm curious about your new avatar. Can you explain what's going on?

Hi Brent, You are a night cat again!

好！大家一起研究吧

Thanks cassie, that should keep me busy for a few hours or days hehe. ;)

Cassie> Interesting.. what exactly are you studying? And what kind of work do you want to do when you have finished studying?

Hey.. can I ask for recommendation for Chinese books for primary school level readers? I think if I were to start off like children start off reading, I would feel less intimidated if I had books with only a small amount of writing on each page. I remember when I was a kid, I would read picture books that, had at the most, 20 words per page.. however I don't know where to look for these books as I live in Australia..

Thanks, casie, lots of relevant vocab in there, e.g. 揭晓 (jiēxiǎo, to announce [here: test results]) 我刚在判卷子, 枯燥死我了。 不过学生都等待我揭晓结果是什么。。。 light, those elemetry school readers are the most frustrating, believe me. News are easier.

P.S.: Be aware that not all of us are native English speakers. Me for example. Try not to pick up my mistakes...

我不知道！！哈哈！ >'.'< -亚当

Let's take this line: 不过学生都等待我揭晓结果是什么。。。 What would be the most beneficial way for me to translate/learn that? Should I break it down into each separate character, then re-write it character by character? Or should I be trying to recognise the groups of characters? Should I be saying the characters out loud as I read them? May be I am being too hard on myself as I hear some people's stories of learning for many years and still not being able to speak and write fluently...

First of all you should be extremly careful with the garbage that I produce in Chinese... ;) Then, the best way to get a feeling for the language is to stick with the podcasts first - go for Elementry to Intermediate. There you learn to identify common phrases and to discinguish high-frequency words and patterns. When I came here two years ago I did the same (before I had already learned some individual words phrases + tons of characters, but no sentence structures, patterns, grammar, etc. All got it here). And yes, I have been learning for many, many years and still not really consider myself "fluent" (whatever that is).

light487, Here are many good fairy tale story books for kids in China.^_^ Oh, many books are for learning 成语chengyu called成语故事书. And I second henning's suggestion, news is good for you because you can learn the most practical use words in China. Henning, Thank you for your reminding, but I think your English is much better than me.^_^ henning, yes, I can understand you. I know it would be boring if you doing (评)改卷子(how to say that in English?)again and again sometimes. And as students, they are always eager to know the result. Ha ha!

我不知道！！哈哈！ >'.'< -亚当

How do you learn "tons of characters" without any real meaning to them.. I mean.. are you looking at the character and then reproducing the pinyin so you can see the tone and sound etc? I have a great reading and writing book but I don't actually write the characters myself: 1 because I don't any decent materials to do it justice, and 2 because I suck at drawing :) Should I be writing it all out? I dunno.. I just feel I am at a road block with my learning at the moment and I am unable to construct the most basic sentences.. like.. I am a good boy I like to eat beef I want to go to Shanghai My favourite colour is red I guess I need to start writing lots and lots.. I just don't know where to begin... :/

light> I think that it is very important to read groups of characters. The characters are not words in themselves, the composites are! Knowing the individual characters is no guarantee for knowing the composite, but it helps a lot. In the line you take, there are several composites. Step one is to recognize those composites , and to translate them. 不过 however 学生 student(s) 都 all 等待 (wait) 我 (our) 揭晓 (make public) 结果 (results) 是 (is/are) 什么 (how)。。。 So, in this case, it is enough to knowing the meaning of the words to understand the meaning.. unfortunately, Chinese is not always that simple.

@urbandweller 你不知道什么？ I hope I said that right.. I just guessed - 路加

light, I did it with flashcards - first paper based: I got a set of 1375 German-Hanzi ones with pronounciation, basic meaning, and example vocab. Later I worked with an electronic flash card program which had up to about 4000 characters. But: Although I want to encourage you to start early with characters, please do not follow my footsteps. Do it in a more meaningful way. I remember Bazza found a good book for learning characters, maybe he helps out...

Adam and Brent, you two should be more patient although I know it is very hard for you to understand those words. If I were you i will figure out those hard words or phrases that I don't know via a dictionary. I do really use dictionary when I do English reading sometimes, but i did not look up every words that i don't know, I just look up those frequently used words that I don't know.^_^ It depends on, some need intensive reading while some need extensive reading. Bazza, How is it going? Can you understand most of them, I just heard that you are good at chinese reading from "Bazza and Dating with Chinese girls".^_^ marcelbdt, Sounds like you can understand my chinese diary. That is cool. Are you in the advance level? How long have you learned Chinese? Ummm, I am studying foreign language and English is my major. I originally thought to have a job that somewhere can relate to English, such as international trade, intermediate translation and interpretation.(It is a little hard for me now since my English is not good enough, but that is still a good dream.) I am going to graduate in two months. I will start work for my present college in this August. In China is hard for a common graduate college or university student to have the ideal job at the first begin. And the society ,the real world is more and more competitive. Still many students can not find a job after they graduate. In a word, the situation is very tense.