Self-Study Methods for Learning Chinese

Over the past four years of my degree in Chinese, I've acquired a few ways of studying Chinese on my own to prepare myself for classes, study for the HSK exams, and generally improve.

I saw this written on a wall in a cafe and I thought it was hilarious

Okay, okay. Chinese does NOT suck. But at times it feels like you're not making progress or that you'll never be able to string a sentence together. Here's a few ideas about how to self-study Chinese, whether you're studying it at school or university or just studying on your own.


Pleco - First of all, if you're not using Pleco already, stop and go download it. It's a free Chinese dictionary app and it's unrivaled. Seriously. One of the best features is that you can save entries and make them into flashcards. You can also organize the flashcards into different decks by subject, etc. Can't recommend it enough!

Character practice - this is probably the only reason I made any progress in my first and second years of learning Chinese, which makes sense because that's how kids in China learn to write. You do just have to write the characters over and over. I found a way to make it aesthetically pleasing on some grid paper. It's so good to memorize the characters by writing them over and over. Plus, it's a really good way of practicing your handwriting!

I tend to do character practice for the vocab that comes up in my courses but I'm also working through the HSK 6 vocab list at the moment (5000 characters!). It's slow going, but I do feel like I'm learning a lot I otherwise wouldn't have encountered.

Reading - This seems obvious, but seriously, read in Chinese. You learn so much so fast. I started reading children's picture books in China.

Then I upgraded to illustrated travel journals.

I also enjoy browsing Weibo (China's Twitter) for articles to read. Even if you don't understand every word, the articles are short and a good challenge. Now I have to read a lot of academic articles in Chinese and that has also pushed me to learn a lot more vocab and be faster and more confident in my reading skills.

TV/movies - Last semester I got really into this historical drama called 十送红军, which is about the Long March. I also really like old Chinese movies like 马路天使 Street Angel and  霸王别姬 Farewell My Concubine. But there are loads of good, critically acclaimed films, especially from the 80s. I'm taking a Chinese cinema course at the moment, so I've been watching even more Chinese films.

Language Partners - Now I've struggled to find language partners since I started learning Chinese. It's kind of the only way to really learn, but you have to look outside language exchange groups like Tandem. If you ever meet a Chinese person and get on with them at all, just tell them you're studying Chinese and most of the time they will be so excited, they would love to help you. It's better to just make Chinese friends and go from there. Language exchanges can be really awkward and feel unnatural. Plus, generally Chinese people who go to those things are more looking to practice English or get help editing essays. I've made some good Chinese friends just in classes and societies!

Music - I've been on a journey over the past three or four years to find Chinese music that I actually like. Music has been important for me while I was learning Spanish and French. I wanted the same connection with Chinese, but founded it a lot harder to find music I would listen to in my free time.

If you listen to a song a few times, you'll probably get a lot of the lyrics, but I recommend looking up the lyrics and writing them out, looking up words you don't know, and learning the lyrics by heart. It's a good way to learn some new vocab, and also it will prepare you for KTV (karaoke) in China. Definitely learn some classics like 月亮代表我的心.

In second year, I really loved 降央卓玛's music. Her songs were all about the grasslands in Mongolia, so eventually I ran out of new vocab to learn from her songs. But she has such a beautiful voice, I still love her music.

In China, I had a few breakthroughs. I really got into 宋冬野


Since then I've found a lot of really cool music, and I've got a whole playlist on Spotify of Chinese music, which is primarily what I've been listening to for the past couple of months. 
Use what you've been given. Go over the materials you've got in any classes or what's in your textbook. Revise dialogues and texts. Learn the vocab. Make the most of what you have and build a good foundation. From there it only becomes easier to pick up new vocab and learn new characters. I hope this was helpful. I have really enjoyed studying Chinese my own way, and these are the main ways I go about that!