Learning Mandarin for a non-native speaker can be challenging with its complex character system, grammar, tones, sentence structures etc. But it is not the end of the world. Here are some ways to enhance your Mandarin Skills and simplify your learning process:
- Listen carefully – Chinese is a tonal language, so always listen carefully and repeatedly. At Happy Mandarin, we put a lot of emphasis on building listening and responding skills. We provide video and audio files which our students use every week to reinforce the lesson of the week
- Increase your Mandarin Exposure – Add a little more Chinese to your weekly practice by reading a new book, watching a Chinese movie, or reading a Chinese news article. At Happy Mandarin, we provide our students with extra learning resources like videos, Chinese educational TV shows, cartoons and music and online training and reading resources that can be used to enhance their grasp of the Mandarin language and its various aspects
- Get a Mandarin buddy – Team up with your Mandarin classmates in groups of 2 or more and study, read and practice Mandarin together at least once a week. You can test each other on the new lessons, characters, words and pronunciations you learned that week. You can help each other practice your reading sheet of the week or the past lessons where you may still be falling behind.
- Feedback – When learning a new language, it is important to get feedback in order to understand your language learning strengths and areas of improvement. At Happy Mandarin system, we have a unique and innovative learning & feedback system based on which teachers carefully assess the progress of our students every week and enhance their learning in natural and progressive way through various teaching tools and techniques. Apart from that we have implemented the Weekly Call system where our students practice their lesson of the week.
- Engage with Chinese Culture – Mandarin like any other language has many dialects and native Chinese people from different parts of China may say the same thing differently. However, since Mandarin is a character-based language, the various ways to say one thing may use an extremely diverse set of characters. Mandarin books for non-native learners are often one-dimensional and do not teach students these. Therefore, at Happy Mandarin, we not only teach students other popular ways of conveying the same message, but we integrate Chinese culture, tradition, history, music, Chinese festival celebrations, Chinese events and engagement with native Chinese speakers as part of our curriculum or as part of our extracurricular activities ensuring that our students receive a well rounded Mandarin language training.
- Consistent practice – Learning a new language means practicing regularly. At Happy Mandarin, we put a lot of emphasis on consistent and quality practice. We guide our Happy Mandarin community of students are parents and students on how to establish a Mandarin practice routine at home by supporting them with advice, tools and resources.
