The best way to undertake the contest of learning Chinese is to identify your reason and motivation for learning the language, as this will help you focus on the things that you should look out for. The psychological trigger of paying for books, resources, lessons, teacher all motivate the student to put in a certain amount of effort. However, learning this way can become slightly monotonous.
The benefit of this method is that you can gain formal assessment for your study efforts, and can take something away from the course that will help further advance your studies. On the other hand, it doesn't necessarily suit the style and pace of everyone.
The established way of studying Chinese is to enroll in a course. For example, the business owner wanting to learn Chinese has different needs to the traveler going over for a two week trip, and so you have to direct your learning to achieve the best results.
Of course, perhaps a combination of methods would work best for you, but first let's look at some of the popular approaches today.
A pioneering ways to study Chinese is to join a chat room or virtual reality environment. The design of software programs have allowed the use of multi-lingual input and output, along with speech and voice recognition to offer users a much richer learning environment even in the absence of direct human face-to-face contact. Chat programs such as QQ up being rapidly taken up by the Chinese populations, and foreign users always attract curious Chinese locals that want to offer language exchange through the translation and dictionary functions of the program.
Instead of traveling to the country, it might also be worthwhile considering making friends with Chinese people who have made the trip to your country. Perhaps enquire about how you can host foreign exchange students, or join language exchange programs with local English language schools or organizations. Nevertheless, whatever method you choose to learn Chinese1, the thing of paramount importance for any beginners is to work out your motivation for learning the language (it is one of the most difficult and greatest learning curve). When you have figured that out, you will want to adjust your learning style to the method of learning.
Well justified motivation for learning Chinese2, along with the efficient learning methods, will go a long way to ensure that the experience will be a rewarding, even if slightly challenging one.
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