Tonight, I finished my mandarin for cantonese speakers level 1. My mandarin still pretty bad, I can barely communicate with a patient mandarin speaker. I think I had learnt the pronouncations of about 100 new characters in the class. I have to speak manadrin for 3 hours every week, that trained my brain to operate in mandarin mode. I believe to the key to learn a language is to think in that language. Many people have a wrong approach in learning a foreign language. They try to memorize the foreign words as a translation of words in their mother tongue. This will lower your language skill, since you have to translate the words all the time. The right way to learn is memorize the words as pure non-language concepts in the brain. You can associate nouns with the real thing, link verbs with the actual action, and adjectives with the feeling. For words with complex concepts, try to deconstruct them into simplier concepts, don’t just memorize the equally complex word in your mother tongue. I am a male, so my language ability is naturally limited. However, I think my theory of a second language sounds pretty reasonable. Maybe I should do some research on language teaching methods, see is there any philosopher of education agress with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"