<p>I desperately want to learn Chinese. Unfortunately, there are no Chinese language classes in my area and I am unable to afford private lessons or Rosetta Stone. I would like to self-study the language and supplement with interaction with speakers. Can anyone recommend free/cheap ways to self-study the language or inexspensive classes in the San Diego area.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Community College or Online Guides.</p>
<p>Why do you want to learn Chinese so badly? But as long as you’re willing to put in a huge amount of effort, I’m sure it will be…doable. Try online courses. Livemocha and Byiki are some that I can think of off the top of my head. (I’m not sure if I got the spelling right though…) What kind of Chinese? Mandarin? Traditional? Simplified?</p>
<p>Oh. And yawn had a really good post a while back. Check it out <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/744019-learning-chinese.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/744019-learning-chinese.html</a></p>
<p>If you want to learn it well, it’s extremely helpful to have a friend or some kind of audio to speak the words. That way you won’t ruin the four different tones and end up saying “That is my horse” instead of “That is my mother.”</p>
<p>Resources I used when learning Mandarin:
[Learn</a> Chinese - Audio and video Chinese podcasts - ChinesePod<a href=“You%20get%20a%20free%207-day%20trial,%20after%20that,%20just%20keep%20making%20new%20accounts.”>/url</a>
[url=<a href=“http://byki.com%5DLearn”>http://byki.com]Learn</a> Spanish, French, German, Italian and over 70 languages with Byki software.](<a href=“http://chinesepod.com%5DLearn”>http://chinesepod.com)
[Language</a> Learning with Livemocha | Learn a Language Online - Free!](<a href=“http://livemocha.com%5DLanguage”>http://livemocha.com)
Download Pimsleur, Mandarin 1-3 (I have them all if you want me to email them to you.)
I used this site: <a href=“MEGA888 EWALLET ORIGINAL APK IOS Download Register Login 2024 Senang Menang”>MEGA888 EWALLET ORIGINAL APK IOS Download Register Login 2024 Senang Menang; to find a native Mandarin speaker to speak with on Skype. There are a lot of people willing to do language exchanges - you help them with English, they’ll help you with Mandarin,.</p>
<p>ETA: If you don’t mind doing the extra work, you can usually find a lot of really good free resources from college professor’s websites. Use their syllabus to get an idea of books to purchase (IMO, the books they use are better than the typical language tutorial guides which are usually aimed towards travelers.) They also tend to upload teaching materials like slides, or lessons they’ve used in classes which can be useful.</p>
<p>The problem is finding the sites.</p>
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<p>I’m sure he wants to learn how to speak it before writing it.</p>
<p>I’d go with Livemocha and Byki, like fairy and Platts said. You can get in speaking, reading, and writing. I like Livemocha because there are native speakers checking my work. =3</p>
<p>Wow, how much is Rosetta Stone anyhow?</p>
<p>I just took a glance at Amazon, it looks like the 3-pack is at $450. And a single pack is $233.</p>
<p>Rosetta Stone, in my experience, is pure garbage. I got it for free and still trashed it - it was so bad.</p>
<p>Wow, I didn’t realize it costs that much. What made it such crap?</p>
<p>For me, it was the lack of instruction.
For example, they’d show you a picture and tell you the word, in say Mandarin, and you of course have to associate the word with the picture. However, sometimes the pictures were not clear as to what they are: like in one picture, I remember there was a man walking a dog – was the Mandarin word of the dog, of the man, or of the actual act of him walking?</p>
<p>There also wasn’t any instruction on grammar; it was entirely based on repeating what they said and taking their word for it, but never actually learning why it was this way.</p>
<p>The entire program was just vague. </p>
<p>I guess it’s good if you’re learning for travel and you just need to know the very basics, but if you actually want to learn the language, not just repeat phrases, then it’s useless.</p>
<p>Talk to TONS of different people who speak Chinese, because it seems every single person speaks Chinese slightly differently. It took me a week to realize that my Chinese teacher this year was telling us to take out our homework. Go wander around Chinatown and listen to how people pronounce the words, watch movies in Chinese (Yay Chinese Lion King! :P), watch Chinese dramas…really, anything that can get you to hear the language. </p>
<p>Also, pay attention to stroke and tones. I’ve been working at a Chinese kindergarten the past few months, and what struck me the most was that the teachers <em>didn’t</em> explain to the kids about the tones, they just made it very well known that 是 (shi4) is a completely different word from 十 (shi2) Since they can’t read pinyin, they don’t know that 是 and 十 are spelled exactly the same. Basically, they consider the difference the same as we would for separate (“Separate the piles” vs. “The piles are separate.”) or the difference between ban and pan. </p>
<p>Of course, you aren’t in kindergarten, but still–try to remember the words based on how they sound, not “oh yeah, ten is shi…uh…shi second tone? What was on top of the “i”?”</p>
<p>As for stroke order–that’s how a lot of dictionaries are ordered, that and radicals (parts of characters that appear in many different characters that have roots in a word). A box is three strokes, not for. :P</p>
<p>If you have any Chinese friends, maybe you can go ask them. You should learn listening first, then speaking, and if you want, you can also learn to read and write (but do that after listening and speaking).</p>