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Are you interested in learning Chinese? Do you want to learn what the Chinese learn? You can begin with a recorded course, such as those offered by Rosetta Stone (RosettaStone.com) and Pimsleur (Pimsleurdirect.com or Cheappimsleur.com). Or you can enroll in a Chinese course at the local community college or university. Or you can travel to China and participate in an immersion course. All of these options are discussed elsewhere on this site. On this page, I'd like to talk about the character of the Chinese language and what it takes to learn to speak Chinese. Let's start with the difficulty. You can't expect to learn Chinese - Mandarin or Cantonese - in a hurry. It's not going to happen through college classes in less than several years. Language professionals recognize that it takes an English speaker about a full year of intense study - studying only Chinese every day for a full year - to reach a minimal fluency. That's roughly the length of the courses at the Defense Language Institute and the Foreign Service Institute. You could become more fluent by spending the same amount of time immersed in the language in China. I don't mean just living in China and trying to absorb the language. I mean studying Chinese for a year in China. Web Design - Small business custom website from EverestWebDesign.com. Rich Christiansen: - Management metaphors at RichChristiansen.com. |
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