Michael Kennedy, Author at Jinbupal | Page 2 of 3

Author: Michael Kennedy

Ways to Jumpstart Your Chinese Number Listening Skills

May 10, 2021

If you’re like me, developing solid listening skills is one of the most challenging parts of learning Chinese. I have multiple other posts and videos dedicated to practicing your listening skills by watching videos on YouTube (posts here and here), but today I want to talk about something new.

The interesting thing about listening skills is that sometimes its okay to accept just catching the gist of what the speaker is saying, particularly if you’re watching a TV show, lecturer, etc. However, if you’ve ever experienced being in China and needing to ask a local for help, you know that it can be crucial in those situations to understand every word the other person is saying.

As always, I like to narrow down my studying to the minimum effective dose or the least amount of studying and practice required to get to a sufficient skill level. For this reason, I think that drilling your listening on high frequency content is the best solution for rapid success. So for this exercise, I decided I would start off small by working exclusively with listening to numbers in Chinese.

Numbers come up often in spoken language, particularly as the answers to questions you would likely ask. How much does this cost? How many are included? What is your phone number? Etc. So I went scouring the internet for the best ready made tools to solve this problem and here is what I came up with:

  • “Nums – Learn Numbers” – iPhone App – $2.99

This app is very simple, but super cool! It says aloud a random number in Chinese (or in many other languages of your choice) and you type in the number on the keypad to check if you heard it correctly. I like practicing to shorten my hesitation time on any numbers that tend to trip me up when I hear them quickly. You can set the random numbers to ranges starting at 0 going all the way to 9,999.

  • “Mouichido” – iPhone app – Free

This app is very similar to Nums, except no keypad is included. Instead, you quiz yourself like you would with a typical flashcard, answering in your head before clicking to see the answer and checking if you were correct. I much prefer Nums for random numbers because I like the act of typing in the numbers. However, Mouichido has a lot of extra capabilities not available on Nums. First of all, you can set random numbers in a range from 0 all the way to 1,000,000! Not only that, but you can also quiz yourself on times and dates, as shown in the picture. These are multi-select so you can quiz yourself on multiple categories at once. Like Nums, Mouichido also offers various languages other than Mandarin (you can even set it to Cantonese).

Lastly, I’d just like to note that JinbuPal has no affiliation with either of these apps and these recommendations do not benefit us in any way. I really hope you find these tools helpful for practicing your Chinese listening skills. Give them a try and let us know what you think!

Great Resources for Mandarin Reading Content

March 28, 2020

When you’re first getting started learning Chinese, it’s very important to start reading as soon as possible. Reading helps you contextualize the language so that you reach your maximum language acquisition potential. If you want to learn more about this method, you can some research further into Stephen Krashen and his “Input Hypothesis.” But in this post, I want to skip over the details on why reading is so important and discuss more about how you can get started with your reading by finding content.

Once you’ve gotten over the initial plateau of reading Chinese characters. It’s important to have go-to resources on hand for content that you are truly interested in so that you can pick out a book or article at any time and start reading on the fly. Dump the textbooks as quickly as possible and get going with some of the following resources:

  • News Sources
  • Print Books – I always think it’s good to have at least one physical print Chinese book around so that you can practice reading even if you’re tired of sitting in front of a computer screen all day. When you are first getting started and not used to navigating Chinese websites, I would highly recommend buying a Chinese version book on Amazon so you don’t have to deal with the complexities of the interface and checkout. For example, my favorite genre is biographies. So to find a book like this (or for any other genre you prefer), perform the following steps: go to Amazon.com, click the menu button in the top left, select “Books & Audible”, select “Hardcover & Paperback”, scroll down and look on the left side for the filter called “Language”, click “See More” and then select “Chinese (Simplified)”, finally scroll back up find the “Department” filter on the left side and select the genre you are most interested in. The most important thing here is to find a book you really want to read because you are interested in the topic.
  • Blogs      
    • Wait But Why. www.waitbutwhy.com/wechat . This one is a little trickier to access because you will to set up a WeChat account first, add Wait But Why to your WeChat account by scanning the QR code, and then access articles by selecting View History and selecting from the Past Articles list.
    • Lei Jun’s (雷军) personal blog（Chinese billionaire tech entrepreneur）http://leijun.blog.techweb.com.cn/
  • Technical Content
    • Zhihu: www.zhihu.com – Similar to Quora.com or StackExchange.com, a forum with questions and answers about a wide variety of topics. You can find the simpliest or most technically advanced of topics on this forum for whatever you might be interested in. Download the app for on-the-go reading. This will require you to set up an account by entering your mobile number.

I would also highly recommend you check out the following post from our Getting Started Series: Pick a Go-To Source of Chinese Reading Material. If you haven’t read through that entire series, you might want to visit it because it is packed with more information to help you along the way.

Using JinbuPal’s Chinese Content Library

June 9, 2019

How would you like to improve your Chinese listening and vocabulary by watching genuine Chinese language videos? There are so many great Chinese films, TV shows, documentaries, and video bloggers to choose from!  

JinbuPal Chinese
Youtube Library
View Library

Regardless of your current skill level, it is always more fun to learn through content that actually aligns with your interests, rather than conversation that feels like it came from a textbook. If what you’re learning isn’t interesting or meaningful to you, it’ll be much harder for it to stick in your memory. For example, I’m an engineer; for this reason, engineering and tech related videos were what I was most interested in watching. Once you find Chinese language videos about the topics you already want to learn about, you can now just use the language as a means to learn about something that is meaningful to you. The more meaningful, the more easily you’ll acquire the language! Makes sense, right? So how can you go about finding what you really enjoy?

I know that when I first started learning Chinese, I found it very difficult to track down the Chinese shows that I really was interested in.  I found in my own experience that finding YouTube channels which teach Chinese is a very simple task; just run a search for Chinese language in YouTube or on Google and you’ll find many channels available (JinbuPal being one of these). However, finding actual Chinese content proves to be a lot more difficult, especially if you’re picky enough to only watch what you’re interested in.

Having experienced this myself, I want to prevent you from having to go through the same challenges! I want to save you time and, most importantly, help you on the path to rapid success as best as I can! So that’s why I’ve compiled a huge list of Chinese content YouTube channels that I’ve found by personally mining through YouTube. I’ve even categorized all of these channels based on common topics and subtitle availability. This way, you can easily filter by category and find something you like right off the bat! It’s available right here for you and it’s absolutely free! All you have to do is join the JinbuPal email list by entering your email address in the popup on this link and you’ll have free access as long as you remain subscribed to the email list! It doesn’t get simpler than that!

The rest of this post is a walkthrough of how to use the library, so I’d encourage you to go ahead and visit the YouTube Library and enter your email address so you can get started and follow along.

Here’s what you’ll find in the AirTable spreadsheet inside the YouTube Library.

Each channel has the following details filled out:

  • Channel Name
  • Category
  • Typical Subtitle Format
  • Subtitle Style
  • Topic
  • Direct Channel Link

You’ll also find separate tabs for Movies and TV Shows, each of which have similar breakdowns of details, such as directors, awards, etc.

You can easily apply filters throughout the AirTable in the YouTube Library similarly to how you would do this in an Excel spreadsheet. If you need more information, check out the following images which show how to turn filters on and off as well as how to activate filters for specific columns. You’ll be able to sort and filter the listed channels based on topics you’re interested in to find content just for you.

Using filters:

Sorting:

Example After Filtering and Sorting:

Depending on your current skill level, you may want to filter the channels by subtitles. Digital (or “soft”) subtitles will be the easiest for you to make use of if you’re working a lot on your vocabulary and encountering new Chinese characters. These soft subtitles will be compatible with popup dictionaries, such as Zhongwen.

Lastly, if you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend you read through our posts on how to utilize YouTube as the ultimate language learning tool and ways to find Chinese content on YouTube. Trust me, you will not want to miss out on the information provided in those posts because they should really help you see how incredibly powerful YouTube can be for language learning.

Also, check out our related video with some extra tips on how to search for Chinese content on YouTube.

Ultimate Guide to Learning Chinese on YouTube

April 3, 2019

When I first started studying Chinese, I found it really difficult to find interesting video content to watch. After talking with some Chinese friends, I learned that tons of incredible content was right under my nose – on YouTube. In this post, I will discuss how to turn you YouTube into the ultimate language learning tool. This post (and JinbuPal, in general) is geared specifically toward learning Chinese. However, these same tools are applicable regardless of what language you’re learning. And the best part is… all but one of these tools are completely free and will take you less than 5 minutes to set up! Ready? Let’s start!

YouTube can be an incredible resource for learning any language. You’ll find all sorts different topics of interest such as movies, TV shows, TED talks, documentaries, and more. But even aside from the content itself, the YouTube video player and interface itself can be adjusted to create huge benefits for the language learner.

Before jumping into the tools, I’d like to introduce a mindset I’ve found super helpful for efficient Chinese learning – combining tools for efficiency. In this article, you will learn about several different browser tools that are useful by themselves but way more powerful once you combine them together. Once you’ve see how this works, you might want to consider this same mindset in the future to eliminate any time that you feel is wasted in your studying process. Because even repeatedly wasting just 30 seconds to look up words inefficiently can add up significantly over time. So remember, any time you notice waste in your studying process, look for tools that could be used by themselves or in combination with others to optimize your use of time.

Alright, bring on the tools!

1. Google Chrome Browser – Free

         No. 1 is pretty straightforward, but we will need to install several Chrome Extensions to add functionality to YouTube so it’s important that you are using Google Chrome.

2. Zhongwen Popup Dictionary – Chrome Extension – Free

         No more looking up unfamiliars words! Every second you spend looking through a dictionary is wasted time. Hover your mouse over a Chinese character or word and Zhongwen will instantly display the definition, pinyin, and tones. You will find this tool essential for your language learning and particularly on YouTube, it will help you find definitions from subtitles and the titles of videos themselves.

Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zhongwen-chinese-english/kkmlkkjojmombglmlpbpapmhcaljjkde?hl=en

3. Youtube Playback Speed Control – Chrome Extension – Free

         You may know that you change the speed of a YouTube video by clicking the Settings gear. It offers the speeds .25x, .5x, .75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x and 2x. These settings work really well for speeding up an English video to quickly get through all the information. However, the .25x increments make it less than perfect for language learning because it’s often too slow and can also result in poor sound quality.

Enter the Youtube Playback Speed Control Chrome extension. With this extension there are no limits on how fast or slow you play a video. Not only that, you can also change the speed increment to whatever you want. To set this up, right click the extension icon next to the browser URL bar and select Options. Click the Settings tab. Here you can update the value in the setting Speed Change Step. I typically use “0.05,” which will allow you slow down the value by 5% at a time. This allows you to slow down to exactly the speed that is manageable for you at your current ability level.

         Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-playback-speed-co/hdannnflhlmdablckfkjpleikpphncik

4. Controls for Youtube – Chrome Extension – Free

         Now that our video playback speed is just right, we need to think about how to quickly skip backward and repeat dialogue when you don’t understood. YouTube has built-in keyboard shortcuts to jump backward and forward by 5 seconds by hitting the Left and Right Arrow keys. But I find that 5 seconds usually skips back a few seconds more than would like to. And what do extra seconds mean? You got it, wasted time! Install this Chrome extension and it will add 2 rewinds buttons to your YouTube playback bar with customizable Seek Duration settings.

I like to set my buttons to 3 seconds and 1.5 seconds. Having these two buttons plus the 5 second keyboard shortcut, you are all set to quickly skip backwards with precision.

Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/controls-for-youtube/doocmbmlcnbbdohogchldhlikjpndpng

5. CopyFish – Free

         Now let’s move on to the topic of closed captions. As you probably have noticed, a vast majority of available Chinese content has subtitles already embedded in the video. On the plus side, this is great because you almost always have the ability to look up unfamiliar phrases from the subtitles.

However, because so many videos contain these “hardcoded” subtitles, it is less common that someone has taken the time to create a digital version of the subtitles, or “soft subtitles.”

This tool offers a quick way to lookup characters from hardcoded subtitles by performing an OCR (optical character recognition).

Also, the tool is compatible with Zhongwen, which we already added to your stack of tools. You will have to activate this functionality as shown below. Note that to use the Zhongwen dictionary, you have to hover your mouse over the red font overlaid on the actual screen capture, not the text in the OCR Result field.

Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copyfish-?-free-ocr-soft/eenjdnjldapjajjofmldgmkjaienebbj

6. Closed Captions & Open Transcript – Free

         Okay, so you’ve found a video with soft subtitles? Fortunately, this adds a lot more functionality. Select the Subtitles/CC setting (shown below). Note that the Zhongwen dictionary will be compatible with these subtitles!

Next, click the “…” button as shown below and “Open Transcript.”

This will open the entire closed caption transcript in the right pane of the window. Again, this text will be compatible with Zhongwen.

7. LingQ – $12.99/month

         Have you heard of LingQ? If you haven’t you should definitely check it out for learning any language. There are a lot of excellent features in Lingq that are outside the scope of this article, but I would like to discuss one potential use for Lingq to add to your YouTube Chinese learning experience.

Lingq includes a Chrome Extension which allows you to scrap content from the web, including YouTube videos and their closed caption transcripts. If soft subtitles are available for your video of choice, you can upload the video to Lingq through the extension. After uploading you can view the video directly in Lingq and follow along with the text.

All of the YouTube extensions we’ve just added will be applicable when you watch a video on LingQ.  However, I find it a bit cumbersome switching back and forth between adding definitions (called lingqs) and watching the video because both features appear in the same pane one at a time.

To make things easier, I prefer to open the LingQ app on my iPhone and follow along with the transcript on my phone while watching the video on my laptop browser directly on YouTube.

Link: lingq.com

This brings us to the end of the list. I really hope that you find these tools helpful to get the most of your Chinese learning on YouTube!

Now you have all the tools you need to use YouTube to it’s fullest potential. But do you have many sources of Chinese videos on YouTube?
You don’t want to miss the next post: 4 Ways to Find Chinese YouTube Content. In this post, I’ll share a few tips for how to find videos and you can even download a document with tons of popular Chinese YouTube channels organized by category.

Lastly, we’d love to hear from you! If you know of any additional tools that didn’t make the list or if you have some unique ways of using these tools, please share your thoughts in the section below.

Beginner Series Summary

March 14, 2019

Alright! You made it! You’ve now read all the steps you’ll need to be a proficient Chinese speaker in record time. I hope you’ve found these posts interesting and you’ve learned how much easier learning Mandarin Chinese can be than you may have once thought.

You may be thinking, “Okay, great! Now where do I start?” First of all, keep your eyes on JinbuPal.com because we are currently working hard on some big plans which will revolutionize the way you learn Chinese characters using frequency data. You’ll be able to track your progress and study characters like never before. But it’s not quite ready yet, so make sure you sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date on all the details.

Until then, I’d highly recommend start off by running a quick Google search for “Chinese Characters by Frequency” where you can find characters listed out in order of their frequency usage. From there, you can start learning from the top or download the text and sort the characters however you like in an Excel spreadsheet.

Another great place to start is by reviewing the word lists which have been compiled for official Chinese Language Proficiency exams called HSK. There are 6 HSK word lists of increasing difficulty (all available here). They start with HSK1 which includes 150 of the most frequently used words and progress up to 5000 words in HSK6. Each HSK level includes all words from previous levels with each level being around double the size of the previous one. The only downside to the HSK is that some words are included which are not particularly high frequency.

As you begin your learning journey, be sure to check back here at JinbuPal for more articles packed with tools, tips, and tricks to help you along the way. Good luck!

How to get started learning Chinese Series