Transitioning from Chinese courses to self-study
Two years ago I wrote a blog documenting my experience of learning Chinese at the Confucius Institute. Since then I have continued to learn, largely through self study, using the knowledge I had gained in my evening classes as a base from which to progress to a more advanced level. When I wrote my previous blog I had just returned from 2 highly enjoyable weeks on the BCI’s China Camp, was able to have basic conversations with Chinese people and felt inspired to continue studying towards fluency. My goal at that time was to move out of the classroom and towards a level where I could understand native content such as articles, novels, and podcasts. This blog is about how I went about achieving that goal and which learning tools I found most effective along the way. Phase 1: Learning characters At the time of writing my last blog I had not yet begun to learn Chinese characters. My evening classes were conducted using the Pinyin romanisation system alongside characters, so despite havi