Continuing on from last week’s post, here are some more great blogger profiles for your reading pleasure. Again, the Skritter team would like to send a huge thanks to all the bloggers who helped to make our Skritter Chinese iOS launch a big success!
Greg Bell at En Route to Fluency
1. In brief, tell us about the goals of your site.
The goals of my site are to share with people some of the different methods, tools, and ways of learning Chinese that I experiment with (and, even, fail at). It’s also a place that I like to share interesting tidbits from my own studies, and hope to get discussions going on various studying methods.
2. What’s the one character you could copy over and over again until the end of time?
 |
| 亭: As described on WenLin |
3. Traditional/ Simplified or both?
Both traditional and simplified. However, I strongly believe that a serious student of Chinese should begin with traditional and then move on to simplified. I believe it is important to know both, and knowing traditional first makes getting into simplified a lot easier.
4. What is one post that everyone who visits your blog simply must read?
I would say the entry: “Be Sure to Fail.” Short, sweet, and something to keep in mind with SRS studies. Sometimes people focus too much on high scores; better retention, so they trick themselves into passing when they shouldn’t be. Rather, this leads to higher retention scores but that does not reflect reality. Aim to fail baby!
1. In brief, tell us about the goals of your site.
My blog is an old-fashioned journal; there’s not really an audience I’m aiming for, and I’m not selling anything… it’s just a place for the things I want to remember. My readers are family, friends, former SpanishPod listeners, people with like interests. I have a very specific point of view regarding language learning; I’d like to think I can be helpful in that area. In terms of Mandarin Chinese, I’m an intermediate speaker working on proficiency. I also happen to be in Taipei at the moment, so there are a lot of travel adventures to report…
2. What’s the one character you could copy over and over again until the end of time?
Until the end of time? 使 is one that I can’t seem to get the proportions right， so is 雞; I do enjoy writing 幽，幾，and 變。 I’m not sure I’ll ever get 麟.Also, does 圓 look like an oncoming train in a tunnel? I so wish that’s what it meant.
3. Traditional/ Simplified or both?
Both. I started out doing simplified. I decided to switch to both because I thought I might as well start now. There were a few moments when I thought, dear God, this fanti is crazy. But after a day or so I realized that I was having an easier time learning two characters for one word than just one. We all think our brains want simple isolated units, but it turns out what our brains really want is a story, and learning both fanti and jianti at the same time provide that story.
4. What is one post that everyone who visits your blog simply must read?
Haha, none of it is a must-read situation. I think my post about How to Hate Bad Coffee could be the biggest blessing to people, but that doesn’t have much to do with Chinese, I guess…
Ly-ann at Alternative Education
1. In brief, tell us about the goals of your site.
An Exploration of how technology can be used in or as alternative forms of education.
2. What’s the one character you could copy over and over again until the end of time?
車. A very useful radical that also seems to appear in many words. On its own it means car/vehicle but as a compound character with other radicals, it tends to take on the meaning relating and connecting. And it’s easy to remember.
3. Traditional/ Simplified or both?
Traditional – having done Simplified before and failed to remember much, I find Traditional to be more meaningful especially using Heisig’s method of remembering the words.
4. What is one post that everyone who visits your blog simply must read?
Ryan McLaughlin at Lost Laowai
1. In brief, tell us about the goals of your site.
Lost Laowai shoots to be a gathering place and resource for expats and travellers in China.
2. What’s the one character you could copy over and over again until the end of time?
家 Jiā — when I first started studying Chinese, this was the most complicated character in my limited set of knowledge, and it still fills me with a small sense of pride every time I write it.
3. Traditional/ Simplified or both?
With Chinese writing, so too in life, Simplified all the way. Traditional characters have a place, but that place is on the shelves of libraries and in the hearts of academics. Character simplification has largely proven itself effective, so why maintain a more complex system simply for the sake of posterity?
4. What is one post that everyone who visits your blog simply must read?
It’s from a couple years ago, but “Confessions of a Chinese Language Student” is definitely one of my favourite Chinese learning reads.
Sara Jaaksola at Living A Dream in China
1. In brief, tell us about the goals of your site.
I have two sites with a slightly different goal and topic:
Living a Dream in China is about my own life in China, including studying Chinese language undergrad degree in Guangzhou. In posts under “Chinese Language” category I share my own experiences in learning Chinese and I have written over then blog posts in Chinese under the category of “Mandarin Monday”. With these posts I want to give my readers some peer support when learning Chinese.How Can I Learn Chinese on the other hand is just for learning Chinese, Mandarin or Cantonese. For years I had my bookmarks full of sites to learn Chinese and now I share all of them on this new blog. Including free sites and resources, iPhone/iPad apps, language schools, tips and anything I can think of that could be helpful for people who find my site and want help starting to learn or improving their Chinese. I’m a learner my self and my major is with a Teaching Chinese to Foreigners specialization, so I have a lot to share!
2. What’s the one character you could copy over and over again until the end of time?
There are some characters that I just can’t get to look pretty when handwriring, for example 我, 爱 and 州. I’ve been complimented on having a nice hand writing in Chinese and I try to keep it up!
3. Traditional/ Simplified or both?
I study simplified Chinese and use it in my studies, but there have been times when it would have been uselful to know traditional as well. Course of ancient Chinese characters would have been a lot easier if I had studied traditional characters! Also trips to Hong Kong would be much more interesting if I could read traditional (and if I would improve my almost no-exsistent Cantonese!)
4. What is one post that everyone who visits your blog simply must read?
For someone frustrated on learning Chinese I would recommend “When you feel learning Chinese is the hardest thing you’ve done“. For someone wanting to improve their essay writing skills I would advise learning from my mistakes and checking out my Chinese blog posts. And finally for iPhone/iPod/iPad owners I recommend checking out my always growing list of Chinese learning app reviews and news.
Becky Ances at Writer, Traveler, Tea Drinker
1. In brief, tell us about the goals of your site.
My website doesn’t have any major goals. Instead it is just a place for me to record my experiences, discuss chinese culture, what it is like to teach in China, traveling experiences (and tips) and talk about learning chinese. It’s not focused on just one topic, but rather several, so that if say, someone is interested in teaching English, but not learning chinese, they will still find a lot o read about. People also seem more and more interested in China these days, and especially interested in a foreigners perspective of the place. So I try to talk a lot about my experiences of being a stranger in a strange world.
2. What’s the one character you could copy over and over again until the end of time?
For some reason I really like writing the character shi, 事， I’m not quite sure why (perhaps because it is so easy) but it feels the most comfortable to me. On the other hand, I could right the character 舒服 until the end of time and STILL never remember it. It’s my most hated hanzi.
3. Traditional/ Simplified or both?
Simplified. I live in mainland and never really have any plans to live in a place that only uses traditional, so I don’t feel the extra effort is needed to learn both.
4. What is one post that everyone who visits your blog simply must read?
One of the earliest, and more personal posts I wrote was called “Why China.” I wrote it before I even stepped foot in China, but I feel like it captures the unhappiness that I felt before, and the excitement I had at the prospect of moving to China. Now, three years later, I wish I could go back and tell that girl that everything will not only work out, but be better than she ever could have imagined.
Again, we hope that everyone will enjoy reading these blogs as much as we have. If you’ve got your own Chinese related blog and you wanna answer these four questions, than please post your responses in the comments below!