I first heard about Olle and Hacking Chinese a few months ago. Reading it made me a bit sad: Olle was writing about the same things that I want to write about (Learning how to learn Chinese), but he did it better: it’s more systematic and complete. I strongly encourage you check it out. Hacking Chinese has a similar name to another good blog, Chinese Hacks. A bit confusing. Maybe Olle and Dave should get together and create superchinesehacking.com.
About Olle
When did you start writing a blog? Why did you start it?
I’ve been running a personal blog for almost ten years, which included articles about learning Chinese starting from around 2007. I decided to launch a site completely dedicated to learning Chinese in 2010, but I spent almost one year on preparations before launching Hacking Chinese officially in 2011. I started Hacking Chinese because I think it’s more or less unique (or at least I haven’t come across any other site which is completely dedicated to how to learn Chinese rather than what to learn).
What are the most important learning techniques you discuss on your blog?
This question is difficult because it requires a summary of everything I’ve done. If I have to choose, I would say than the most important articles on this website are the following (for more, check the essential articles category):
Learning Chinese words really fast (and related articles)
Goals and motivation (and related articles)
Chinese is fascinating, not stupid (and related articles about attitude)
Quick Questions
Mandarin, but I like regionally flavoured Mandarin.
Traditional or Simplified:
Traditional.
Pinyin or Characters:
Characters.
Speaking/Listening or Writing/Reading:
I love all four, but I love speaking most.
When did you start learning Chinese? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
I started learning Chinese in 2007. My strengths include a sincere interest in the language and a thirst for knowledge, combined with an analytical and open mind. My weaknesses include not having studied long enough (reading too slowly, etc.) and having quite lousy handwriting.
Why do you think most people learning Chinese struggle with the language?
Because they don’t think about what they are doing or if they do, they don’t have the right insights or knowledge. This is what I try to provide. Learning Chinese is hard and requires lots of time, but that doesn’t mean there are no shortcuts. There are so many things, both big and small, we can do to make learning easier. Take my series on building a powerful toolkit as an example. With it, learning Characters and words is quite easy; without it, it might feel hopeless.
What’s the one post on your blog that everyone learning Chinese should read? Why?
This would depend very much on the reader, but if we take into consideration that most people are beginners, I have to choose between my introduction to spaced repetition software and my article on how to learn Chinese words really fast. Since spaced repetition software is slowly gaining ground anyway, I choose Learning Chinese words really fast. I do this because I think it’s extremely important that people realise that Chines is very logical if you just spend some time trying to understand the logic. Learning can be fun and quite easy with the correct approach.
Thanks for the interview (both this and the one on Skype)! I also think that the name similarity is a bit confusing, but honestly I didn’t know about Chinese Hacks when I registered Hacking Chinese.
The sites are still quite different, though. Dave also writes about learning techniques sometimes, but that’s all I do. I follow what he’s writing and I think most readers would benefit from doing so as well, since overlapping articles are very, very few (if they exist, I haven’t checked carefully).
They are definitely both good blogs. I hope to interview Dave in the coming months.
[...] I do everything right. Other language blogs I read are often written by extremely motivated and accomplished Chinese learners. Sometimes, that can be an inspiration, but other times it might be a bit discouraging, [...]
The FunkyChinese method is designed to drill the Chinese audio right into your brain so that you learn Chinese with minimum effort. Each and every Chinese phrase is accompanied by a slow recording and a fast recording as explained above AND loops of those recordings. You can use the loops to play the recordings indefinitely until you decide you’ve had enough and press the loop button again. As you know, there’s no learn ing without memorization, so you do need to memorize those Chinese phrases. However, memorization is oftentimes associated with cramming, which is quite a fun-deprived way of learning. That’s why the loops – so you can spend as much time as you want listening to a native speaker repeat the phrases you want to hear as many times as you wish, until you can actually remember it. The audio loops will make your memorization effortless.