Articles for Learning

Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) The Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK, or Chinese Proficiency Test) is an international standardized exam, administered by Hanban, that assesses and rates proficiency in Mandarin. The HSK focuses on listening, reading, and writing, without an emphasis on grammar, and can be taken either as a written exam or as a computer-based test.

One of the difficulties of learning Chinese (as well as other languages) comes from word pairs that have similar meanings (synonyms). For Chinese learners, it is always hard to figure out which word to use under the situation that both words from the pair appear to be applicable. Here, we would like to give out five typical examples.

There are many good reasons to listen to Chinese popular songs. You can improve pronunciation, learn Chinese vocabulary, develop grammar structure and beautiful expressions in Chinese, and learn more about Chinese culture, which is fun! In this article, we are going to listen to a sweet love song 小酒窝(xiǎo jiǔ wō) by 林俊杰(lín2 jùn jié) and 蔡卓妍(cài zhuó yán).

Popular Chinese Idioms Everyone realizes that learning idioms of a foreign language is an interesting way to sound “native-like”. For English as second language learners, UrbanDictionary is an awesome place to check out interesting popular English idioms. However, it is a pity that there is no such a counterpart the Chinese language as of yet.

Chinese Idioms 活到老，学到老  (成语) An idiom is a figure of speech that isn’t taken literally. For example, in English we have idioms such as “don’t let the cat out of the bag,” and “to have a cake and eat it too”, when we are not really talking about letting cats out of bags, or eating a piece of cake. There are numerous proverbs, sayings and idioms in every language.