How to make chinese lessons interesting? For those who don’t like chinese.

1) Words wise, play with the parts(偏旁) and the sides(部首). You can create new meanings with them, string them in a short story and make sure the story is funny. The traditional ones is the
一个日本人，拿着一把刀，站在大门口，砍了四个人。It is the word zhao 照 which means shining. I could create something like there is a Sun (日) which shore lights rays like (刀)on the mouth (口) and the mouth dropped 4 saliva (四个点). Visual stories tend to be remembered better than non logical ones.

2) Let them play with Chinese words and phrases. Play creates good memories and enhances learning. using parts and sides, let pupils go into text book and find as many words based on parts or sides. let them compete for best finders' award. (good for primary schools) find word pairs, find cheng yu that started with certain words etc, make sure the process is fun.

3) Do with a time limit
Pupils loved a challenge and certainly loved timed challenges. I tried "find a word in dictionary in 12 seconds", "Read a paragraph in 2 minutes" or "read all spelling words in 5 minutes". Show them the clock, demo once for them and time your try. Ask them if they can win you by doing it using less time or do more for same time. Encourage good try, let them win a few times (innocently) to enhance their interest. (even if the improvement is 0.01 seconds, to pupils its means a lot to praise that improvement.) At conclusion show that they have improved would inspire them.

4) coach with the objective in mind and their obstacles in sight.
Set their objective straight and know their hardship.
Common hardship:-
a) lack of vocabulary
b) unable to read words apart from spelling lists.
c) unable to pronounce words correctly
d) lack of knowledge on grammar and sentence structure.
e) lack of motivation to study
f) lack of focus and willingness
etc

Some common objectives of our young ones and a common reason for it:
a) wanted to be a star/k-pop star/actor(ess)/sports star/youtuber/muser/popular blogger/instagram star etc. (why study so hard if I can earn more?)
b) wanted to ignore Chinese and score in PSLE.( I'm hoping for an exemption from Chinese etc)
c) wanted an A in Chinese (but plays game like crazy and in every situation)
d) don't know what I want????? (because I really have no idea about my future)

Just like a doctor, look for symptoms and discover the obstacles and prescript medicine to cure. Most obstacles are just symptoms of bad habits, bad manners and bad thinking processes; alter their habits and their results will show.

Now this is in request of a reader on how to make Chinese interesting, hope you like it.

如何在17天内流利讲外语！

What are the best ways to learn a language as an adult? appeared as a question on Quora. Below we are republishing an answer from David Bailey, CEO of Spotnight. 

I've learned several foreign languages as an adult.

I was able to learn French to conversation fluency in 17 days using the following techniques.

Note that I had previously learned Spanish to fluency so this was not my first foreign language.  

In summer of 2005 I stayed with a French friend in a tiny village in the Beaujolais region of France.

No one in the village spoke English and, since my friend knew I had an ambitious learning goal, she refused to speak to me in English as well.  

I set up a routine where I did the same things every day.  

In the mornings, I woke up and wrote out longhand the regular and irregular verb tables for 1.5-2 hours. I managed to get through an entire pad of paper in two weeks. I still believe that writing things out by hand is the best way to memorize things.

While I wrote, I would listen to Michel Thomas' language learning mp3s. On the CDs you listen as he teaches French to other English speakers. It's really helpful to hear other students make mistakes that you can learn from, just like a regular classroom environment. In two weeks I listened to the foundation, advanced and language building courses twice.

I would run for 45-60 minutes in the early afternoon in the French countryside listening to catchy French music. Music is a great way to learn the intonation of a language and train your facial muscles as you sing along.

I had lunch with my friend and her French friends everyday. As they refused to slow down when speaking to me in French, it was learn or starve!

In the afternoon, if I wasn't playing darts or Boules with my French friends, I was reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in French. Reading the children's books you read as a child is a great hack to learning new languages. Firstly, the language used is simple and secondly, knowing the story helps you to guess the meaning of new words and avoid using a dictionary. Surprisingly children's books are more entertaining in a foreign language.

I spent at least an hour writing basic essays about myself which I had my French friend check for errors. When you meet new people you inevitably get asked the same things: "Where are you from?", "What do you do?", "Do you like France?" By learning ready-made answers, you get to practice what you learned and build up your confidence.

Another good tip is to learn the filler words. These are the words and phrases people say then all the time between sentences (alors, en fait, etc.) but have no real meaning; allowing you to buy time in a conversation and increase your confidence.

After 17 days I left the small town and went to Paris. I met a girl in a coffee shop and we started talking. After a few minutes, she asked how long I had lived in France. When I told her I had been learning French for 17 days, she swore that I had lived in France for at least a year. 

Hopefully there are some useful tips you can use in your learning. Let me know and bonne chance!

http://www.businessinsider.com/learn-french-in-17-days-2014-11?IR=T&