Ok i admit, for many of you, studying of chinese is hell, or
even nightmare for some. When i was a sec sch or JC student, i have
seen many students crying over it.
Now i have produced a guide to make your studying of chinese
better, more fun and maybe improve your results!
For "all" (weaker/stronger) students
Improve the basics of a language:vocabulary and
understanding
following extract taken from "H1 chinese" thread which i have
suggested to one of our fellow forumnite:
when i say "read" newspaper, not just
read thru, flip it and forget abt it. at the end of the day, u will
still forget. My suggestion is that, take a notepad and a pen with
u, when u are reading newspaper and see a word that u nvr seen
before or u dun understand, write it down in your notepad. do this
for every article you read in your newspaper. when u finished
reading the newspaper, take a chinese dictionary and check out all
the words u do not know. rmb the hanyupinyin and zhao ju of the
words (if ur dictionary has it), write down
everything.
Doing the above will help a lot. I myself have used this method and
my chinese improved by leaps and bounds.
As you all know that reading and understanding is the key to
improving English language, same goes for chinese (Chinese is also
a language!), reading more chinese books will help in your general
overall understanding in chinese and you will find that you will
not stumble that much when you read chinese passages and exam
questions.
For a start, read short stories ( or what u call, "san wen" ).
These stories are actually short, but very interesting and yet
easily understood. i recommend local chinese author books for a
start.
Common problem in chinese
For composition, with many years being a student, one of the major
problem is "cuo4 bie2 zi4" (wrong words). Due to the little more
"complexity" in chinese language, this problem is sometimes
unavoidable, even for stronger students.
One of the solution to address this problem, what i suggest is,
greatly expand your "bank" of vocabulary in chinese words (see the
above paragraph in red). With a greater bank of chinese words, you
will be able to differentiate the different kind of words used for
different things. Many students actually can write beautiful
composition, but due to too much cuo bie zi, many marks are lose
and a A grade compo becomes a B grade compo.
DONT RELY ON YOUR DICTIONARY DURING COMPOSITION EXAMS!
you can ask me, then why the hell we are allowed to bring
dictionary into the exam hall for?
Bear in mind that, dictionary is there to help you with occasional
" forgetfulness " , it is not your "literature" passage!
Use the dictionary only after u have finished writing your
composition. This will prevent you from losing your train of
thoughts. Leave spaces for words that you do not know so that you
can check them later, not flipping here and there duing the
exams!
Check your sentence structure, tell youself whether it makes sense
or not. If not, change it! change to something which you
understand. If you do not understand, then i dont think your
teachers will understand it too!
Use idioms in your chinese composition. I know weaker students may
find it hard to do so, but chinese idioms are taught since primary
school, so actually in my opinion, there is no excuse for you not
to use. Use of idioms, even very simple ones, will improve your
overall mark of your compositon.
Choosing the topics to write:
Generally, for secondary schools and Junior college (H1, H2
chinese), topics are generally classified into two types:
1. Narrative topics
2. Argumentative topics (Famously known as: Bao zhang bao
dao.......)
So which one to choose and write?
1. If you are full of imagination and your chinese writing skills
is good (know how to use a lot of idioms and descriptive words), go
for narrative type of questions. Narrative questions are easier to
"go out of topic" so do be careful.
2. If you read a lot of newspaper and is very well informed by
current affairs and stuff, go for arugmentative topics.If you know
how, you can also use a lot of idioms, descriptive words in
arugmentative type of questions. Arugmentative essay are harder to
go out of topic because you basically have to just deal with and
debate about the topic thats all, unless you purposely write
something out of point.
I will recommend arugmentative essays for weaker students because
it would be easier. Why? As you all know more China students are
studying here, they are taking the same chinese paper as us (if we
do not talk about higher chinese, even so they have to take normal
chinese first). (Most of us have to take O level chinese, they
too). To them, our O level chinese is actually very simple for
them. As narrative essay requires huge amount of vocabulary to make
it "shine", they certainly do have the required condition to excel
well in this area and honestly not many local students can do
this.
So you can ask me, is it really that difficult to score As with
China students around? Absoulely not. Remember, there is something
called arugmentative essay. So far, topics that are set are all
based on local affairs. As a Singaporean, you should be well
informed and know a lot more on local affairs than a foreign
student 
. Thats where you can score.
For formal and informal letter (Famously known as gong han and si
han, applicable for secondary school):
Informal letter: less memorisation of letter format but more
creativity in content needed to score higher marks.
Formal letter: More memorisation of letter format but less emphasis
in content (actually, if you ask me, the content are literally
"dead" (means, all are about the same!))
Weaker students, choose gong han. It is "dead" stuff and you can
score marks by memorising!!!
For stronger students, you may want to choose si han if you are
thinking of scoring "rocket high" marks for this section. However,
as i say again, watch out for "out of topic" danger. It can make
your "rocket" reach your destination or explode anytime.
PAPER 2:
I am not very sure how has chinese exam's format changed now (2
years sicne i took my H2 J1 chinese exam), but i am pretty sure
that for secondary school chinese, no more memorising of "han zi"
is needed. i will just touch on the tecniques for cloze passage and
comprehension.
Cloze passage:
(more to be added on)
For Stronger students
Keen to improve your chinese to the next level? Try these:
If you listen to chinese pop songs, why not learn from the lyrics
and how they write?
Copy down the words or descriptive phrases that you think has made
an impression on you.
If you are not sure what that phrase means exactly, use a
dictionary to help you!
after copying, try to apply it in your everyday school work
composition excerise! During my secondary school days, i copied
down one of the phrases from Jay Chou's lyrics and applied it in my
composition. My teacher was very impressed (probably he didnt hear
jay chou's song) and got a very higher mark for it.
If you read si da ming zhu (i will strongly recommend you to read
at least one, with xi you ji the easiest one), learn from their
style of writing. True, sometimes the way it is written is very
"chim" but do consult your teachers or friends if you do not know
or understand any part. Or alternatively, read those "jian3 hua4
ban3" (simplified version), it is easier to understand, after that
then you proceed to read the original ones.
If si da ming zhu bores you, why not try wu xia xiao shuo,
especially by jing yong. Quite interesting, though i have not
really finished reading one (i prefer san wen and short stories),
and it will surely enriches your knowledge of chinese
vocbulary.
Stay tuned for more.....
