"Platform Period" Theory--what to expect after learning Chinese for some time I wanna talk a little bit about the process of learning language. After learning the basics of Chinese, you may find that your pace begin to slow down and you can't make as fast progress as you did in the beginning any more. This is the point where a lot of people give up because they need to see their progress to motivate themselves. If they don't, they suspect that they are in the frustrating wrong way. But in many cases they aren't, they are just in the what I call “platform period”. See it below. After this period, you will find yourself fly in the air in whatever way you want. Some people may not get into this “platform period” at all(I hope you don't!). Some people may be struck there for a long time. The best way to get over is practice with patience. Hope it helps you know what to expect in the process and prepare yourself well.

The hard way to improve your listening ability of Chinese--it worthes your time! What I did when I was preparing for TOEFL was "listen and write down". Find some Chinese conversations, news or short essays with translations. Don't look at translations. Listen to the material and write down what you hear. You can stop, repeat or even slow down the material with your player. I recommend you to listen one sentence at a time. If you don't catch it, repeat it as many times as you want. Typically, at early stage I use 40 minutes to 1 hour to listen and write down to a material that's about 5-10 minutes long(Normal speed). It worths the time because it's gonna lock the impression of the pronunciation in your brain and make you react properly and quickly next time you hear it. Then compare your work with the translation and find all the tiny difference bitween yours and the translation. I think the difficulty here is to find listening material with PINYIN translation. Check if your Chinese textbook has CDs that you can use. I will try to find some for you too. Another thing I did was listen to audio book. Choose the book that you are interested in so you can keep making progress. It's convenient because it doesn't require you to stop what you are doing. Hope it helps. Permission needed to redistribute.

The difference concerning describing sports in Chinese ti1 & da3 & wan2 ti1: kick (soccer) da3: beat (basketball) wan2: play (when you don't know what sport "wan2" is indicating)

Different word of "wife" in Chinese qi1 zi3 lao3 po2 Comment: qi1 zi3 is more formal. But when you call your wife face to face, you don't want it to be such a formal scene, then you can usc Lao3 po2. Lao3: old. Po2: old woman. It's not rude to call your wife an old woman in Chinese. It shows that she is your dear.