Comments on: How to improve fluency in Chinese by playing word games https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/ A better way of learning Mandarin Fri, 06 Feb 2026 02:37:35 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: 4, 3, 2, 1: Fluency! A great technique to boost your Mandarin speaking ability – JACOB'S WIKI https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-146735 Fri, 06 Feb 2026 02:37:35 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-146735 […] Time pressure: With each round getting shorter, you naturally learn to speak more concisely. You shed unnecessary filler words and pauses, becoming a more efficient speaker. A slight time pressure is also good for focusing on meaning, since you don’t have time to think about how you say it. Playing word games can have a similar effect and is also great for building fluency. […]

]]> By: 4, 3, 2, 1: Fluency! A great technique to boost your Mandarin speaking ability | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-143194 Tue, 18 Nov 2025 06:25:31 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-143194 […] Time pressure: With each round getting shorter, you naturally learn to speak more concisely. You shed unnecessary filler words and pauses, becoming a more efficient speaker. A slight time pressure is also good for focusing on meaning, since you don’t have time to think about how you say it. Playing word games can have a similar effect and is also great for building fluency. […]

]]> By: Learning Chinese through comprehensible input | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-140315 Mon, 25 Aug 2025 19:26:57 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-140315 […] Another example is certain word games that are great for targeting fluency specifically. […]

]]> By: Using AI chatbots for low-stress Mandarin speaking practice | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-137852 Mon, 21 Jul 2025 22:43:45 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-137852 […] Reverse the roles: You describe an object, and ChatGPT guesses. This then turns into one of my favourite activities for improving spoken Mandarin. […]

]]> By: Learning Chinese by playing board games | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-127638 Fri, 24 Jan 2025 16:18:36 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-127638 […] how to use computer games to learn Chinese (and a separate article about StarCraft), as well as an article about playing word games to improve oral fluency. I have also designed text adventure games for learning […]

]]> By: Student Q&A, August 2024: Avoiding mental translation, untranslatable words and why practising translation is good | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-121860 Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:14:29 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-121860 […] How to improve fluency in Chinese by playing word games […]

]]> By: How to learn Chinese in the long term with intrinsic motivation | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-118130 Tue, 12 Mar 2024 19:49:09 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-118130 […] at first, but hear me out! I use this often when teaching Chinese through games and it works well. In a game where you try to make your teammates guess the right word by describing it indirectly, simply having a time limit will decrease expectations of accuracy; no one will produce perfect […]

]]> By: The cheapest and most convenient way to improve your spoken Chinese | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-111773 Sun, 17 Sep 2023 12:40:03 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-111773 […] word games with yourself – One of the best activities to practise oral fluency is word games where you are supposed to describe… If you think about it, not being allowed to say a word is similar to not knowing it, so playing […]

]]> By: Tone errors in Mandarin that actually can cause misunderstandings - Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-103770 Mon, 07 Nov 2022 08:07:52 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-103770 […] there are few real-world examples where this would cause trouble. I have been confused by this once when a student tried to describe a word when playing a word game and said yǒu hěn duō shū, whereupon I guessed túshūguǎn “library”, but he […]

]]> By: Olle Linge https://www.hackingchinese.com/playing-word-games-to-practise-fluency/#comment-91000 Sat, 01 Jan 2022 09:30:07 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=940#comment-91000 In reply to Dennis Lee.

Thanks for pointing this out! I changed the example while recording the podcast because I thought it was boring to use the same word again, but then forgot to change the answer. I now also realise that I changed the sentence in the podcast, but not the answer, so I need to edit and republish that too. I would never hav found this on my own, and it might have already confused a lot of people, but no more thanks to your sharp observation! 🙂

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