How do you study on the go?

[Lost in Mong Kok]

I tend to find reading some of the basic parts of newspapers helps. That and some of the little apps on my phone which have character drawing tools in.

I've recently picked up some Children's books which seems to make people stare at me, but they are quite useful as the grammar is simple and the sentences are short. I also find having short text frames and pictures helps, rather than masses and masses of text which can become boring.

[Lu]

I read. On the train in Holland, I used to read books; now on the Beijing metro, Western paperbacks are easy to read one-handed while holding the pole, but Chinese books are a different size, too big for one hand. Yesterday I bought a literary magazine, with some force it can be folded over, and now I read Chinese. Works so well that I missed my stop today.

[Meng Lelan]

Another thing I just thought of --- in my job I drive endlessly from one campus to another. Actually I drive more than I teach. Now I just pop in an audio from my endless collection of audio CDs from Chinese readers and listen as I drive. The audio CDs never tire of yapping at me in Chinese for hours and hours and never force me into some language battle.

[heifeng]

I usually keep a small paperback book with me to read (if waiting or in a vehicle) or a small special vocab dictionary or printed glossary to memorize vocab or other things while walking (glance at book, glance ahead and think, back to book and repeat)..which has caused me to take a huge embarrassing nose-dive once in the middle of the sidewalk. :blink:

Sometimes if I don't mind looking crazy I'll also download something to my phone and try to shadow it while walking.

[mike39]

ChinesePod.com is a great resource. I also find that having flashcards on my person is a great way to review.

[driftman]

its probably a bit old fashioned, but I look up characters in my dictionary when I am on transport. Its slow but helps me to really think a character through and - at least for me - is a lot more useful than writing them by hand.

Also that Oxford Chinese Dictionary just nicely fits into my pocket ;)

[Meng Lelan]

The Oxford Chinese Dictionary is indeed small but very useful. I still have mine from 20 years ago.

[Lu]

Another thing I just thought of --- in my job I drive endlessly from one campus to another. Actually I drive more than I teach. Now I just pop in an audio from my endless collection of audio CDs from Chinese readers and listen as I drive.

Forgive my ignorance, but don't you have trouble hearing that?

[Meng Lelan]

Forgive my ignorance, but don't you have trouble hearing that?

You're not ignorant at all.

Actually with my hearing aids I can hear most (not all) vowels and a few consonants (just "m", "n", "f", and "l"). Really I'm so tired of hearing nothing but English and Spanish on my job that out of sheer loneliness and boredom I've resorted to popping in a Chinese CD on my car stereo and dialing the audio up to a billion decibels just so I can hear something. You want to see worlds collide here in Texas? I can drown out monster trucks blasting the latest Mexican pop hits with my very own CDs blaring back at them with Chinese dialogues from NPCR Volume 5.