Chinese Language Forums - Chinese Etymology Institute

As a more advanced learner of Chinese, I've learned the importance of Chinese idioms as an essential part of learning Chinese. Having lived in China, I've also learned that being able to use Chinese idioms correctly in conversation really sets your Chinese apart from others and you start to sound more native. I worked for a Chinese company for a summer and during that time I was taught many Chinese idioms. However, for me, they proved to be fairly difficult to commit to memory and even more difficult to know how to use. I often got overwhelmed and really only probably remember about 10 or so of those idioms. I've been thinking about a good system to learning and retaining idioms and I've researched to find a service that would help make the learning of them more simple. From what I've seen, there really isn't a whole lot out there besides Chinese idiom dictionaries.

I just wanted to get a feel to see if anyone would find a Chinese idiom service useful. For example if there was a service that took just one, commonly used, idiom each day, provided by a native Chinese speaker, with examples, a breakdown of the characters, and several sentences to know how to use them correctly, would that be something that any of you would be interested in? If so would you be willing to pay a small fee per month to keep that service going? I'm just curious because I would like to see a service like this. I feel that it would help my Chinese a lot.

Great idea. Idioms often (but not always) are metaphors that give short, instant comprehension. You might also want to include collocations, too.