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On today’s episode, we delve into one of the most remarkable language-learning stories I’ve ever come across.
It’s the story of Will Hart, a 20-year-old medical student who on the eve of the first UK lockdown in 2020 had never been to a Chinese-speaking country, had no Chinese family and had never had any meaningful contact with the language in any form.
Fast forward 12 months and he posted a short video to YouTube speaking with the kind of fluency many people fail to reach after more than a decade of studying the language immersed in Chinese-speaking countries.
Recently, a second video appeared on YouTube in which he was interviewed in Chinese at length at the 1.5-year mark. Watching that video I was astonished by how fast he had progressed.
A lot of people upload videos claiming to have reached fluency in as little as six months. I’ve written previously about why I’m usually not a fan of this kind of content.
But Will’s case really is different. His Chinese is genuinely phenomenal, as any native speaker or advanced learner who hears him speak will confirm.
So I decided to invite him on the podcast to see what I could learn from his methods. What he told me is, I believe, utterly invaluable to all Mandarin learners, especially people with an interest in making their learning as efficient as possible.
Need help with Mandarin speaking?
If you’re studying Mandarin and are struggling with your speaking skills, Will and I have teamed up to launch our free Peak Mandarin newsletter sharing practical tips on how to become fluent in Chinese. It’s based on exactly what we did to teach ourselves the language while working and studying full-time in the UK.
Subscribe to the newsletter on this link and we’ll also send you my 50-page eBook, Lessons from a Chinese Learning Phenomenon, telling the story of how we went from zero to fluency. And how you can too!
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