How This Medical Student Became Totally Fluent in Chinese Within One Year While Living in the UK (Podcast)

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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.

Mischa Wilmers