Recently I went on the excellent You Can Learn Chinese podcast where I was interviewed about my motivations for learning Mandarin as well as my tips for other learners. The…

Over the years I have used a number of different language learning apps and websites. Out of all these online tools, LingQ has been the most beneficial to my Chinese.…

Assessing your level of Chinese may sound simple but it is easier said than done. There is no objective test that can accurately measure your ability to understand and use…

In the four years I have been learning Chinese I have spent very little time studying the formal rules of Chinese grammar. It is not that I think doing so…

When I started out learning Mandarin one of the things that used to irritate me the most was receiving vague and unhelpful replies from seasoned learners about precisely how they…

The recent death of popular YouTube polyglot, Laoshu (老鼠) has caused me to reflect on an issue which continues to afflict the language learning community: perfectionism. Laoshu was an imperfectionist…

When I first started learning Mandarin I quickly found myself drowning in an ocean of online advice, with hundreds of popular gurus all promoting their favoured methods and techniques for…