In 2023 I spent the year living, studying, and working in Taipei. I had the chance to take an advanced Mandarin course for a semester at NTU where I was constantly surrounded by the language all the time.
By the time I arrived in Taiwan, I’d already been learning for 6 years in the UK and had acquired confident speaking skills. I was used to developing methods to improve despite not living in a country that spoke the language, and this certainly helped me on my return.
But going from being immersed in the language every day back to an English-speaking environment still required some serious adjustments. In this blog post, I’ll explain five strategies I’ve adopted to make sure my Chinese speaking doesn’t regress while I’m in the UK.
1. Listening to my favourite Chinese podcasts
Listening to podcasts in Mandarin has always been one of my favourite ways to improve and maintain my listening skills. And fortunately, it’s an activity that’s just as easy to do outside Chinese-speaking countries as within them. I try and listen to Chinese podcasts in the background whenever I’m driving, walking down the street or doing any activity that doesn’t require huge amounts of focus.
My favourite podcasts are all conversational ones where native Chinese speakers chat with each other about topics of interest in Mandarin. These days I tend to listen exclusively to podcasts intended for native speakers, rather than those made with learners in mind. A few of my favourites which can be found on Apple Podcasts include 声东击西 - featuring interviews and discussions on current affairs, 宇宙乘客 - discussions between millennial Chinese friends about general life, living abroad, and feminism, and 来都来了- regular chats between two friends about work, travel, and productivity.
2. Producing my own podcast episodes in Chinese
Since returning from Taiwan, it’s been vital to find ways to keep up my speaking practice. I’ve found one of the best ways to do this has been to commit to producing a podcast episode on Chinese every two weeks. This involves coming up with an idea for a topic or story about Chinese learning, writing an outline and recording myself speaking about it.
Initially, these episodes all featured me discussing my thoughts on Mandarin learning and my experiences living in Taiwan. But recently I’ve started supporting listeners of my podcast to develop their own podcast episodes entirely in Mandarin. A recent episode featured Jered Odegard, a listener from the US who spoke about his belief that speaking practice is every bit as important as getting lots of input when it comes to learning Mandarin.
3. Going on an immersive Mandarin-speaking summer camp
Over the past two years, I’ve been organising and taking part in Mandarin Retreats. These involve going to scenic parts of the UK and spending entire weekends speaking only Mandarin with other learners and native speakers. Participants on the retreats do activities together, including hiking and cooking dumplings. Speaking Chinese for days on end has proven the perfect way to maintain my speaking skills while living abroad.
Last year we organised our first-ever five-day summer camp. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend as I was in Taiwan. But this year I’m helping organise our 2024 camp which will take place in Cheddar, in South-West England. The 2024 summer camp is now fully booked but if you’re a Mandarin learner living in Europe and are interested in attending similar Mandarin immersion camps in the future you can sign up to the Mandarin Retreat newsletter to receive updates here.
4. Attending language exchange meet-ups
Recently I discovered a language exchange meet-up held in a bar in my home city of Manchester. The meet-ups take place every Thursday evening and are a great place to chat with native Mandarin speakers and other language-learning enthusiasts. Speaking Chinese in a bustling environment with noise all around you comes with its challenges, forcing you to hone your listening skills!
Most cities worldwide have similar meet-ups so you should able to find similar events near you by searching for groups on meetup.com. If you don’t feel confident about speaking yet you can always start a conversation in English first, get chatting, and speak some Chinese when you feel comfortable. Alternatively, the relative anonymity of language exchange apps like HelloTalk and Tandem may be an option to start with.
5. Keeping in touch with friends
Lastly, finding time to keep in touch with native-speaker friends I made over the past seven years of learning Chinese has also been an important part of maintaining my speaking skills. I try to make time to do Skype calls with friends in Mandarin as often as I can, although admittedly this is something I need to get better at and do more regularly!
How about you?
Are you learning Chinese from outside Mandarin-speaking countries? If so, how do you go about maintaining your speaking skills? Let me know in the comments!