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In today’s episode, I interview one of my most hotly anticipated guests, the Mandarin educator, blogger and teacher, Olle Linge.
Olle is well known for being the founder of the blog Hacking Chinese. For over a decade, he’s been drawing on his extensive experience of learning and teaching Chinese to offer tips and advice for other learners. If you’ve ever googled anything related to learning Mandarin, you’ve likely encountered his blog towards the top of the search results.
His own Mandarin journey began all the way back in 2007 when he studied Chinese at university. This was followed by two years studying in Taiwan, after which he completed a Master of Education in his native Sweden, focusing on teaching Chinese and English.
Olle returned to Taiwan in 2012 for a two-year master’s program for teaching Chinese as a second language. Since returning to Sweden in 2014, he’s been working mostly at a university teaching Chinese and professional development for language teachers.
We had a wide-ranging discussion covering his insights into learning tones, criticisms of conventional teaching methods and thoughts on the future of self-directed online language learning at a time when the number of people registering for formal Chinese studies courses is in decline globally.