Christmas Raffle: Win Twelve Chinese Graded Readers!

Update, 17/12/2021: The winner of the raffle has been announced as Søren Friis Hansen, from Denmark! Congratulations Søren and thank you to everyone who took part! — I’ve previously written…

Benjamin Zephaniah on Learning Mandarin (Podcast)

*This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Pocket Casts and Breaker. Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. For Today’s podcast I had…

Can you be Literate Without Writing Chinese Characters by Hand?

Recently one of my Tweets sparked a lively discussion among Mandarin learners, teachers and the wider language learning community. I recalled an encounter with a beginner Mandarin learner who told…

Expectations Vs Reality of Learning Chinese (With Luke Truman)

*This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Pocket Casts and Breaker. Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. On today’s podcast I discuss…

Why I Don’t Believe in Language Talent

I used to think there was such a thing as language talent. I used to think I had language talent. At school, teachers would tell me I was good at…

Letting Go of Mandarin Learning Delusions

Around a year ago I fell into a common trap for Mandarin learners. I started to prematurely believe that I was on the verge of becoming “fluent” in the language.…

Immersion Vs Structured Learning (Podcast)

Anyone who studies a language has to combine a mixture of approaches which broadly fall into two categories: naturalistic and structured. Naturalistic approaches involve learning through immersion in the target…

Reading Novels is the Best Mandarin Hack

Those of us learning Chinese from abroad often struggle to replicate the levels of immersion students based in China take for granted. This is especially true for speaking and listening,…