Don’t Blame Native Speakers for Not Understanding You
I recently came across a video parodying a phenomenon allegedly encountered by many Japanese learners. The sketch (see below) involves a group of five friends about to order food at…
Tag: Mandarin
Learning Chinese While Dreaming
A little over a year ago I had an experience which led me to become interested in the role of dreams in language learning. It was during lockdown and I…
Three Ways Native Speakers React to Chinese Learners
Two years ago I hosted a party for the language exchange group I run. My guests included a mixture of Chinese and English friends who were all keen to practice…
Cracking the Intermediate Plateau (Podcast)
*The I’m Learning Mandarin Podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify . If you enjoyed this content please subscribe on your favourite podcast provider and leave a review.…
Learning Mandarin in a Pandemic (Podcast)
*The I’m Learning Mandarin Podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts as well as Spotify. If you enjoyed this content please subscribe on your favourite podcast provider and leave a…
Learning Characters with Hack Chinese (Podcast)
One of the most daunting aspects of learning Chinese is the sheer number of characters required for basic literacy. It’s estimated that comfortably reading a newspaper requires around 3000 characters,…
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…
