Chris Foley’s Mandarin Speaking Journey: Mission Accomplished!
One year ago, Chris Foley set himself a challenge to transform his Mandarin and achieve a standard Mandarin accent in time for his Chinese wedding cer...
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Honest, practical writing on learning Mandarin as a busy adult — tones, listening, reading, methodology, and the learners doing it for real. Pick a skill to dive into, or search the full archive.
83 posts Output Speaking Tones, pronunciation, fluency, tutors, and real conversations.
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44 posts Input Listening Podcasts, immersion, native-speed audio, and comprehension.
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37 posts Characters Reading Characters, graded readers, apps, and native material.
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9 posts Expression Writing Sentence patterns, grammar, and turning input into your own words.
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Can a Busy Dad Learn Mandarin in Just One Year?
Over the last 12 months, busy Welsh accountant and father to a young daughter, Lewys Thomas, has been working to improve his Mandarin speaking skills...
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Chris’s Diary Month 8 & 9: Untangling the Tongue Twisters
Chris Foley has set himself a challenge to improve his tone pronunciation, and achieve a standard Mandarin accent in time for his Chinese wedding cere...
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Chris's Diary Month 7: Dialing in the Tones and Preparing for New Challenges
Chris Foley has set himself a challenge to improve his pronunciation and achieve a standard Mandarin accent in time for his Chinese wedding ceremony....
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How to Make the Most of Mandarin Language Exchange
If you’re not in the server, click the 'Discord' tab at the top of this blog. I definitely recommend checking it out. It’s a community of nearly 400 M...
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Getting Smart about Mandarin Listening
I chose this topic because listening is probably one of the areas that frustrates Mandarin learners more than any other. First, I want to talk about t...
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Generate Mandarin Podcasts on any Topic with Mindblowing AI Tool
It’s called Notebook LM, and it’s a website run by Google. Here’s what makes it so powerful: you can feed it any content: websites, text, even audio,...
Read more Chris's Mandarin Diary Month 6: My First Chinese Interview (Video)
Chris Foley has set himself a challenge to improve his tone pronunciation and achieve a standard Mandarin accent in time for his Chinese wedding cerem...
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Is Taiwan a Good Place to Study Mandarin?
In this week's episode, I delve deeper into the experience of studying and living in Taiwan, specifically asking the question: Is Taiwan a good place...
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Using AI to Nail Daily Interactions in Mandarin
Even with relatively fluent Mandarin, it can be easy to stumble in seemingly simple situations, buying train tickets, ordering coffee, or understandin...
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How to Generate Personalised Mandarin Tongue Twisters with AI
Continuing this theme in this week's episode, I outline a really simple method that you can use to use AI to generate your very own Mandarin tongue tw...
Read more Chris Foley’s Mandarin Speaking Journey: Months 4 & 5
Chris Foley has set himself a challenge to improve his tone pronunciation, and achieve a standard Mandarin accent in time for his Chinese wedding cere...
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