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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Tips, stories and insights on learning Mandarin as a busy professional
Showing 176 of 176 posts
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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LTL School
At LTL School, just like Mandarin Retreat, we believe Mandarin isn’t just learned in a classroom. It’s absorbed, lived, and spoken until it becomes se…
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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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My Full Asiaglot Speech: The Inconvenient Truth about Mandarin Learning (Podcast)
On today's episode, I'm going to play my speech, which I recently made at the Asiaglot conference in Taipei. The speech was called The Inconvenient Tr…
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Why Deepseek is the Biggest Mandarin Learning Game Changer of 2025
This week on the I'm Learning Mandarin podcast, I discuss how you can use Deepseek as a game changing tool to become fluent in Chinese. As we've previ…
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My Experience at Asiaglot: Asia's Hottest Multilingual Conference
Last week I participated in Asiaglot, a new multilingual conference in Taipei. I first heard about Asiaglot a few months ago when Philipp Marxen, a gr…
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Lewys's 6-Month Transformation to Conversational Mandarin (Video)
Over the last six months, Welsh accountant and father Lewys Thomas has been working to improve his Mandarin speaking skills with I'm Learning Mandarin…
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Prof Clare Wright: Why Some Learners Succeed While Others Lag Behind (Podcast)
Professor Clare Wright has pioneered research into second language pedagogy with a particular focus on Mandarin. She is particularly interested in dis…
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How my Student Founded Asia's Hottest Languages Conference (Podcast)
Shortly after that Philipp signed up to my coaching programme to improve his Mandarin speaking. And since graduating from the programme, he's moved to…
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My Four Coolest Mandarin Learning Moments (Podcast)
But staying the course and persevering through the hard times has enabled me to have all sorts of life experiences that I would otherwise never have h…
Read more Chris Foley's Mandarin Speaking Diary: My Immersive Trip to China (Month 3)
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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Four Attitude Shifts You Need to Master Mandarin Speaking
Over the past few weeks, I've been interviewing lots of fascinating guests providing great solutions to commonly faced Mandarin learning problems. Gue…
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How Jake Gill from Skritter Learned Chinese
Skritter has been around for years, helping learners improve their handwriting and character recognition through a unique combination of spaced repeti…
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Battle of the Apps: LingQ Premium Vs Duolingo
Over the years I’ve used a number of Mandarin Chinese learning apps with mixed results. Some of them, I credit with playing a significant role in enab…
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Jared Turner on How He Created Mandarin Companion Graded Readers
If you’re learning Chinese, you’ve probably heard of Mandarin Companion’s graded readers, which make it possible to read Mandarin from an elementary l…
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Gamify your Chinese Learning with Ninchanese (Podcast)
I found Ninchanese particularly effective when transitioning between elementary and intermediate levels. The gamified elements, progressing through st…
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Learning Mandarin with Dong Chinese (Podcast)
Dong Chinese is an all-in-one Chinese learning app that enables learners to learn sentences in context using spaced repetition. In the episode, we dis…
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Chris Foley's Mandarin Speaking Journey: Month 2
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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Former NASA Employee Applies Engineering Approach to Mandarin learning (Podcast)
Outlier specialise in facilitating the language learning process by breaking down the complexities of the language, including Chinese characters. And…
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Interview with Karen Cheuk from Happy Mandarin
Karen was born and raised in Hong Kong and went on to study at Cambridge University on a scholarship. After graduating and having a daughter, she was…
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Interview with Michael Campbell from Glossika (Podcast)
Michael has dedicated a significant portion of his life to understanding and mastering languages, having lived in Taiwan for most of his life and beco…
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Can I sharpen my tones and speak in a standard Mandarin accent in time for my wedding?
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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Interview with Phil from Mandarin Blueprint (Podcast)
Phil is one of the two minds behind Mandarin Blueprint, a Mandarin learning course with over 4000 videos taking learners step-by-step all the way to M…
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Learning Chinese with Amanda Miss Panda (Podcast)
Amanda boasts over 30 years of experience teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) and Mandarin Chinese. She's also a published author, consultant,…
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Chinese TV Shows to Learn Chinese - Netflix
There are literally dozens of Chinese TV shows to learn Chinese on Netflix. And making use of these has had a huge impact on my ability to go from int…
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Maintaining your Mandarin Skills Outside China: Interview with Jorrit (Podcast)
Jorrit opens up about learning the language, living in China, and the challenges of maintaining his abilities after returning to a non-Chinese-speakin…
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Special Live Q&A: Ask Me Anything with Will Hart
Will should need no introduction to readers of this blog. Two years ago he burst on the Mandarin learning scene when videos of him speaking flawless C…
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75% of Learners Make these Chinese Tones Mistakes
I’ll walk you through four of the most commonly mispronounced tone combinations and explain how to get them right. Join us Live This Sunday This Sunda…
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Live Q&A: How to Fix your Chinese Tones (Podcast)
If you're looking to improve your tones but aren't sure how, this discussion is packed with insights from me, as well as server moderator, Jered. Tune…
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Do you Have to Memorise the Tones for All Your Chinese Vocab? (Podcast)
In this episode, I dive into one of the most common questions Mandarin learners face: Do you really need to memorise the tones for every new word you…
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Live Q&A: How To Practice Mandarin Speaking Early On (Podcast)
In just over a week we’ve seen the server grow into a thriving hub with nearly 200 learners supporting each other to ace their Mandarin-speaking goals…
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How to Say Hello in Chinese
In this guest post, Chinese learner Lewys Thomas takes some of the most common examples of textbook Mandarin phrases all learners get taught and offer…
Read more How I Accurately Mimic Full-Speed Mandarin In Four Simple Steps
The sentence was: 这么复杂的东西怎么学得会啊不可能的嘛对吧。Zhème fùzá de dōngxī zěnme xué de huì a bù kěnéng de ma duì ba. Something this complicated, how could I possibl…
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How Joshua Lykes is Learning Chinese Through AI (Podcast)
Joshua recently posted an hour-long video documenting in detail his first year of Mandarin learning. And one of the things that stood out to me about…
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Join Our New Discord Community For Mandarin Learners
Over the past few months, I’ve been coaching Chinese learners from around the world whose goal is to improve their conversational skills in the langua…
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Your Ultimate Guide to Practicing the Tones of the Chinese Language
The tones of the Chinese language are often considered to be extremely difficult for non-native speakers to grasp. In this post I explain how I learne…
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How long does it take to learn Mandarin Chinese in 2025
A number of influencers claim to have mastered Mandarin within just six months. But is this really possible? And just how long does it actually take t…
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Have You Had a Chinese Learning Wet Fish Moment?
This might take the form of a direct comment from a native speaker who is less polite than normal. Or it might be an embarrassing failed attempt to co…
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Launching New Sentence Mining App Mandarin Mosaic (Podcast)
Karl Baker, recently launched his new Mandarin learning app, Mandarin Mosaic. The App seeks to make sentence mining accessible. Like Anki, but easier…
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Reflecting on Five Days of Pure Mandarin Immersion with Will Hart (Podcast)
A group of 14 of us, including learners, organisers volunteers, and native tutors got together in Cheddar, in the south-west of England, and spoke not…
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5 Things I Learned From 5 Days of Total Mandarin Immersion
I've just returned from five glorious summer days in Cheddar, UK, where I was leading our annual Mandarin Retreat Summer Camp. I began organising Mand…
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Mandarin Learner Completes Extreme One Month Anki Challenge (Podcast)
Anki is a Spaced Repetition flashcards program that enables you to drill and create flashcards to aid your memory's retention of new information. And…
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Fluent Mandarin Star Uses Sentence Mining to Learn Spanish (Podcast)
Will Hart, created waves in the Mandarin learning community when he reached an incredible level of fluency in just 1.5 years while living in the UK du…
Read more How to Build Your Perfect Step-By-Step Mandarin Learning Plan
Will Hart is an Educator, fluent Chinese speaker. In this blog post, he lays out the building blocks all learners can use to create an effective Manda…
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From Mandarin Learner to Teacher & Instagram Star (Podcast)
Kristen has been learning Chinese since 2013. Like me, she initially began learning outside China, and is full of insights based on her experience of…
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My Top Five Podcasts For Learning Mandarin at an Intermediate to Advanced Level
In previous posts, I’ve discussed how listening to podcasts has played a crucial role in my Mandarin learning. There are two reasons why I value podca…
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Insights from a Lifelong Mandarin Learner (Podcast)
Stacy Bridges, from the US, began learning Mandarin at school and has continued studying the language on and off ever since. He recently attended one…
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Learning to Listen: The Neuroscience of Language Learning
Duncan Parrish is an I’m Learning Mandarin contributor and coordinator of Arti Languages, a project using mobile games and cognitive science to enhanc…
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How to Get Hooked on Mandarin Learning (Podcast)
One of the most rewarding parts of running this podcast and creating Mandarin-learning content is receiving messages from learners whose lives have be…
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Channeling Jealousy into Curiosity is the Key to Mandarin Progress (Podcast)
Lewys has been learning Chinese for a few years but recently realised that, despite getting a tonne of input, his speaking skills weren't improving. A…
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Is Anki The Best App for Learning Mandarin?
Karl Baker is a Mandarin learner, app developer, and regular contributor to I’m Learning Mandarin. In this post, he delves into the Spaced Repetition…
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App Developer Reveals 5 Tips for Chinese Sentence Mining (Podcast)
Karl began learning Mandarin several years ago as a way of communicating with his Chinese wife's family and he's previously written for the I'm Learni…
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5 Things I Learned as a Keynote Speaker at the Swire Chinese Conference 2024
Last week I attended the annual Swire Chinese Language Conference in Birmingham as a keynote speaker. Organised by the Swire Chinese Language Foundati…
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Language exchange app leads composer to Chinese speaking breakthrough (Podcast)
And today’s guest is a perfect example of this. Daniel Leo Simpson is a composer from the US whose music has been played by orchestras around the worl…
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Five Ways I Maintain my Mandarin Speaking Skills While Living in UK
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 w…
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Practicing Output is Every Bit as Important as Comprehensible Input (Podcast)
Jered was responding to my callout inviting listeners to produce their own short podcast episodes in Chinese, with my support. Jered is an accomplishe…
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These Five Tech Breakthroughs Will Soon Make Mandarin Infinitely Easier To Learn
In a previous blog post, I discussed the major changes in technology which have revolutionised the way we learn Chinese over the past decade. From sma…
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How to Practice Speaking: Live Q&A with Will & Mischa (Podcast)
So on today's podcast episode, I'm broadcasting a live Q&A session I recently hosted together with fluent Mandarin speaker and YouTuber, Will Hart. We…
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Sorry but Nobody Ever Learned Chinese By Making Mistakes
One of the most fashionable ideas in language learning is that we learn by making mistakes. This idea is appealing for obvious reasons. Beginner and i…
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From Zero to Fluent in Two Years. I'm Learning Mandarin Listener Nails Spoken Mandarin (Podcast)
On today’s podcast, I broadcast the first of what I hope will be many Chinese monologues submitted by listeners to this podcast. Today’s recording is…
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Does ChatGPT Speak Authentic Chinese? The Results of My Study May Surprise You...
Karl Baker is a Mandarin learner, app developer, and regular contributor to I'm Learning Mandarin. He is working on developing the Chinese sentence-mi…
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How this Deaf Mandarin Learner Perfected Chinese Tones (Podcast)
This episode is available to listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. On today’s podcast, I speak to James Wong, a commercial model and…
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How the Dunning Kruger Effect Makes Chinese Learners Overestimate Their Skills
Will Hart is an Educator, fluent Chinese speaker and I'm Learning Mandarin contributor. In this blog post, he explains how a psychological phenomenon…
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The History of Chinese Attitudes Towards Mandarin Speaking Foreigners (Podcast)
Two weeks ago I announced my plans to open up the I'm Learning Mandarin podcast to you, offering you the chance to record your own podcast episodes in…
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The Fluency Simulator: Why You Should Get Into Intensive Listening (Again and Again)
Duncan Parrish is an I'm Learning Mandarin contributor and coordinator of Arti Languages, a project using mobile games and cognitive science to enhanc…
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The American Professor Who Performed Live Mandarin Comedy in Front of a Billion People (podcast)
He's had a fascinating and varied career in academia teaching courses in Chinese history and politics and authoring books on Mandarin grammar and the…
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Four Ways to Bridge the Gap From Textbooks to Native Chinese Reading Material
If you’ve memorised the most common 500 to 1000 Mandarin words you might find yourself in an awkward position. You can understand most of what’s writt…
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This Bully Nearly Made Me Give Up Chinese! (Podcast)
As usual, you can read the Chinese transcript below with the English translation underneath. As I've mentioned previously, I'll be posting these short…
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Building an App to Achieve Native Chinese Reading Skills (Podcast)
Emmanuel has more than 35 years of experience learning Chinese. He began his Mandarin odyssey in the late 80s, studying the language at university. Ho…
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Three Things You Need To Know Before You Study Chinese in Taiwan (Podcast)
Recently I decided to commit to producing the I'm Learning Mandarin podcast once a week instead of fortnightly. The plan is to continue posting guest…
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This Fluent Mandarin Speaker Worked for Google on Speech Recognition Systems (podcast)
Isaac has a fascinating Mandarin learning backstory which involves extensive travel around Taiwan and China and working at Google training language mo…
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What is Micro-Fluency and Why Should You Aim for It?
Duncan Parrish is an educational technologist and coordinator of Arti Languages, a project using mobile games and cognitive science to enhance how we…
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How to Stay Motivated When Learning Chinese (Podcast)
D. researcher and Chinese teacher originally from Finland Sara first moved to China in 2010 to study Mandarin, before deciding to settle there long-te…
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Why Memorising Chinese HSK Vocab Lists is a Bad Idea
In a previous post, I discussed why language proficiency tests are largely a waste of time as they distract you from working towards your real goals.…
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How did people learn languages in centuries gone by? (Podcast)
But if we study history, we’ll discover many of these modern approaches are actually very similar to the ways our ancestors learned foreign languages,…
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Does Your Chinese Teacher Meet These Five Essential Requirements?
Chinese teachers are everywhere. There are thousands upon thousands of them. They can be found on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Italki… Anywhe…
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How Much do Chinese Tones Actually Matter? Interview with Rob Neal (podcast)
Occasionally though, I have the pleasure of interviewing people with experience of all three - my recent episode with Olle Linge being a perfect examp…
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The Ultimate Chinese Learning Adventure (Podcast)
Today’s podcast episode is all about Carolina Navarro, a language educator from Spain whose Chinese learning adventures saw her overcome numerous cult…
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There Isn’t a Shred of Evidence That Speaking Early is Harmful for Your Chinese
“When should you start speaking Chinese?” This is the question at the centre of one of the longest standing debates in the language learning community…
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Interview with Hacking Chinese Founder Olle Linge (Podcast)
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…
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Reflecting on 2023 in Taiwan & Plans for 2024!
2023 has been an eventful year, both in terms of my own Mandarin learning journey as well as the Chinese education projects I’ve been involved with! A…
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Can You Really Be Understood If You Ignore Chinese Tones?
Recently I came across an interesting research paper investigating the popular claim that native speakers can still understand Mandarin learners who i…
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Fewer Students are Taking Chinese at University. But Online Self Directed Learning is Booming!
Recently the Times reported the number of British pupils studying foreign languages has more than halved over the last 20 years. Only 131,000 pupils t…
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Chinese Grammar Isn't As Simple As You Think!
I’ve often heard learners and teachers alike say Mandarin grammar is ‘simple.’ Unlike European languages, they point out that there are no genders, ve…
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My Photo Diary from Five Days Speaking Only Chinese on Mandarin Retreat Summer Camp
In this guest post, blogger and Mandarin Retreat volunteer Lingo Geek publishes his photo diary from five days spent speaking only Chinese on a recent…
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Catch-up with Will Hart: Nailing Sentence Structure & Visiting China for the First Time (Podcast)
By now, listeners to this podcast will be familiar with Will Hart, the Mandarin learning phenomenon who became incredibly fluent in Chinese within the…
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Five Ways I’ve Changed My Mind About Learning Chinese
My approaches to studying Chinese have evolved quite a bit since I first started this blog two years ago. Broadly speaking my view on how we learn lan…
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Learn Chinese With Instagram Star Jiaqi Laoshi (Podcast)
(This podcast is available on Apple, Spotify and Google) When I think back to all the Chinese tutors I’ve had in the past, the best have without fail…
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I Conducted an Experiment to See if I Could Overcome Chinese Accent Fossilisation. Here are the Results
Over the past few years, I've been conducting an experiment on myself to see whether it's possible to undo deeply entrenched Chinese pronunciation mis…
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I was Interviewed in Chinese by Language Learning Phenomenon Will Hart for his YouTube Channel! (Video)
Recently my friend Will Hart (whose incredible Mandarin learning journey was previously documented in this blog and on my podcast) invited me to go on…
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Can You Learn Mandarin From Outside Chinese Speaking Countries? Yes, Here’s Why
Ask someone who has never learned a foreign language to fluency what they imagine the best way to do so might be and many will reply: “Go and live in…
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How Overcoming Chinese Speaking Fears Led to a Life Changing Experience (Podcast)
(This podcast is available on Spotify and Apple.) A few weeks ago a message appeared on the I’m Learning Mandarin Facebook group addressed to me from…
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You Don’t Understand Everything In Your Native Language. Stop Trying To Do So In Chinese
One of my most misguided thought patterns when learning Chinese involved the belief that my ultimate goal must be to understand everything. This was t…
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How this Learner Fulfilled her Ambition of Becoming a Chinese Teacher (Podcast)
(This podcast is available on Apple and Spotify) Welcome back to another episode of the I’m Learning Mandarin Podcast. It’s been a while since I recor…
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Why I Never Use The CEFR Framework to Measure my Chinese Proficiency
Last week I started a discussion thread on the LingQ open forum in which I expressed my surprise at how popular the CEFR (Common European Framework of…
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Why Most Language Proficiency Exams are a Pointless Waste of Your Time
Recently I tweeted out the following message concerning language exams, generating a fair amount of discussion and agreement among fellow learners. I’…
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Four Ways ChatGPT Can Give Your Chinese a Huge Boost
Since ChatGPT became publicly available last November it has allegedly grown in popularity at a faster rate than any other online app or service in th…
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The Valuable Lesson I Learned Buying Snacks at Taiwan's Night Markets
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been travelling around Taiwan, visiting various towns and cities in the south of the country. As I wrote previousl…
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Four Things I’ve Learned From My First Week Living in Taiwan
Last week I moved to Taiwan to travel and study Chinese for six months. Although I have been to Taipei before, this is my first time doing so as a Man…
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2023 Chinese Learning Plans: I'm Moving to Taiwan!
Over the past few weeks, I haven’t posted quite as often as previously. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that I was struggling with m…
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The Beginner's Guide To Surviving a Weekend of Total Chinese Immersion
Lingo Geek is a language blogger, teacher and volunteer at Mandarin Retreat, organising immersive weekend trips for Chinese learners in the UK. In thi…
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Refold: Making Immersive Language Learning Mainstream (Podcast)
On to today’s podcast! On today's episode, I speak to Ethan, the CEO of Refold, an immersion-based language learning system that offers a guide and a…
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Opinion: No, Professor Krashen, the Perfect Accent Is NOT Already Within You
Just over a year ago, I attended an online networking conference for Mandarin enthusiasts. The event was run by the Confucius Institute and provided a…
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I Recorded My First Ever Podcast in Mandarin Chinese! 中式礼貌和英式礼貌有什么区别？
Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. Today’s episode is a very special edition in which, for the first time ever, th…
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Your Ultimate Guide to Mastering Chinese Listening in Five Steps
Of the four core language learning skills - listening, reading, speaking and writing - I've found listening to be the toughest to crack. For long peri…
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Four Myths About Learning Chinese Debunked
1. You Need to Go to China to Learn Chinese When I first started learning Chinese teachers and fellow learners often told me the only way I could poss…
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Tolerating Ambiguity: How to Cope With Not Understanding Chinese (Podcast)
New language learners often find it difficult to cope with the experience of not understanding. We’re used to being in situations in our native langua…
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How To Make the Most of Your Language Exchange Partnerships
In this post blogger and teacher Lingo Geek draws on his personal experience to offer four tips for using language exchange apps and developing learni…
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How to Overcome the Problem of Chinese Tones (Podcast)
Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. If you ask any Mandarin learner which aspect of the language they find most cha…
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Four Things to Look For in a Good Chinese Tutor (and What to Avoid)
Searching for a Chinese tutor online can be a headache. Whilst there are plenty of online apps and websites pairing language learners with tutors it c…
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Does Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis & Comprehensible Input Work for Learning Mandarin Chinese?
Professor Stephen Krashen has arguably had more of an impact in the field of modern language education than any other academic linguist. His Input Hyp…
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I Tasted Full Immersion for the First Time on a Weekend Mandarin Retreat (And You Can Too)
I’m Learning Mandarin are helping organise immersive language retreats to give learners in the UK the chance to spend entire weekends away speaking on…
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What's the Big Deal About Sentence Mining? (Podcast)
Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. Last Christmas I set myself a New Year's resolution to improve my spoken Chines…
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Watch this Beautiful Animated Short Story & Discover the Key to Persevering in Your Chinese Studies
In this post, language teacher and I'm Learning Mandarin blogger Lingo Geek reflects on the striking parallels between the classic tale, The Man Who P…
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Benny Lewis on Learning Chinese, Embracing Mistakes & Why He's Not a Language Learner (Podcast)
On today’s episode, I interview arguably the world’s most popular language learner, the one and only Benny Lewis. To many listeners, Benny or Benny th…
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Enter This Chinese Writing Contest & Become a Published Mandarin Author (Podcast)
On today’s episode, I talk to April Zhang, an inspirational Mandarin teacher and founder of the Chinese teaching website MSL Master. April is also the…
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Your Ultimate Guide to Chinese Sentence Mining in 5 Basic Steps
Illustrations by Esther Birts Many Mandarin learners are obsessed with building a large vocabulary. Often this can seem like a competition where stude…
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How to Achieve a Near Native Chinese Accent with Professor Karen Chung (Podcast)
Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. On today’s podcast, I chat with a very distinguished guest. Someone who has des…
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The 5 Most Common Chinese Learning Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them
(Illustrations by Esther Birts) A large part of my motivation for writing this blog is to discuss mistakes I've made in my approaches to learning Chin…
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How This Medical Student Became Totally Fluent in Chinese Within One Year While Living in the UK (Podcast)
Please subscribe on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review. On today’s episode, we delve into one of the most remarkable language-learning…
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Interviewing This Master of Oral Chinese Made Me Rethink Everything I Believed About Language Learning
This week I had the pleasure of interviewing two fascinating guests on my podcast, both of whom have achieved unusually high levels of spoken Mandarin…
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Mental Health & the Psychological Highs and Lows of Learning Chinese (Podcast)
Many listeners of this podcast are people who, like me, get immense joy and gratification from the language-learning process. However, it’s also worth…
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Guest Post: Learning Chinese Taught Me To Be Comfortable Making A Fool Of Myself
Many Chinese learners feel embarrassed when speaking the language in front of others and are afraid of being judged negatively for making mistakes. In…
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The Final Verdict. How Effective is Duolingo Chinese? (Podcast)
On today’s podcast, we discuss the world’s most popular language app, Duolingo. I’ve long been a critic of Duolingo, having spent a ridiculous amount…
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Matt Vs Japan on Input, Stephen Krashen, Why Accents Matter & Much More (Podcast)
On today’s podcast we have a very special guest, the YouTube superstar and fluent Japanese speaker Matt Vs Japan. Matt is a well known face in the lan…
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Is Matt Vs Japan Right That Your Accent Really Matters?
A few days ago I had the pleasure of interviewing the accomplished Japanese learner and YouTube star Matt Vs Japan for the I’m Learning Mandarin podca…
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Debate: Is Talent A Factor in Language Learning Success? (Podcast)
On today's episode, I debate the concept of language talent with two guests. Yong Jun is a PHD student researching the philosophy of language. Katheri…
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不敢当 Why I Hate it When Native Speakers Praise my Chinese
Last week a friend in the UK who is at a higher elementary level of Mandarin was telling me about an experience he had while walking the dog in the pa…
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I Completed DuoLingo Chinese. Here's Why You Shouldn't
A few summers ago I became addicted to the language-learning app Duolingo. I was a complete beginner in Chinese having spent the previous year attendi…
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Is Chinese Harder Than Other Languages? Interview with Langaholic (Podcast)
It’s often said that people shouldn’t compare different languages with each other or say that some languages are harder than others to study. I unders…
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How Many Words do you Really Need to Speak Fluent Chinese?
One of the most frequently asked questions from new Chinese learners is: "how many words will I need to learn before I'm fluent?" In this guest post c…
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Mastering Chinese Listening with Lei Lei (Podcast)
My guest on this episode is Lei Lei, a blogger and Mandarin Chinese learner who writes about the process of learning Chinese to a high level. After st…
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Join the I'm Learning Mandarin Facebook Community
I recently launched a Facebook group for Mandarin learners to connect with native speakers, share Mandarin learning resources and access our weekly la…
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Struggling to Speak Authentic Chinese? This Method Will Help Master Mandarin Grammar
In a previous post, I wrote about my ‘traffic light system’ for improving spoken Chinese. This involves categorising my Chinese tutor and friends into…
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Thanks to These Apps Self-Studying Chinese is Much Easier Than Ten Years Ago
It's easy to forget that ten years ago I - and many people around me - didn’t own a smartphone. At that time the most impressive thing I could do on m…
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Improving my Spoken Mandarin with the Traffic Light System
Towards the end of last year, I wrote a blog setting out my objective for 2022. In it I stated that by 2023 I hope to have developed enough confidence…
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Christmas Reflections & Ambitious New Year Goals
Reflecting on my progress over the past year I am left with a strange feeling. On the one hand, I believe my spoken proficiency, listening comprehensi…
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“Wow! Your Mandarin is Awesome!” Decoding Chinese Politeness (Podcast)
Anyone who has learned Mandarin will be familiar with how encouraging Chinese people tend to be towards those of us who take an interest in their lang…
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Benjamin Zephaniah on Learning Mandarin (Podcast)
For Today’s podcast, I had the honour of interviewing a very distinguished guest. Benjamin Zephaniah is best known as one of Britain’s favourite poets…
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Do You REALLY Need to Learn to Write Chinese Characters?
Learning to read and write Chinese characters is one of the most daunting challenges for Mandarin learners. But do you really need to learn to write C…
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Expectations Vs Reality of Learning Chinese (With Luke Truman)
On today's podcast, I discuss how expectations often differ from reality when learning Mandarin. My guest is YouTuber Luke Truman who has been documen…
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Leaning Chinese with Graded Readers (Podcast)
On today’s episode, I discuss a topic I have previously blogged about: graded readers. For those who aren’t familiar, graded readers are books intende…
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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…
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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…
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Key Predictors of Mandarin Success (Podcast)
On today’s episode, I discuss learning Mandarin with a man who has not only learned the language for himself, he’s also observed the trajectories of h…
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Three Ways Native Speakers React to Chinese Learners
Below is a video of me being interviewed in Mandarin on YouTuber Will Hart’s channel. Two years ago I hosted a party for the language exchange group I…
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Cracking the Intermediate Plateau (Podcast)
The I’m Learning Mandarin Podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. As an intermediate Mandarin learner, one of the main challenges I fa…
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Can You Speak A Foreign Language With 400 Words?
Two years ago I had an experience which completely altered my perspective on language learning. I travelled to Taiwan for a three-week trip and quickl…
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Why I Don't Believe in Language Talent
Below is a video of me being interviewed in Mandarin on YouTuber Will Hart’s channel. I used to think there was such a thing as language talent. I use…
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Learning Mandarin in a Pandemic (Podcast)
The I'm Learning Mandarin Podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts as well as Spotify. The global pandemic has had a profound influence on the way w…
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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 re…
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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 th…
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This Tutor Almost Made Me Give Up Learning Chinese
Most of my experiences with Chinese tutors over the years have been excellent and I have benefited from their guidance immensely. However, a couple of…
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Immersion Vs Structured Learning (Podcast)
Anyone who studies a language has to combine a mixture of approaches that broadly fall into two categories: naturalistic and structured. Naturalistic…
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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 especia…
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My Mandarin Methods & Resources (Video)
This week I was interviewed by Elle Lebel of the online language learning tool LingQ to discuss my resources and methods for learning Mandarin. The di…
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My Chinese Learning Podcast Interview
Recently I went on the excellent You Can Learn Chinese podcast where I was interviewed about my motivations for learning Mandarin as well as my tips f…
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Using LingQ To Study Chinese
Over the years I have used several different language learning apps and websites. Out of all these online tools, LingQ has been the most beneficial to…
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How to Assess Your Chinese Level
Assessing your level of Chinese may sound simple but it is easier said than done. There is no objective test that can accurately measure your ability…
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Why I Don't Study Formal Chinese Grammar
Below is a video of me being interviewed in Mandarin on YouTuber Will Hart’s channel. In the four years I have been learning Chinese I have spent very…
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Why I'm a Fan of Chinese Graded Readers
When I started out learning Mandarin one of the things that used to irritate me the most was receiving vague and unhelpful replies from seasoned learn…
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How Useful are Flashcards for Learning Mandarin Vocab?
Mandarin learners are often divided on the topic of flashcards. How useful are they? How should they be used? At what stage are they most useful? In t…
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Remembering Laoshu: the Imperfectionist Polyglot
The recent death of popular YouTube polyglot, Laoshu (老鼠) has caused me to reflect on an issue that continues to afflict the language learning communi…
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Four Language Gurus Whose Advice is Golden
Below is a video of me being interviewed in Mandarin on YouTuber Will Hart’s channel. When I first started learning Mandarin I quickly found myself dr…
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Has Lockdown Helped or Hindered my Chinese Learning?
Below is a video of me being interviewed in Mandarin on YouTuber Will Hart’s channel. The pandemic has had a profound impact on the way we all live an…
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Leaving the Classroom: Self Studying my Way to Chinese Fluency
Below is a video of me being interviewed in Mandarin on YouTuber Will Hart's channel. A little over two years ago I wrote a blog documenting my experi…
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