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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Mandarin Speaking
Posts on getting Mandarin out of your mouth more naturally: tones, pronunciation, conversation practice, tutor work, sentence mining, and the confidence to use what you know.
83 posts
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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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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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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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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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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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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