My Approach to Mandarin Learning

As you would have seen if you read my page on learning methods there are a variety of approaches you can take to learning a second language.

In my numerous and varied (failed) attempts at learning Mandarin I tried a few of them and eventually I settled on a hand picked combination of tools and methods. These are the critical factors I took into consideration when designing my personal training roadmap:

• I am learning to read as well as speak - methods should reflect this.
• Consistency is really important so I need systems and content that can be used daily.
• Motivation to keep going is hard when you hit a wall or life gets busy.
• Needs to keep me interested with fresh or gamified content. Once again this helps me stay motivated.
• I need to be able to track progress - small wins that show visible success helps.
• Portability. It's easier to maintain a daily practice if you can use a mobile device.

There are plenty of apps and learning programs that meet a lot, if not all, of the criteria above. One of the main reasons for me going with a mixed approach is for variety. If you are like me, you can find yourself getting a bit bored with using the same system over and over again. Mixing it up, even at the early beginner stages was really helpful to keep things interesting and fresh. Some of the apps I use are better than others at mixing up the lessons between, learning new words, listening to native speakers, quizzes and writing practice. Even so, mixing it up even further by switching between 3 core learning apps, online videos, flash cards and other sources of input can help to keep it even fresher.

If speed is your thing then this might not be the approach for you. I have wasted years of failed attempts so for me, it was really about finding the method that I personally connected with, rather than trying to race to the finish line. Using several different apps in parallel will seem like it slows you down at first but it will expose you to different vocabualry streams in parallel. You will see that not every 'level 1' is the same in each app or program. Sure there is some overlap but there are also some differences which will give you a bigger arsenal of words and concepts as you take the first beginner steps.

My other finding is that consistent, regular daily practice is better than sporadic marathon sessions. It's great if you can do 3 to 4 hours on a Wednesday night but doing 1 hour every day will help burn things into your memory much better. Of course for busy people this is not easy and it's why I built a learning schedule into my approach. I have some example schedules you can base your own on here in the Schedules section.

Again, Welcome! I hope I can provide you with some tips, advice and tools to help and motivate you on your Chinese language journey - there are more than 1.4 billion Chinese speakers out there - so let's take this adventure together and get chatting with them!