Since I met my fiancee, who is a Singapore citizen, and a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker, I felt the urge to learn the basics of the language myself. As I was living in Finland back then, there was no natural Chinese-speaking environment, so I had to create one artificially.
Here is my Chinese-language learning path I’d like to share with you. I’ve put together a simple and straightforward list of resources I’ve used. It’s by no means a perfect path (there isn’t such), but you will find inspiration if you’re about to start, or have recently started to learn Mandarin Chinese.
In chronological order:
Litao Chinese — YouTube video course for beginners
Pimsleur audio course — Listening and speaking practice for beginners
iTalki — Private tutoring online, over Skype/WeChat
Short traditional course held offline — great for basic grammar and essential vocabulary
TV drama in Chinese — Ode to Joy was my favorite show
Chinese music — My favorite songs
ChinesePod — Huge archive to learn from
Skritter app — Hanzi drilling
HSK tests — Goals to aim for
Chinese Graded Readers book series — reading a real book in Chinese!
1. Litao Chinese was my first learning resource. It’s a simple YouTube course, with 20 episodes each 5-15min long — designed for complete beginners. I started every morning by having a morning run and then reserving the first productive hour of the day to watch one episode with full focus. During the episode, I wrote down all hanzis and pinyins on a traditional paper notebook. I paused the video once in a while to have enough time to do the writing. This was an easy way to get started, as you could learn each episode independently.
2. Pimsleur Chinese audio course. To get started with spoken Chinese and simple conversations, I used the Pimsleur Chinese audio course. They are 30min-long audio recordings, based on spaced repetition. You hear a sentence in English and have time to translate and pronounce it yourself in Chinese, and then you hear the correct Chinese translation. There are altogether 5 levels, each containing 30 episodes (that is, 150 episodes in total). I listened to one episode every morning while on a morning run. I could never have just sat still in a room and listen to them, though. Some people probably found it funny as I was running in a park and speaking to myself. I’ve also read online how some people listen to the Pimsleur episodes while driving a car. I think Pimsleur is best combined with some other activity you do on your own, or whatever works for you. (Btw, Pimsleur courses are quite expensive when purchased directly on the Pimsleur website — better to have a look elsewhere, e.g. on Amazon, first)
3. Private tutoring online on iTalki. I started to take online classes once a week with native Chinese speakers. This is a real language hack and sped up my learning process, especially in pronunciation. Mandarin tutoring is priced anywhere between 5-25 USD per hour, based on the experience/demand of the teacher. That’s very affordable compared to traditional face-to-face private tutoring. I’ve written an entire blog post about iTalki which you can find here (Triple Your Language Learning and Speaking Skills with Private Online Tutors)
4. Short traditional classroom course — I also signed up for a traditional course held in person, which lasted 6 weeks, two times a week. This was useful as well, and it’s always nice to have other people around when learning a language. I found that the course was great for the basics of grammar and vocabulary. However, it didn’t help my pronunciation at all. I think many students actually learned to pronounce incorrectly because the teacher couldn’t help students individually. So, remember to book private tutor time to get the pronunciation right (see iTalki, the previous chapter)
5. Chinese TV drama. After a few months of somewhat monotonous learning, I felt the need to immerse myself with some real Chinese content. I found that Ode To Joy, a TV drama about 5 Shanghainese ladies, was an entertaining way to relax one hour before going to sleep. It also taught me about contemporary Chinese city culture, sometimes characterized by vast wealth gaps. You can find the series on Viki.com and some episodes are also on YouTube.
6. Chinese music. As you must have noticed, I have a habit of going for a 30min morning run. After I listened to all 150 Pimsleur episodes during my runs, I compiled a list of upbeat Chinese music that I could enjoy listening to while running. I found this playlist on Spotify which I’ve listened to dozens of times. Two of my favorite tracks are from a Taiwanese band called 八三夭 (831): the first track being a duet with 鄭秀文 (Sammy Cheng), and the second one called 致青春 Young guns.
The most hilarious piece of music I’ve found online is Backstreet Boys’ legendary song ‘I want it that way’ sang in Chinese :-) See the video below.
7. ChinesePod is a huge archive of videos and podcasts for Chinese language learners in every level. There are free episodes or a paid monthly subscription to choose from. I like the vibe of ChinesePod as its production quality is really professional. However, the content is not very uniform. Many times you would need to follow the video instructions at the same time — listening to just the audio isn’t always suitable. This made it difficult for me to incorporate ChinesePod episodes into my morning run habit. That said, I’m sure many Chinese learners will find ChinesePod resources immensely useful. Also, have a look at their YouTube channel or phone app for some free content.
Skritter app — the best app to drill those damn hanzis
8. Drilling hanzis — enter Skritter app. The most daunting thing in Chinese language learning is to memorize the thousands of hanzi characters. To be able to complete the first HSK1 test, you need to master 150 hanzis. For HSK2 you need 300. However, to be able to read a newspaper you need to know around 3000 hanzis! Leaning hanzis is just about a lot of drilling in reading and recognizing the characters. In different formats and ways that work for you. The best app, in my opinion, to incorporate into your daily bus/train commutes is Skritter, which is specifically designed for learning Chinese hanzis. It’s based on spaced repetition like Pimsleur, and most importantly, you can also practice writing the strokes of each hanzi, not just memorize them. You can see your daily/weekly/monthly progress on the app, which is surprisingly motivating.
A few more thoughts about learning hanzis: Besides writing on your phone screen with Skritter, it is good to also write using a traditional pen and paper. Nothing beats the muscle memory of writing down the strokes in an old fashioned notebook. Also, it’s a good idea to start studying hanzis early on. I didn’t, and I had to catch up later which was more of a struggle for me.
And finally, learn the ‘radicals’ and their meanings. A ‘radical’ is a graphical component of one hanzi, and it can be a semantic/phonetic indicator of what the hanzi means. This can immensely help in memorization. In the beginning, I was just trying to bang out hanzis without much supporting logic. When my iTalki teacher started to teach me radicals, I started to memorize hanzis much better.
9. Chinese Proficiency Test, or HSK tests (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi). Just like English has the TOEFL test, the standardized test for the Chinese language is the HSK test. It comes in 6 levels: HSK 1, HSK 2, HSK 3, HSK 4, HSK 5 and HSK 6. One needs to master 150, 300, 600, 1200, 2500 and 5000 words, respectively, at each level. Passing the tests won’t make you a fluent speaker, however, but they have served as a motivational goal for me. That’s why I have used official HSK language books when learning Chinese.
You can find your nearest test center by simply googling “HSK test YourCountry”. There are plenty of practice tests online (e.g. here), and it’s good to complete some 3-4 practice tests on your own before taking the actual test.
In my experience, HSK 1 is ridiculously easy to complete after a few months of self-study. I actually never tested myself officially and went straight to take the HSK 2 test. For HSK 2, you need a fair bit of practice to pass it. In both the HSK 1 and HSK 2 tests, you will survive with just with pinyin romanization. From HSK 3 and upwards the tests get challenging — everything is only in hanzis and there is no pinyin to help you.
10. Chinese Graded Reader book series. Jared Turner and John Pasden have authored great fiction books for Chinese learners. They use e.g. original English stories authored by H.S. Wells that has been retrofitted to the Chinese language using a limited amount of hanzis. The books come in ‘levels’ as well, with Level 1 books containing only 300 hanzis. If you’ve studied Chinese for about 1-2 years, you should be able to read the Level 1 books. There are also some footnote translations for difficult words, but the actual text is written entirely with hanzis.
I’ve personally read the book “Country of the Blind People” and it was great. The story was captivating, and it felt inspiring to actually read a real book in Chinese.
To be transparent though, I was slow in finishing the entire book (of about 70 pages). It took me around 2 weeks in total and around 2 hours of focused reading every day.
That said, it was very effective. I noticed that my hanzi learning and memorization speed 10x’d. By the end of the book, I was reading significantly faster compared to just 2 weeks before. It was much more effective compared to tackling HSK textbook chapters.
I’m overwhelmed by all the resources — where should I start?
To get started, I recommend to book a good teacher on iTalki for a minimum of twice a week, and order physical copies of HSK 1 and HSK 2 textbooks, and simply stick to these in your beginner routine for a few months. I advise to never drop this routine (if you are having the idea of replacing it with another supposedly ‘better’ routine), but to simply introduce more habits on top of the iTalki classes and HSK books.
The next few habits would be Pimsleur podcasts, HSK tests and Chinese Graded Readers books.
Especially at the beginning of Chinese language studies, apps, music, and TV dramas are just entertainment. They are usually just excuses to avoid real studying which takes quite a bit of mental energy :-)
Looking back, how would I study differently?
Everything comes back to habits. No technique, resource or language hack is useful if you don’t have a regular and steady studying rhythm. Personally, I regret having some months of pauses from iTalki classes when things got too busy and stressful in my entrepreneurial life.
Having a weekly/daily routine is everything. Early morning routines have been the best for me. Besides acquiring a new skill, I discovered language learning also reduced my overall stress levels (I later learned that this is supported by science as well).
Another thing I would do differently is the way how I learn hanzis. For the first few months, I neglected the hanzis almost completely. With pinyin romanization everywhere in the HSK 1 and HSK 2 textbooks, it got too easy.
Not learning hanzis in the beginning was a mistake I had to pay for later as all the chapters in the HSK 3 book are presented in hanzis without pinyins next to the text. Completing a chapter at the HSK 3 level (with exercises included) took me 4 times longer than HSK 2.
Hopefully, you got inspired :-)
With this blog post, I wanted to prove that you can create ‘virtual immersion’ in language learning surprisingly easily, with the resources available mostly online. I have used the methods mentioned above for the first 2-3 years of my part-time Chinese study.
Happy learning!