In this final episode of ‘Will I ever learn Chinese’ I discuss how I would approach learning a new language in future, outlining the techniques, materials and approaches for different languages of the world. Then, I reflect back on my own learn...

We’re coming to the end of the first series of ‘Will I ever learn Chinese’. In these last two episodes, I am looking at language learning techniques and summarise my process of learning Chinese. In this episode, I’m looking at different approac...

I love puzzles, be it crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles or the puzzle that is learning or analysing another language. My PhD thesis, for example, is a grammatical description of the small Amazonian indigenous language Mosetén. I was working wit...

I’m always amazed by how similar the languages of the world are when I’m learning a new language. Languages are able to express the same concepts, often in strikingly similar ways. The apparent differences in lexicon, grammar, sound and so on, ...

In this episode I’m talking about traveling to China for the first time and using my newly acquired language in the real world. Wherever I travel, I like to be able to speak at least a little bit of the local language and communicate with local...

Learning Chinese gave me a new understanding of language acquisition, and a new direction for my research. By going through the process myself, I experienced the mechanisms of language learning subjectively, with my own feelings and experiences...

In this episode I reflect on my immersive learning approach, surrounding myself by the language and using the language in a lot of different environments. Immersion made a big difference to my learning, it helped me ‘see’ myself as a part of th...

When looking at language acquisition and learning, we rarely consider the other side of the coin: language attrition. This means a language is disappearing, the speaker can’t speak it as well as before. The speech becomes slow and less complex....

During the first few months of learning Chinese, I wanted to turn my learning into an experiment: how much Chinese would I be able to learn in a year? This motivated me greatly, but of course I did not stop after a year. But where was I, a year...

A hot topic in second language learning and teaching circles, artificial intelligence proved to be a game-changer for my learning of Chinese. I suddenly had that ‘friend’ who would happily correct my writing. The results were not always perfect...

In this episode I’m looking at accent and dialect. Many learners have a distinct foreign accent. Is that inevitable, or are their ways to work on your accent (and if so, is it necessary)? I’m talking about various techniques, such as shadowing ...

My spoken Chinese was getting more and more ‘fluent’, in that I could have uninterrupted conversations in real life, using my online conversation lessons with teachers to iron out any issues in my pronunciation and expression. All of a sudden, ...

This episode is about me, finally, finding teachers to Chinese. At first I was learning in a vacuum at home, building confidence in understanding the language, but now that I had taken the plunge and had started to speak to others, I wanted to ...

In this episode I’m finally taking the plunge, looking for more speakers of Chinese to talk to. I’m considering tandem language exchange programmes and finding Chinese friends, eventually finding a group dedicated to learners and speakers of Ch...

Would I ever be able to speak Chinese fluently, and what would that mean? I had reached a stage where I was starting to speak more coherently, but on some days it felt like I was not able to speak at all. Crucially, my speaking lagged well behi...

In this episode I explain how I initially learnt and revised vocabulary, and how I prepared for the next stage of my learning journey: speaking for real. Well, I had a number of attempts at trying to speak for real and not really succeeding at ...

In this episode I explore how I honed my different Chinese language skills: understanding, speaking, reading and writing. I look at all those wonderful tools, most of which are free, that are available to the intermediate learner. In my own lea...

In this episode I'm looking at language tests and certificates. Would that be a goal for me, and which test should I aim for? Would preparing for a test really motivate me?I try to find ways to make my language learning at the intermediate ...

How do you even write Chinese text messages when you don't have a keyboard with 5000 or more characters? In this episode I look at ways in which Chinese is used today, and at some of the changes to the written language within the last 100 years...

In this episode I'm looking at the history of the Chinese writing system and why it is so successful that it is still used today. In my own learning, once I knew enough characters and had built up a basic understanding of how the system worked,...

Chinese has many homophones: words that sound the same. And when you are only just entering the intermediate stage and are still not very confident when it comes to the different 'tones', there are even more such homophones. What can the learne...

In this episode I describe how learning Chinese became my treasured escape from reality. I wanted to tell everyone about my new language and also start speaking Chinese with real people, but I was still not very proficient, despite my efforts. ...

When I realised that learning to read and write Chinese characters would help me in my learning, I started to add a writing app to my repertoire of learning methods. Suddenly the characters started to make sense and I saw a pattern behind the a...

Do people really have different learning preferences, and how do you go about finding yours? In this episode I reflect on my language learning back at school, which, mildly put, was a disaster. Not only did my English teacher state that I had n...

I look at how Chinese is different from the other languages I speak, and how I was dealing with this difficulty. Also, after the first few weeks of learning Chinese, I noticed that I was missing something and that I was getting quite confused a...