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  • The Only 3 Resources You Need to Learn Mandarin to Fluency

    In my last post, I argued that to learn more Mandarin, you need to study less. The more apps, courses and textbooks you juggle, the less any of them actually works.

    The obvious follow-up question is: okay, so what should I keep?

    After nearly seven years of learning Mandarin, here’s my honest answer. You only need three resources to learn Mandarin and get to fluency:

    1. YouTube
    2. Podcasts
    3. A spaced repetition system (SRS)

    That’s it. Two give you input, one makes sure it sticks. Add real conversations on top, and you’ve got everything you need.

    Let’s go through each one, why it earns its place, and how to get the most out of it.

    The 3 best resources to learn Mandarin: YouTube, podcasts and spaced repetition

    1. YouTube: input you can see

    YouTube is the best free Mandarin resource on the planet, and it’s the one I’d start with.

    Why it earns its place:

    • Visual context makes input understandable. When you can see what people are doing, pointing at and reacting to, you can follow far more than you could from audio alone. That’s huge at lower levels.
    • There’s content for every level. From slow, learner-focused channels to street interviews, vlogs and full TV dramas, you never run out of things to watch.
    • Subtitles make sentence mining easy. Almost every Mandarin video has subtitles. That makes it quick to look up words and pull out useful sentences to review later.

    Channels I recommend:

    • Mandarin Corner: huge variety, from street interviews to walk-around vlogs. Brilliant for getting from lower to upper intermediate.
    • 大叔中文 Dashu Mandarin: slightly harder, and one of my favourites. Nearly every learner I speak to loves it.
    • My own channel, where I talk about how I learn and share lots of practical chunks.

    How to use it well:

    • Use Mandarin subtitles, not English ones, as soon as you can.
    • As your level grows, move from learner channels to content made for native speakers: vlogs, interviews and TV shows.
    • Don’t just watch passively all the time. When a sentence jumps out as useful, note it down.

    2. Podcasts: input you can take anywhere

    If YouTube is where you learn to understand Mandarin, podcasts are where you learn to understand it without help.

    Why they earn their place:

    • No subtitles. Podcasts force your ears to do the work. They’re the best antidote to becoming over-reliant on subtitles, and the fastest way to get comfortable with native-speed speech.
    • They turn dead time into Mandarin time. Commuting, cooking, cleaning, walking, going to the gym: you can listen during all of it. This is how you get one to two hours of Mandarin a day without “finding” extra time.
    • Real conversation. Many podcasts are two or more people chatting naturally, which is exactly the kind of Mandarin you want to understand and eventually speak.

    Podcasts I recommend:

    You’ll find all of these on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you want a huge range of native Chinese podcasts, it’s also worth trying 小宇宙 (Xiaoyuzhou), China’s most popular podcast app.

    Bonus: audiobooks. I treat audiobooks as part of this category. They’re brilliant for vocabulary and for keeping motivation up with a story you actually want to finish. I personally use 番茄小说.

    How to use them well:

    • Pick podcasts you’d genuinely enjoy listening to. Interest keeps you consistent.
    • Don’t worry about understanding everything. Aim for the gist and let your brain do the rest.
    • If something keeps coming up that you don’t understand, look it up and add it to your review.
    • If you come across a useful sentence which has vocab/chunks in that you think you’ll need in real conversations put it into you spaced repetition system.

    3. A spaced repetition system: making it stick

    Input is where you meet new Mandarin. But if you only meet a useful sentence once, it’s gone a week later. That’s where a spaced repetition system (SRS) comes in.

    An SRS shows you material just before you’re about to forget it. Things you know well come up less and less often; things you struggle with come up more. It’s the most efficient way I know to hold on to what you learn, and repetition is key for successful learning.

    Flashcards have been a huge part of my journey. I’ve made over 20,000 of them, and with good cards my daily reviews still only take around 15 to 20 minutes.

    What to put in it: useful sentences and chunks you’ve found in your YouTube videos and podcasts. Not single words, and not someone else’s pre-made deck. Your flashcards should be personal, built from the Mandarin you actually want to use.

    Why I now use the Fluency Trainer

    For years I used Anki. But Anki is mostly built for recognition: you see something and remember what it means. If your goal is to speak, you need to practice production: building sentences yourself, out loud.

    That’s why I built the Fluency Trainer:

    • You build whole sentences from English, the way you do in a real conversation, rather than filling in gaps.
    • It forces you to say them out loud, so you’re training your mouth as well as your memory.
    • It’s designed around chunks, so you learn ready-made pieces you can slot together on the spot instead of translating word by word.
    • You can add your own sentences from your input in one click (generates the pinyin audio and English automatically), so your reviews stay personal and you’ll save a ton of time making flashcards.

    All in all, the Fluency Trainer is designed for learners who want to reap the benefits of flashcards specifically to improve their speaking.

    If you’re curious how it compares, I wrote a full Anki vs. Fluency Trainer comparison.

    What about speaking?

    You might have noticed there’s no “speaking resource” on this list. That’s deliberate.

    Speaking isn’t something you get from an app. It comes from real conversations with real people: friends, a language exchange partner or a tutor. That’s where the sentences from your SRS start coming out naturally, and where you find the gaps, the things you wanted to say but couldn’t. Those gaps become your next sentences to review.

    So think of it like this: YouTube and podcasts are the input, the SRS is the bridge, and conversations are where it all gets put to use.

    What you don’t need

    Here’s what you can happily cut, or at least stop feeling guilty about:

    • Multiple flashcard apps. One SRS is enough.
    • Stacks of textbooks. One can be helpful at the very start, but you’ll learn far more from real input.
    • Endless grammar courses. Grammar sinks in through chunks and exposure, not memorised rules.
    • Gamified apps you use for the streak. If the streak is the goal, it isn’t helping you speak.
    • Hours of handwriting practice, unless writing by hand is genuinely one of your goals.

    Putting it all together

    Here’s what a day with just these three resources might look like:

    • Morning commute: a podcast episode.
    • Lunch break: a YouTube video with Mandarin subtitles. Note down two or three useful sentences.
    • Evening: 15 to 20 minutes of reviews in the Fluency Trainer, adding the sentences you found today in a click of a button.
    • A few times a week: a conversation in Mandarin.

    Simple, repeatable, and it adds up to one to two hours of Mandarin a day without feeling like a chore. If you want to see how this works in practice, here’s my full Mandarin study routine.

    FAQ

    What are the best resources to learn Mandarin?

    For most learners: YouTube, podcasts and a spaced repetition system. Together they give you plenty of real input and a way to make it stick. Add regular conversations and you have everything you need.

    Can you learn Mandarin for free?

    Almost entirely. YouTube and podcasts are free, and so are conversations with friends or exchange partners. The only thing worth considering paying for is a good SRS, because it decides how much of your input actually sticks.

    Why is it worth paying for? Because a good SRS saves you two things free tools usually cost you: time and speaking practice.

    • It’s built for speaking, not just recognition. Most free flashcard apps train you to recognise Mandarin. A speaking-focused SRS has you build sentences and say them out loud, which is exactly what you need to do in a real conversation.
    • It does the boring work for you. Making flashcards by hand means typing out the Chinese, adding pinyin, finding a translation and recording or downloading audio for every single card. Do that for thousands of sentences and you’ve lost hours and hours that could have gone into listening or speaking.
    • It keeps you consistent. When adding a sentence takes one click instead of five minutes, you actually do it, so your reviews keep growing with the Mandarin you’re meeting every day.

    That’s exactly why I built the Fluency Trainer: add a sentence in one click, and it generates the pinyin, audio and English for you, so your time goes into practicing, not hunting for English translations.

    Do I need a textbook to learn Mandarin?

    Not really. A textbook can help with the basics in your first few weeks, but after that I think you’ll probably find you make far more progress from real input and reviewing useful sentences.

    Three resources, done well

    You don’t need ten resources to learn Mandarin. You need three, used consistently: YouTube, podcasts and an SRS.

    If you want an SRS built specifically for speaking, give my Fluency Trainer a try. You can also sign up to my free email course for more tips like this.

    What are your favourite Mandarin YouTube channels and podcasts? Let me know in the comments here or on my YouTube channel.

  • Want to Learn More Mandarin? Study Less

    Want to Learn More Mandarin? Study Less

    Most Mandarin learners I speak to aren’t short on resources. They’re drowning in them.

    Three flashcard apps. Two textbooks. A grammar course they’re halfway through. An HSK vocab list, a character-writing app, a tone trainer, a YouTube playlist saved “for later”, and a podcast they listen to on 1.5x speed while doing something else.

    And after all that, they still freeze when someone asks them a simple question in Mandarin.

    Here’s the slightly counterintuitive idea behind this post: if you want to learn more Mandarin, you probably need to study less. Not less time, necessarily, but far fewer things. Pick the few activities that actually get the results, and put almost all of your time into them. That’s the secret to a Mandarin study routine that actually works.

    Simple Mandarin study routine: input, study and output

    The resource overload trap

    There has never been more stuff out there for learning Mandarin. That’s great, but it comes with a hidden cost.

    Every new resource feels like progress. Downloading an app, buying a course or building a new study plan gives you a little hit of motivation. It feels productive. But setting up your learning isn’t the same as learning.

    The more things you try to do, the more of these problems creep in:

    • Your time gets spread thin. Ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there. Nothing gets enough repetition to actually stick, and repetition is key for successful learning.
    • You spend more time managing than learning. Keeping streaks alive across five apps becomes the goal, rather than understanding and speaking Mandarin.
    • You never find out what works. When you’re doing everything at once, it’s impossible to tell which activity is actually making you better.
    • You burn out. A Mandarin study routine with ten moving parts is hard to keep up. One busy week and the whole thing collapses.

    I see this all the time with students I work with. They’re working really hard, but a lot of that effort goes into activities that barely touch the thing they actually want, which for most people is to understand native speakers and hold a real conversation. I’ve even seen students ‘procrastinate’ by doing things that seem easier, e.g. practicing calligraphy when they know they should be speaking, because speaking ‘feels harder’.

    The 80/20 rule for learning Mandarin

    You’ve probably heard of the 80/20 rule (the Pareto principle): roughly 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

    It isn’t a precise law of nature, but it’s a surprisingly useful way to think about language learning. Out of everything you could be doing to improve your Mandarin, a small handful of activities account for most of your progress. The rest are nice-to-haves at best, and distractions at worst.

    So the goal isn’t to find more things to do. It’s to:

    1. Find your 20%: the few activities that genuinely make you better at understanding and speaking.
    2. Put the majority of your time into them.
    3. Cut, or heavily reduce, everything else.

    This is where most learners get it backwards. They keep adding resources, hoping the next one will be the breakthrough, when the breakthrough is usually doing the boring basics consistently, day after day.

    Part of the problem is that everything in language learning is marketed as the one and only breakthrough, but very few things actually live up to that expectation. I’ll openly admit I have a course based on learning Chinese in chunks, and a bit of software (it’s called the Fluency Trainer) that helps you learn to construct natural sentences out loud. But as great as they are (and I use my Fluency Trainer daily), if you’re already swamped with resources, don’t just add them to the pile. If you are going to get a new app/course etc, use them to replace something else, not as one more thing to do.

    My simple Mandarin study routine

    People are often surprised by how simple my Mandarin study routine is. There’s no complicated system. It has three parts: input, study and output.

    1. Input: listen and watch a lot

    I listen to podcasts (like Tea Time Chinese, 大叔中文 Dashu Mandarin and Mandarin Corner early on in my learning, and now things like 霓达播客 and 大人的Small Talk) and audiobooks, and I watch TV shows in Mandarin. That’s it.

    This is where most of my time goes, and it’s the easiest part to fit into a busy day. Commuting, cooking, going for a walk, winding down in the evening: all of it can be Mandarin time.

    Lots of input is what lets you keep up with native-speed speech. It also exposes you to how people actually talk, which is often quite different from the textbook.

    2. Study: note down useful sentences and review them

    While I’m listening or watching, I note down useful sentences. Not individual words, but whole sentences or chunks that I can imagine myself saying.

    Then I throw them into my Fluency Trainer for review. Because I practice building and saying those sentences out loud, they don’t just sit in my head as things I recognise. They become things I can actually say. (If you’re wondering how this compares with flashcards, here’s my Anki vs. Fluency Trainer comparison.)

    This is the bridge between input and output. Input gives you the raw material, and review makes sure it sticks.

    3. Output: have regular conversations

    Finally, I have regular conversations in Mandarin with friends.

    This is where everything comes together. The sentences I’ve been reviewing start popping up naturally, and I quickly find the gaps: things I wanted to say but couldn’t. Those gaps become the next sentences I note down, and the cycle starts again.

    Why it works

    Each part feeds the next:

    • Input gives me new language in real context.
    • Study turns the most useful bits into something I can produce.
    • Output puts it to use and shows me what I’m still missing.

    No grammar workbooks, no five different apps, no complicated schedules. Just three activities, done consistently.

    If you want to see how this fits into an actual day, I break it down in How to Speak Mandarin Confidently: A Simple Daily System That Actually Works.

    How to build your own Mandarin study routine

    Your 20% might not look exactly like mine, and that’s fine. Here’s how to work it out.

    1. Get clear on your goal. If you want to speak Mandarin confidently, your time should mostly go into things that build listening and speaking. Hours of handwriting practice won’t get you there, however satisfying it feels.

    2. List everything you’re currently doing. Every app, course, book and habit. Be honest. Most people are surprised by how long the list is.

    3. Ask one question about each item: does this directly help me understand real Mandarin at native speed or say what I want to say? If the answer is “sort of” or “not really”, it’s a candidate for the chop. You need to be a bit more brutal with what you’re doing with your time if you want to make real progress.

    4. Look at what’s actually made you better. Think back to the moments you noticed real progress. What were you doing at the time? That’s a strong clue to your 20%. e.g. I noticed that conversations with friends grew my speaking and listening abilities massively, I also noticed that things I put in my Fluency Trainer just naturally work their way into my future conversations, finally, audiobooks have significantly boosted my vocabulary and motivation. So these are the cornerstone of my routine.

    5. Cut ruthlessly, then double down. Drop or pause the low-value activities, and move that time into the high-value ones. You’ll probably end up studying a similar number of hours, but far more of them will count.

    6. Stick with it. The hardest part isn’t choosing a simple routine. It’s resisting the urge to add the shiny new app you see next month. Give your new Mandarin study routine a few months before you judge it. I would recommend taking some inspiration from my routine, as I’ve found it to work for many others too. I go into more detail in my video Day in My Life Learning Mandarin While Writing My PhD Thesis.

    FAQ

    How many hours a day should I study Mandarin?

    Consistency matters more than hours. A routine you can keep up every day beats a heroic study session once a week. Most of that time can be easy input, like podcasts on your commute, with a short daily review and regular conversations on top. I want to set you the challenge of getting in 1 or 2 hours of Mandarin a day (that sounds hard, but if you use time like your commute, cooking, cleaning, it’s much easier than you think).

    What’s the best Mandarin study routine?

    Focus on the few activities that build real listening and speaking: lots of input, reviewing useful sentences, and speaking with real people. Cut the activities that don’t directly help you with your listening and speaking (if these are your main goals)/

    How many resources should I use to learn Mandarin?

    Fewer than you think. One or two sources of input you enjoy, one tool to review (e.g. my Fluency Trainer) what you’re learning, and one way to practice speaking is plenty.

    Learn more Mandarin by doing less

    Learning Mandarin isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing the right few things, a lot.

    For me, that’s lots of input, reviewing useful sentences, and talking to real people. Simple, but it works, and it’s the Mandarin study routine I’ve stuck with for years.

    If you want a simple way to handle the study part, give my Fluency Trainer a try: add the sentences you come across and practice saying them out loud until they come out naturally in conversation. You can also sign up to my free email course for more tips like this.

    And I’m curious: what’s in your current Mandarin study routine, and what could you cut? Let me know in the comments here or over on my YouTube channel.

  • How I Actually Learn Mandarin: Your Questions Answered

    How do I actually learn Mandarin? You’ve been asking, so this post answers your questions directly. Flashcards have been a huge part of my journey, so most of the questions are about them, but we’ll also cover listening, speaking, native-speed reductions and how long it all took.

    By the way, feel free to watch the video version here

    Cloze deletion or English-to-Mandarin flashcards?

    Both work very well, and I used both. They just have different strengths.

    • Cloze deletion blanks out part of a Mandarin sentence and you fill the gap.
    • English-to-Mandarin shows you an English sentence and you recall the whole Mandarin sentence.

    Cloze deletion: great for thinking in Mandarin

    Because the whole card is in Mandarin, cloze cards train you not to translate into English. They also sharpen your sense of context: where a word naturally goes in a sentence.

    The downside is that you start recognising the shape of the card. After enough reviews, you see where the gap is and the answer pops out automatically. You haven’t really done the work.

    The fix is what I call sentence transformation: take the original sentence and make new versions by swapping parts in and out. It’s harder at lower levels, but it beats the recognition problem.

    English-to-Mandarin: great for building sentences

    The obvious worry here is translation. But translation only causes two real problems for learners:

    1. Translating while listening. If you have to convert everything to English to understand it, you’ll fall behind. The cure is listening so much that you simply don’t have time to translate, and consciously telling yourself to just understand and enjoy it.
    2. Translating word for word when speaking. Learners who don’t know how a Mandarin sentence is built go English word, Mandarin word, English word, Mandarin word.

    That second one breaks what I call the conversation rule: in a real conversation you don’t have time to translate, because the conversation will have moved on before your sentence is ready.

    The way around both is to learn in chunks. With chunks, you aren’t translating word by word; you’re slotting ready-made pieces together.

    The big advantage of English-to-Mandarin cards is that you build whole sentences rather than filling gaps. That mimics what you actually do in conversation. It’s why, when I built my fluency trainer, I moved to whole English-to-Mandarin sentences: for many learners, it can work better (as long as you don’t translate word-for-word). That said, try a mix of both in Anki and see what works for you.

    How to make good cloze deletions

    Should you hide the whole chunk? Most of the time, yes. If that chunk is what you’re trying to learn, hide all of it.

    Should you add English? It depends on how clear the gap is:

    • If the context makes the missing piece obvious, keep the card entirely in Mandarin.
    • If you’re hiding a whole chunk, you’ll usually need English to make it specific. That’s fine.

    A big weakness of cloze cards is that without English they can be so vague that almost anything fits the gap. At that point you’re guessing, not learning.

    There’s also a middle option: split the chunk into two cloze deletions, one per part. Then you can usually work it out from context without any English.

    Should you make several cards for each chunk?

    My view here has changed over time. To use a chunk flexibly in conversation, you need to see it in several contexts. So I’d add two or three cards for important chunks, especially with English-to-Mandarin cards (multiple cloze cards for one chunk tend to look the same anyway).

    Balance that against how fast your vocabulary is growing. Go big on the chunks that really matter, not on everything.

    A feature I’m excited about in my Fluency Trainer is this: attach several very similar sentences to one chunk, each with small changes, and show a random one at each review. You see a new context every time, so you internalise the chunk instead of memorising a sentence.

    That’s the real skill behind speaking confidently. It isn’t reciting memorised sentences like a script; it’s building sentences on the spot to say what you mean.

    20,000+ flashcards: don’t the reviews run away?

    Not if the cards are good. When I was adding 10 to 15 new cards a day and getting over 90% right with long-term retention, I had around 100 reviews a day. If you’re quick, that’s 15 to 20 minutes.

    The catch: go back and delete or fix the cards you keep failing. Most of the time, forgetting something isn’t about your memory. It’s a poorly designed card.

    Do I still use Anki?

    Yes, every day, because all my reviews live there. But I now put new material into my fluency trainer instead. Abandoning Anki for new cards was a tough call after using it for so long. The main reason is that I can speak into the trainer, and I simply prefer it.

    I actually think flashcards matter more as you advance:

    • Beginner: somewhat less important.
    • Intermediate: very important.
    • Advanced: still very important, because new words and chunks are rarer and more technical. You may not hear them again for a long time, so a flashcard is your snapshot of it.

    So even at a high level, keep treating new material as seriously as you did early on.

    Should you delete old cards?

    Yes and no. Mature cards end up with review intervals of years, so they barely cost you anything. I can’t be bothered to delete them, so I leave them. Badly designed cards, though, I delete or fix straight away.

    Can I buy your Anki decks?

    I get this question constantly, and the answer is no. I don’t sell them or even give them away, because flashcards should be personal.

    Beyond the core chunks everyone needs to build sentences, your vocabulary depends on your job, family, where you live and your background. What you talk about will be different from what I talk about. My cards make sense to me, but they’d be a rocky road for anyone trying to go from beginner to fluent with them. Personalised cards will serve you far better.

    This is why, although I think my Fluency Trainer curriculum works very well, I encourage my students to add their own sentences they come across into the system to personalise their learning.

    Do Mandarin subtitles hurt your listening?

    In Mandarin they’re unavoidable: almost every video comes with subtitles. The key is not becoming over-reliant on them, and the easiest way is to listen to lots of podcasts, which have none.

    Mix subtitled video with plenty of podcasts and real conversations and you’ll be fine. Subtitles are even a plus, because they make looking up new words and sentence mining much easier.

    Imitation and self-talk (自言自语)

    Listening and repeating is one of the best things you can do. I did a lot of shadowing and sentence-by-sentence imitation, because pronunciation, and especially rhythm, is a big issue for non-native speakers.

    You don’t need a native accent. You do need a solid one that anyone can understand clearly and easily. Five to ten minutes a day repeating native speakers will get you there.

    Self-talk is something I’m a big believer in. Most of us listen, read and study characters a lot, but don’t speak nearly enough. Speaking is a skill that needs training, and talking to yourself lets you practice anywhere, any time.

    The risk is that you might be making mistakes. Don’t worry too much, as long as they don’t get in the way of communicating and you get corrections when you need them. To lower the risk, stick to things you’re confident about.

    For example, when I was studying medicine at university, I’d sit in my room between study sessions naming objects in Mandarin until I hit one I couldn’t name. It grew my vocabulary and my confidence speaking out loud.

    How do you get things out of Anki and into conversation?

    A lot of learners find words get stuck in their flashcards. Anki gets something into your head so you can say it. Using it repeatedly is what makes it stick for life:

    • in real conversations, ideally
    • out loud, on your own
    • in your own practice sentences
    • in practice with AI
    • through sentence transformation (see above)

    At its simplest: make a list of the things you struggle to say, and make your own sentences with them until they come out naturally in conversation.

    Why can’t I keep up with native-speed speech?

    One Mandarin learner commented on a YouTube video of mine saying they know all the official tongue positions but get lost in the reductions native speakers use. Are they hearing it wrong?

    Mostly, it’s just speed. Native speech feels impossibly fast at first, but once you’ve heard enough of it, it almost starts to sound slow.

    There are some real reductions, though, especially in northern China. In fast speech, sh and zh initials often soften into something close to an r sound. For example: [add example word or phrase]. This is probably the most common reduction that trips learners up.

    The solution is lots and lots of listening. You’ll gradually start to notice these and pick them up.

    Why Mandarin sentences can feel ambiguous

    Another learner asked how to use context quickly to follow what someone is saying. I think the real issue is that Mandarin can be quite vague. Unlike English, it often drops the subject, and a sentence can carry more than one meaning.

    Here’s an example I came across while designing some learning materials: 你应该早点来找我. Depending on context, it can mean either:

    • Past: “Why didn’t you come and find me earlier?” (you should have)
    • Future: “You should come and find me early.”

    This comes up a lot in Mandarin. To handle it:

    • get plenty of exposure and have lots of conversations
    • be aware that this ambiguity exists
    • practice at the sentence level so you really understand how Mandarin sentences are built

    It’s one of the harder, often-overlooked nuances of the language, and it simply takes practice.

    Podcast recommendations for HSK 4–5

    First, some news: I’m going back to making Mandarin podcasts myself, aiming for one a week with my girlfriend and other guests. Expect stories about my life, some crazy things that have happened, Mandarin learning and culture.

    Beyond that, my two top picks:

    • Tea Time Chinese – slightly easier, and one I recommend a lot.
    • 大叔中文 Dashu Mandarin – slightly harder. I’ve been on their channel many times and it’s one of my favourites. Nearly every learner I speak to loves it.

    How long did it take me?

    I’ve been learning Mandarin consistently for nearly seven years, and I’ve almost never missed a day. After about two years I was pretty happy with my level.

    The five years since have mostly gone into expanding my vocabulary, especially the technical side: language for my PhD, medicine and similar topics.

    Got more questions?

    I’d love to do more relaxed Q&As like this, talking through the problems you’re having with Mandarin. If anything here raised a follow-up, or I misread your question, drop it in the comments either here or over on my YouTube channel, and I’ll answer it next time.

  • 17 Mandarin Learning Mistakes That Are Slowing Your Fluency (And How to Fix Them)

    Learning Mandarin is an incredible journey, but it’s also very easy to make the following 17 Mandarin learning mistakes that quietly slow down your progress.

    Looking back on my own journey, from sounding like a complete robot in Mandarin to doing interviews and speaking comfortably on YouTube, there are a lot of things I would do differently if I started again.

    In this article, I want to share the biggest Mandarin learning mistakes I made, so you can avoid them and reach spoken Mandarin fluency much faster.

    Some of these mistakes slowed my progress for months. A few slowed me down for years.

    Let’s start with one of the most common.

    Mistake #1: Translating Everything in Your Head

    One of the biggest Mandarin learning mistakes beginners make is constantly translating between English and Mandarin.

    At first, this is normal.

    It’s a bit like riding a bike with stabilisers.

    The stabilisers help you stay balanced in the beginning, but if you keep them on too long, they actually stop you from learning how to ride properly.

    The same thing happens with translation.

    If every sentence goes through this process:

    Mandarin → English → Response → Mandarin

    your conversations will always feel slow and unnatural.

    To reach spoken Mandarin fluency, you eventually need to start thinking directly in Mandarin.

    When you do, two big things happen:

    • Your responses become faster
    • Your listening comprehension improves dramatically

    So don’t leave this transition too late.

    The sooner you start learning to think in Mandarin, the smoother your conversations will become.

    Mistake #2: Ignoring Cultural Context

    Another one of my Mandarin learning mistakes is focusing only on vocabulary and grammar while ignoring culture.

    I learned this the hard way.

    The first time I went to China, I had a conversation with someone and said something that sounded perfectly fine when translated directly from English.

    But culturally, it was very inappropriate.

    What I meant to say was something caring and polite.

    What I actually said sounded awkward and slightly offensive.

    That experience taught me something important:

    Mandarin isn’t just a language.
    It’s deeply connected to Chinese culture and social norms.

    If you want to:

    • build friendships
    • have natural conversations
    • avoid awkward situations

    you need to expose yourself to authentic Mandarin content like:

    • TV shows
    • podcasts
    • conversations with native speakers
    • books and online content

    Cultural awareness is a huge part of speaking Mandarin naturally.

    Mistake #3: Learning Individual Words Without Context

    Early in my Mandarin learning journey, I made terrible flashcards.

    I recently found one from years ago.

    Front: 猫
    Back: Cat

    That was it.

    No context. No example sentence. No pattern.

    Looking back now, it seems ridiculous.

    Words have nuance and usage patterns that only make sense in context.

    A much better approach is learning language in chunks.

    Chunks are short pieces of language like:

    • sentence patterns
    • common phrases
    • sentence starters

    For example:

    • 我很好奇… (I’m really curious…)
    • 说实话… (to be honest…)
    • 对我来说… (for me personally…)

    These chunks act as the real building blocks of spoken Mandarin.

    If you’d like examples to start with, I’ve put together some free PDFs with sentence patterns and sentence starters that you can download and start practicing immediately. You can check them out here.

    Mistake #4: Not Taking Mandarin Tones Seriously

    When I first started learning Mandarin, my tones were terrible.

    Even worse, my speech sounded robotic.

    I remember sending voice messages on language exchange apps like Tandem, and people genuinely couldn’t understand what I was saying.

    It was embarrassing.

    If I could start again, I would focus on tones much earlier (not doing so is one of the most common Mandarin learning mistakes I see when working with my students!).

    A good approach is to practise:

    Tone pairs

    For example:

    • má → mǎ
    • mǎ → mà

    Whole sentence imitation

    Once you’re comfortable with tones individually, start copying the rhythm of full sentences.

    This is where pronunciation really starts to improve.

    You can do this easily with my Speak Mandarin with Me playlist.

    Mistake #5: Not Doing Enough Listening Practice

    For the first four months of learning Mandarin, I spoke every day with a friend.

    My speaking improved quite quickly.

    But my listening comprehension was terrible.

    The problem?

    I wasn’t getting enough input.

    Speaking practice is important (something that a lot of people on the internet simply don’t emphasise enough!) , but listening is what builds your internal language system.

    Everything changed when I started:

    • listening to podcasts
    • watching TV shows every night
    • surrounding myself with Mandarin audio

    Within a few months, my listening ability improved dramatically.

    So from day one, try to listen to as much Mandarin as possible, especially content that is close to your level.

    Mistake #6: Believing You Need 8 Hours of Study Per Day

    A lot of learners think Mandarin requires extreme study routines.

    Eight hours a day.

    Perfect discipline.

    Non-stop studying.

    But that’s not how most people succeed.

    During the busiest period of my medical degree, I only had:

    • 20–30 minutes of focused study per day
    • regular listening throughout the day
    • occasional speaking practice

    And that was enough.

    Consistency beats intensity.

    A sustainable Mandarin routine might look like:

    • 20–30 minutes focused study
    • passive listening during the day
    • occasional speaking practice

    That combination can take you very far.

    Mistake #7: Searching for the “Perfect Method”

    Many Mandarin learners spend months jumping between methods.

    New apps.
    New systems.
    New study routines.

    I did this constantly.

    Whenever something felt difficult, I assumed the method was wrong.

    But eventually I realised something important:

    There is no perfect Mandarin learning method.

    The best system is the one that works for your life and your goals.

    What matters most is consistency and adaptation.

    Mistake #8: Not Prioritising the Right Vocabulary

    Mandarin is enormous.

    There are:

    • over 20,000 characters
    • hundreds of thousands of possible words and phrases

    Trying to learn everything is impossible, and doing so is one of the top Mandarin learning mistakes.

    Instead, prioritise language based on your goals.

    If your goal is daily conversation, focus on:

    • conversational vocabulary
    • common sentence patterns
    • everyday expressions

    Don’t waste time memorising niche vocabulary you’ll never use.

    Prioritisation completely transformed the way I learned Mandarin.

    Mistake #9: Making Terrible Flashcards

    Another major Mandarin learning mistake is creating ineffective flashcards.

    Many learners make cards like:

    Chinese → English

    But these cards don’t train real language usage, they just train receptive abilities and recognition.

    A better approach is using cloze deletion flashcards or using cards that also go English to Chinese. These two types of flashcard helped train recall. You can automate the production of flashcards using my tool Chunk Deck.

    This keeps the language in context and helps you remember patterns more effectively.

    Mistake #10: Not Recording Your Mandarin Progress

    One thing I regret is not recording my progress earlier.

    Many of my students regularly record:

    • speaking practice sessions
    • short Mandarin monologues
    • conversation clips

    When they look back at old recordings, they can clearly see their improvement.

    This is incredibly motivating.

    Even if you never share them publicly, recording yourself speaking Mandarin is a powerful learning tool.

    Mistake #11: Not Learning Mandarin in Chunks

    This is probably the biggest Mandarin learning mistake of all.

    When I started learning Mandarin in chunks, sentence patterns, templates, and common structures, everything changed.

    For example, if you learn one sentence pattern like:

    既然…那就…

    you can suddenly create thousands of sentences.

    That’s the leverage effect of chunking.

    Instead of memorising individual words, you’re learning ready-made building blocks of the language.

    Mistake #12: Ignoring Mandarin Rhythm

    Natural Mandarin speech isn’t just about tones.

    It also has rhythm and flow.

    When learners focus only on individual words, their speech sounds robotic.

    Practicing full sentence imitation helps you develop more natural rhythm and pacing.

    Mistake #13: Not Having a Clear Learning System

    Eventually, I realised that effective Mandarin learning needs a system that connects:

    • pronunciation
    • listening
    • speaking
    • memory

    When these pieces work together, your speaking ability improves much faster.

    Mistake #14: Overestimating Your Ability

    There’s a psychological phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

    At a certain stage, learners often overestimate their ability.

    I definitely went through that phase, and it’s a big Mandarin learning mistake and not very culturally appropriate.

    But as your Mandarin improves, you become more aware of how much there still is to learn.

    Staying humble keeps you improving.

    Mistake #15: Trying to Help Everyone

    When I first started teaching Mandarin online, I tried to help every learner.

    But over time, I realised I care most about helping intermediate learners who feel stuck.

    Once I focused on that group, both my teaching and my content improved dramatically.

    My goal here at Chunking Chinese is to help intermediate Mandarin learners speak Mandarin naturally and confidently.

    Mistake #16: Not Practising Speaking Through Video

    Recording videos in Mandarin, even just for yourself, can dramatically improve:

    • clarity
    • sentence structure
    • confidence

    You don’t have to publish them.

    But the act of explaining ideas in Mandarin forces you to organise your thoughts clearly.

    Mistake #17: Using Content You Don’t Enjoy

    Finally, one of the worst Mandarin learning mistakes is forcing yourself to study boring content.

    If the material doesn’t interest you, Mandarin becomes a chore.

    But when you find the right content, topics you genuinely enjoy, you can become almost addicted to learning.

    That’s when real progress happens.

    Final Thoughts on Avoiding Mandarin Learning Mistakes

    Every Mandarin learner makes mistakes.

    I certainly did.

    But if you can avoid these common Mandarin learning mistakes, you’ll progress much faster and enjoy the journey much more.

    Focus on:

    • thinking in Mandarin
    • learning chunks instead of individual words
    • listening as much as possible
    • prioritising useful language
    • staying consistent

    Do that, and Mandarin becomes far more manageable, and far more fun.

  • How to Improve Mandarin Listening: A Complete Roadmap to Understanding Native Speakers

    If you’ve ever wondered how to improve Mandarin listening, you’re not alone.

    Recently, a student emailed me asking to share a bit more about my method of how to improve Mandarin listening. They were interested as to why I could understand everything the hosts on 大叔中文 asked me whilst being interviewed on their channel, whilst they personally struggled when it came to understanding native Mandarin content.

    How to improve Mandarin Listening?
    How to Improve Mandarin Listening?

    This is one of the most common frustrations in Mandarin learning.

    You can:

    • Hold basic conversations
    • Pass vocabulary tests
    • Finish your Anki reviews

    But when you turn on a native TV show like 家有儿女 – suddenly you understand… almost nothing.

    So in this guide, I’ll give you a complete, practical roadmap on how to improve Mandarin listening, step by step.

    Step 1: How to Improve Mandarin Listening by Identifying Your Bottlenecks

    Before fixing anything, we need to diagnose the problem.

    Businesses analyse weak points before scaling. Athletes identify weak muscle groups before building a training plan.

    If you want to truly work out exactly how to improve Mandarin listening, you must first identify your listening bottleneck.

    There are five major ones:

    Accent

    Standard Mandarin (普通话) is one thing.

    But real-life Mandarin? That’s another story.

    For example, 家有儿女 features a strong Beijing accent. If you’ve only trained your ear on slow, standard textbook audio, regional accents can feel overwhelming.

    Speed

    Native speakers talk fast.

    Even if you “know” the vocabulary, your brain may not process it quickly enough.

    Vocabulary

    If your vocabulary size isn’t large enough, comprehension breaks down immediately.

    This one is straightforward:
    No words = no understanding.

    Sentence Structure

    Do you understand how Mandarin sentences are built?

    Native speakers rely heavily on:

    • Common chunks
    • Set phrases
    • Repeated sentence patterns

    If you only learn isolated words, you’ll struggle to process full sentences at natural speed.

    Conversational Listening Block

    This is sneaky.

    You understand podcasts alone…

    But freeze in real conversations.

    That’s pressure-based listening failure, and it’s very common.

    In fact when I first moved to Manchester to go to University and started having conversations in real life, face-to-face, as opposed to over video call, I was shocked to find my listening comprehension dropped dramatically. This is because I wasn’t used to being under ‘face-to-face’ pressure when listening to Mandarin.

    Now ask yourself:
    What is actually stopping you? What are your ‘listening bottlenecks’?

    If you want to know for you personally how to improve Mandarin listening, clarity comes before action.

    Step 2: How to Improve Mandarin Listening with Targeted Solutions

    Once you identify your bottleneck, you need a specific solution.

    Just like a doctor prescribes treatment based on diagnosis, your listening practice must match your weakness.

    Here’s how.

    If Accent Is Your Bottleneck

    To improve Mandarin listening across accents:

    • Listen to speakers from different regions
    • Rotate podcasts and YouTube channels
    • Watch content featuring northern and southern accents

    If you only train with one “clean” accent, your comprehension will collapse in real-world situations.

    If Speed Is Your Bottleneck

    Two powerful tools:

    1. Line-by-Line Imitation

    Pause. Replay. Imitate. Repeat.

    This forces your brain to process Mandarin at higher speeds.

    2. Gradual Native Exposure

    Shift your input ratio:

    • Start with 70% learner content
    • Slowly move toward 70% native content

    Progressive overload works in listening just like in the gym.

    If Vocabulary Is Your Bottleneck

    You must:

    • Make flashcards for high-frequency words
    • Focus on useful vocabulary
    • Learn words in context

    Vocabulary is foundational when learning how to improve Mandarin listening.

    If Sentence Structure Is Your Bottleneck

    Stop learning single words.

    Start learning in chunks.

    For example:
    Instead of memorising 就, learn full patterns like:

    • 早就…了
    • 就算…也…
    • 一…就…

    When you can use these patterns, you will automatically understand them when you hear them.

    If you want to learn Mandarin in Chunks, check this out.

    If You Have Conversational Listening Block

    You need pressure training.

    That means:

    • Regular conversations
    • Language exchange partners
    • A tutor

    Listening alone is different from listening under pressure.

    If listening under pressure causes your listening to crumble, then, the answer to ‘how to improve Mandarin listening‘ is really simple. You must simulate real conversations.

    Step 3: How to Improve Mandarin Listening by Reducing Friction

    Here’s why most learners fail:

    Not because they don’t know what to do.

    But because they don’t remove friction.

    Friction is invisible resistance. I wrote a detailed post about what friction is and how to reduce it as much as possible in your Mandarin learning. You can check it out here.

    For example:

    • Gym far away – you skip workouts
    • Rainy weather – you stay inside

    Listening has friction too.

    So how do we reduce it?

    Reduce Listening Friction

    • Download podcasts in advance
    • Use autoplay
    • Prepare a “Watch Later” playlist
    • Queue content before bed

    Make listening automatic.

    When your ears are free – Mandarin should be playing.

    Reduce Flashcard Friction

    If flashcards take 2 hours to create, you won’t keep doing them.

    Automate where possible.
    Keep cards simple.
    Avoid overcomplicating your workflow.

    Consistency beats intensity when it comes to how to improve Mandarin listening.

    Step 4: You’re Probably Not Listening Enough

    This might be uncomfortable.

    But it’s true.

    Many learners think:
    “10 minutes a day is fine.”

    It isn’t, if your goal is fast progress.

    When a student once asked me for the bare minimum to maintain rapid improvement, I told them:

    • 1 hour of listening per day
    • Complete Anki reviews

    For most learners, I recommend:

    • At least 30 minutes of listening daily
    • Plus flashcard reviews

    And here’s the key:

    Listening doesn’t mean sitting at a desk.

    It includes:

    • Walking the dog
    • Commuting
    • Working out
    • Cooking

    If your ears are free, you can train them.

    Learning how to improve Mandarin listening is less about intensity and more about volume over time.

    So try and list out all the times you could be listening and aren’t, then reduce the friction as much as possible.

    And I guarantee that if you actually do these steps, in a few months time your listening will have improved dramatically.

    Why Listening Takes So Long to Improve

    Listening feels slow to improve because:

    • It requires massive exposure
    • It depends on vocabulary depth
    • It depends on chunk recognition
    • It requires processing speed

    There’s no shortcut.

    But there is a roadmap.

    Final Thoughts on How to Improve Mandarin Listening

    If you want real progress:

    1. Identify your bottleneck
    2. Apply targeted solutions
    3. Reduce friction
    4. Increase daily listening volume

    Most importantly:

    Be honest about how much you’re actually listening.

    If you consistently get:

    • 30–60 minutes daily
    • Active chunk learning
    • Conversational exposure

    Your listening ability will skyrocket.

    Mastering how to improve Mandarin listening isn’t mysterious.

    It’s systematic.

    And once you identify what’s holding you back, progress becomes inevitable.

    In fact, everything in Mandarin learning can be and should be systematic. If you want me to help you implement my system to improve Mandarin listening and speaking, click here.

  • Anki for Mandarin Learning: 20 Proven Tips to Avoid Burnout and Make Real Progress

    If you’re using Anki for Mandarin learning but still struggling to speak confidently, remember words, or keep up with reviews, you’re not alone.

    I learned this the hard way.

    Flashcards are not a magic bullet. In fact, Anki for Mandarin learning can become a complete waste of time if you’re using it incorrectly. But when used strategically, it becomes one of the most powerful tools for vocabulary acquisition, tone accuracy, and long-term retention.

    In this guide, I’ll share 20 battle-tested lessons to help you use Anki effectively, without burnout, overwhelm, or “ease hell.”

    Note: you can check out the video version here

    Why Most People Fail with Anki for Mandarin Learning

    Most learners:

    • Add too many new cards
    • Create vague flashcards
    • Rely too much on English
    • Don’t practice recall
    • Never actually use the words in real life

    The result? Hundreds of reviews per day, frustration, no actual benefit, and eventually quitting.

    Let’s fix that.

    1. One New Thing Per Flashcard (The Golden Rule of Anki for Mandarin Learning)

    Each card should test:

    • ONE new vocabulary word
    • OR ONE grammar structure
    • NOT five new words in one sentence

    I used to think I was being “efficient” by learning five words per card. In reality, I slowed myself down dramatically.

    Clarity beats efficiency. Always.

    2. Keep Flashcards Short (10–12 Characters Max)

    When using Anki for Mandarin learning, your example sentences should be concise.

    If you add a paragraph:

    • You won’t remember it
    • You’ll waste review time
    • Your recall will drop

    Keep sentences tight and focused.

    3. Make Your Flashcards Extremely Specific

    Specificity is everything.

    Bad card:

    我喜欢_____。

    That blank could be anything.

    Better card:

    我喜欢吃_____。(水果)

    Now it’s clear you’re recalling a fruit.

    Use These 3 Types of Prompts:

    Context Prompts

    The sentence itself makes the answer obvious.

    Picture Prompts

    Add an image (e.g., an apple if learning 苹果).

    Language Prompts

    • English translation
    • English definition
    • Chinese definition

    The key: eliminate ambiguity.

    4. Stop Turning Everything Into a Flashcard

    Not every word deserves a card.

    Ask yourself:

    • Will I actually use this in conversation?
    • Is this personally relevant?
    • Will I encounter this again?

    Prioritization is essential in Anki for Mandarin learning.

    5. Personalize Everything

    The more personal the card, the stronger the memory.

    Instead of:

    他学土木工程。

    Try:

    我的朋友James学土木工程。

    Now it’s tied to a real person in your life.

    Memory loves emotional and personal connections.

    6. Use What You Learn (Input + Output)

    Anki gets words to the tip of your tongue.

    Real usage cements them.

    You must combine:

    • Listening practice
    • Reading practice
    • Speaking conversations

    Flashcards alone will never make you fluent in Mandarin.

    7. Use Spaced Repetition Software (Like Anki)

    If you’re still using paper flashcards, you’re wasting time.

    Spaced repetition:

    • Schedules reviews automatically
    • Optimizes long-term retention
    • Prevents over-reviewing

    This is why Anki for Mandarin learning works so well, when used correctly.

    8. Train Recall, Not Just Recognition

    Recognition = “Oh yeah, I know that.”

    Recall = Producing it from memory.

    For speaking improvement, recall is critical.

    Instead of only:

    • Chinese → English

    Also practice:

    • English → Chinese
    • Cloze deletions

    Recall-based cards dramatically improve speaking fluency.

    9. Limit New Cards (5–10 Per Day)

    If you add 20+ new cards daily as a beginner, you’ll burn out.

    Start with:

    • 5–10 new cards per day
    • Increase only when comfortable

    Sustainable pacing is crucial in Anki for Mandarin learning.

    10. Keep Reviews Fast (5–15 Seconds Per Card)

    If you’re spending 1 minute per card:

    • You’ll hate reviews
    • You’ll quit
    • Your daily sessions will exceed 1–2 hours

    Move quickly, but accurately.

    11. Avoid “Ease Hell”

    If you keep pressing “Hard,” Anki will show you the same card constantly.

    Instead:

    • Wrong → Press “Again”
    • Correct → Press “Good”

    Stop being overly humble with your ratings.

    12. Follow the “I+1” Principle

    Your example sentence should contain:

    • ONE unknown element
    • Everything else familiar

    If half the sentence is confusing, the card is poorly designed.

    13. Reduce English Over Time

    English is useful at the beginner stage.

    But intermediate learners should:

    • Use picture prompts
    • Use Chinese definitions
    • Reduce translation dependency

    This improves thinking directly in Mandarin.

    14. Don’t Zombie-Review

    If you’re tired and just clicking:

    “Yeah I know this… next… next…”

    You’re wasting your time.

    Be fully present during reviews.

    Quality > speed.

    15. Be Consistent (Daily Use)

    Spaced repetition depends on consistency.

    Miss one day? Fine.

    Miss several days?
    Your reviews will explode.

    Daily consistency makes Anki for Mandarin learning manageable.

    16. Flashcards Are Not the Magic Bullet

    You won’t magically wake up fluent after 10,000 cards.

    You must:

    • Listen a lot
    • Read a lot
    • Speak a lot

    Anki supports fluency, it doesn’t create it alone.

    17. Use Sentence Transformations

    This is a game-changer.

    After answering a card:

    1. Read the full sentence aloud
    2. Change the subject
    3. Change the tense
    4. Modify one word

    Example:

    我昨天去了北京。

    Transform:

    我上个月去了上海。

    Now you’re training flexibility, not memorization.

    18. Delete or Edit Bad Cards

    If a card:

    • Feels unclear
    • Keeps failing
    • No longer useful

    Delete it (or edit it if you think you can save it and it will actually be useful!)

    Your deck is a tool, not a trophy collection.

    19. Always Include Pinyin and Tones (For New Words)

    Mandarin is tonal.

    If you only memorize characters without pronunciation:

    • Your speaking will suffer
    • You’ll fossilize tone errors

    Include pinyin (especially for new words) to check accuracy.

    20. Don’t Burn Out

    The biggest mistake in Anki for Mandarin learning is overuse.

    Recommended daily limit:

    • 15–30 minutes of Anki
    • Then focus on input + output practice

    Sustainable systems beat intense bursts every time.

    Final Thoughts: How to Truly Master Anki for Mandarin Learning

    When used properly, Anki for Mandarin learning is incredibly powerful.

    But remember:

    • One new thing per card
    • Make cards specific
    • Train recall
    • Limit new cards
    • Be consistent
    • Use the language in real life

    Flashcards are a support system, not the entire strategy.

    If you combine smart Anki usage with consistent listening, reading, and speaking, you’ll see dramatic improvements in your Mandarin.

    And most importantly?

    You won’t burn out doing it.

    For more tips like these, I’d recommend checking out my free email course.

  • The Best Way to Learn Mandarin: Reduce Friction, Increase Consistency

    When most people try to improve their Mandarin, they focus on willpower.

    “I just need to be more disciplined.”
    “I need better motivation.”
    “I need to try harder.”

    But in my experience and the experience of my students, the best way to learn Mandarin and the real breakthrough came when I stopped trying to just increase motivation, and started reducing friction.

    Let me tell you this, the best way to learn Mandarin for you is the one with the least friction.

    Let me explain with my set of dumbbells.

    The Dumbbell Experiment: Removing Hidden Resistance

    For years, I tried to go to the gym consistently. On paper, it sounded simple:

    • Walk to the gym (or get the bus)
    • Decide what exercises to do
    • Wait for equipment
    • Do the workout
    • Walk home

    None of this is hard. But each step adds friction.

    Even small things create resistance:

    • “Do I really want to walk 15 minutes in the rain?”
    • “Is it going to be crowded?”
    • “What should I train today?”
    • “Where am I going to get changed into my gym clothes?”

    Again, navigating these problems isn’t difficult. But combined they make a simple decision of should I go to the gym today, into a complex exercise where before I even reach the gym I need to ‘jump through multiple hoops’ and make a ton of tiny decisions.

    Each of these small things taken alone as easy to resolve and overcome with willpower. But, taken together, they create a hefty amount of resistance that might be enough to put me off going to the gym that day entirely, even if I’m motivated.

    Eventually, I bought a set of dumbbells and started working out in my lounge instead first thing in the morning.

    Game changer.

    Now:

    • No commute
    • No decision fatigue about exercises
    • No waiting
    • Just press play on a follow-along video and get working out

    The result? I started working out consistently six times a week instead of three or four.

    Is this method of working out the most optimal for muscle growth? No.

    But it is the best for my health, because I’m able to stick to it and do it consistenly.

    Why did I become more consistent?

    Not because I became more disciplined.
    But because I removed friction.

    The Best Way to Learn Mandarin Consistently

    Mandarin learners often design systems that rely on constant decisions:

    • What should I study today?
    • Which podcast should I listen to?
    • Which video is at my level?
    • Should I review flashcards or learn new words?
    • Is this resource good enough?
    • How should I allocate my time?
    • Should I use free resources or paid resources?
    • Should I try this new app that promises to solve all my Mandarin learning problems?

    Each decision is tiny, but together they create resistance. Just like they did with me going to the gym.

    And resistance kills consistency.

    You don’t quit because Mandarin is hard.
    You quit because starting feels slightly inconvenient.

    That’s why the best way to learn Mandarin is a method that reduces friction and the feeling of inconvenience as much as possible.

    My “Zero-Friction” Mandarin Setup (The Best Way To Learn Mandarin)

    Instead of trying to optimise for perfection, I optimise for ease.

    This is what will help you design the best way to learn Mandarin for you personally.

    Download Podcasts in Advance

    I batch-download Mandarin podcasts onto my phone and subscribe to a ton of Mandarin podcasts so that they are on auto-download.

    This means:

    • No searching.
    • No deciding.
    • No “what should I listen to?”

    I open my phone and press play every morning on my commute.

    That’s it.

    The easier it is to start, the easier it’ll be to actually stick to.

    Create a “Watch Later” Goldmine

    On YouTube, I aggressively add cool Mandarin videos to my “Watch Later” list.

    When I sit down to relax, I don’t search things in Mandarin or scroll randomly until I hopefully find something I think will be worth watching and be interesting.

    I just open the list.

    No thinking required.

    It’s the equivalent of leaving dumbbells on the floor in your lounge, visible, ready, impossible to ignore.

    Eliminate Material Anxiety

    A hidden friction point in language learning is worrying whether the material is “good enough.”

    Is this too easy?
    Too hard?
    Too slang-heavy?
    Too boring? Too accented?

    When you remove the constant evaluation process, you remove mental strain.

    Input is input.

    Press play and if it’s not right for you, worse case swap to something else on your watch later list or in your pre-downloaded podcast bank.

    The most important thing is to start, not to overthink everything.

    Doing and adapting = the best way to learn Mandarin

    Overthinking and not actually doing anything = the worst way to learn Mandarin

    Let me give you an example…

    I recently met an awesome student who came to me with an incredibly detailed and well thought out plan of how to learn Mandarin effectively. But it was complicated, full of multiple steps and he admitted he spent 2 weeks working on this plan without studying as much Mandarin as he’d liked whilst working on the plan.

    Don’t get obsessed with finding ‘perfect input’ or the ‘perfect method or plan’. Instead reduce the friction, stop thinking and start doing.

    Eliminate all friction in the flashcard creation process

    In the past I used to spend a lot of time making Mandarin flashcards, it helped loads and I was very motivated to do so. I thoroughly recommend you use Anki flashcards too!

    But I’ll be honest with you, recently life has been getting the better of me. The pressure to get real results in my PhD has been steadily building over the last year. I’ve got more students to look after in the lab. I’m helping as many Mandarin learners as I can, maintaining this blog, my email newsletter and my YouTube channel.

    So I simply can’t face sitting down to a list of new words I wrote down from podcasts, generating sentences from AI again and again until they sound natural and would actually be used in a conversation. Then going and copying and pasting these into anki and making cloze deletions.

    It’s a long and tedious process.

    So instead I just switched to language reactor instead. It literally helps me generate decent cloze deletion flashcards in a click of a button directly from YouTube videos. I often have to edit them slightly in Anki, but in all honesty it’s saving me hours.

    Now believe it or not, I’m not sponsored by language reactor, I’m just recommending their platform to no benefit of my own because I genuinely think it’s good.

    Don’t get me wrong it has some problems; I can’t seem to remove the pinyin from the front of the flashcards (I don’t need it nor want it to be there), sometimes the whole sentence isn’t included in flashcard, it can be cut off. But for the time saved on making the cards myself from the same content it’s worth it.

    Now I can use the time that I spent keyboard crunching and arguing with AI to make flashcards on enjoying the language more.

    The ‘flashcard friction’ trap is exactly why I provide all my Chunking Chinese students with anki decks with native audio for each lesson they do. As I know that if I made my students make the flashcards themselves the friction there would stop many of them in their tracks.

    I’m not saying you have to do the same as me, but I think this serves as a great example to demonstrate the power of removing friction from each and every aspect of your learning routine.

    Why This Works (Psychologically)

    Friction compounds.

    Every extra step increases the likelihood that your brain says:

    “Eh… maybe tomorrow.”

    But when the path is smooth:

    • No decisions
    • No preparation
    • No logistics
    • No planning

    You build momentum.

    And momentum is addictive.

    The reason I ended up working out six times a week wasn’t because the workouts were better or I because I was more motivated to work out.

    It was because starting was easier.

    The same is true for Mandarin.

    The Real Goal: Lower the Activation Energy

    If activation energy is high, you need motivation.

    If activation energy is low, you need almost nothing.

    So instead of asking:

    “How can I be more motivated to learn Mandarin?” or “How can I be more disciplined?”

    Ask:

    “How can I make it ridiculously easy to start?”

    And then:

    “How can I make everything I do to learn Mandarin have literally zero friction?”

    Finding a way of answering these two questions is how you go from being inconsistent to learning Mandarin for hours a day without even realising.

    And with time you’ll have found a personalised approach, that for you, is the best way to learn Mandarin.

    Practical Ways to Reduce Mandarin Friction

    • Pre-download 10+ podcast episodes.
    • Keep a permanent “Watch Later” queue ready in YouTube.
    • Keep flashcards open in a pinned tab.
    • Consider automating flashcard generation as much as possible.
    • Leave your headphones somewhere visible.
    • Set a default activity (e.g., “When I cook, I always listen to Mandarin.”)

    Design your environment so that Mandarin learning happens automatically.

    Consistency > Intensity (The Best Way To Learn Mandarin)

    The gym didn’t change.

    The exercises didn’t change.

    My identity didn’t change.

    The friction changed.

    And that changed everything.

    If you want to improve your Mandarin, don’t overhaul your goals or ‘become more disciplined’.

    Just make it easier to press play.

    Reduce friction, increase frequency and let consistency do the rest of the work for you.

    Ready to Remove the Friction?

    If you’ve realised that the real problem isn’t motivation, it’s friction, then here’s the good news:

    You don’t have to figure this out alone, I’m here to help.

    I’ve built a step-by-step Mandarin programme designed to remove the thinking, the guessing, and the constant “what should I do next?” decisions.

    No scrambling for resources.
    No overcomplicating your study plan.
    No wasting energy choosing materials.

    Everything is laid out clearly, in order, so you can just show up and press play, the same way I did with those dumbbells in my lounge.

    If you want a Mandarin system that makes consistency feel natural instead of forced, check it out here.

    Reduce the friction. Increase the frequency. Let’s make Mandarin stick.

    Let’s find the best way to learn Mandarin personalized to you, your goals and your life together.

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