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  • How I Finally Started Speaking Mandarin (After Years of Feeling Stuck)

    In this post, Christopher, one of my Chunking Chinese students shares his story of how Chunking Chinese helped him start finally start speaking Mandarin naturally.

    How to Learn a Living Language

    I went about learning Mandarin the wrong way. 

    I never had a plan. I’d bounce between textbooks. I’d shy away from talking to people. 

    Somehow, I eventually reached an upper-intermediate level, but it was wobbly. I was conversational and functional, but was missing some fundamentals of grammar while being able to speak on advanced subjects. 

    I bought a book on sentence patterns thinking, “Language is just chunks and structures.” It’s a lovely book, and it remains lovely since its spine remains intact.

    Here was my problem… I’d reached a level where it was hard to find material. Beginner material was too easy, and native material too hard.

    Most Mandarin content on YouTube is focused on three things: content for absolute beginners; content about how to learn without actually teaching the language; or SHOCKING locals.

    That’s where Chunking Chinese came in. Chunking Chinese is designed specifically for a tragically under-served market, the intermediate learner. These are people who have the words but not the voice. There’s a big difference, you see, between saying Chinese words and speaking Chinese. 

    The Chunking Chinese method is elegant in its simplicity:

    1. Listen and Read (Normal Speed) — absorb the rhythm, get a feel for the flow.
    2. Slow Listening — hear every syllable clearly; notice the tone and texture.
    3. Sentence Imitation — chunk, pause, imitate pronunciation and intonation.
    4. Shadowing — remove the pauses; flow with the native rhythm.

    It’s not just listening practice, it’s a full reprogramming of your ear, tongue, and brain to sound like a human being again.

    If you’ve ever began your study from a textbook, you’ve started from a place likely of grammar and vocabulary, implicity installing an idea that language is static. But speech is alive. And the way people speak can’t be learned from a textbook. 

    That was my first mistake years ago: thinking I could learn tones and pronunciation from ink on a page.

    You can’t. Especially not in Mandarin. 

    Will’s approach flips that. It treats Mandarin as music before it treats it as meaning. You learn to hear the rhythm before you chase the tones. You learn to mimic the sound before you force the structure. And because each module repeats the same content in four scaffolded ways, you don’t just understand it, you internalize it. It gets into your ear, your mouth, your rhythm, and finally, your life.

    Here’s why I think Chunking Chinese works, and why it will work for you: it simply skips the academic clutter. 

    What’s happening is sophisticated and elegant, but spending time on the meta-learning can actually be a barrier to learning, if not at least a speed bump. Chunking Chinese gets you right to doing it, with each step building on the last. You’ll feel the progress by building familiarity rather than recalling theory. By the time you’ve shadowed the module 4 times, the sounds have shifted from foreign noise to an internalised and deeply felt sense. 

    More and more research points to the fact that our brains are prediction machines. Chunking Chinese gets you anticipating Mandarin. This places it worlds above other courses that teach you to decode Mandarin. They are different skills, and while one may lead to accuracy, the Chunking Chinese method leads to fluency. 

    It’s rare to find a programme that respects both the science of language and the art of speaking. Chunking Chinese does both. It’s thoughtful without being pedantic, structured without being stiff, and challenging without being overwhelming.

    If you’ve been stuck on the plateau, able to speak Chinese but not sound Chinese, I firmly believe Chunking Chinese will get you unstuck.

    If Christopher’s story resonates with you, you can find out more about Chunking Chinese below:

    Learn More

    If courses aren’t your thing, I’d also highly recommend the Fluency Trainer, which is a browser based software based around these principles. Check it out here

  • How To Actually Learn To Speak Mandarin

    After Teaching Hundreds of Students, I Realised There Are Only 3 Pillars to Actually Speaking Mandarin…

    What we’ll be covering:

    • The Problem
    • The Three Pillars of Learning To Speak Mandarin Confidently
    • How To Apply This Into Your Mandarin Learning

    The Problem

    After years of studying Mandarin and teaching Mandarin to learners from all over the world, I started to notice a pattern.

    No matter how much effort they put in, hours of studying vocabulary, watching Mandarin lessons on YouTube, or memorizing grammar points, many of them still couldn’t actually speak Mandarin confidently. They were doing all the ‘right things’, but weren’t getting the results they desired.

    They could recognize characters. They could translate simple phrases. But when it came time to have a real conversation, they froze, frequently stuttered and lacked the ability to express themselves confidently in the language.

    If this sounds like you, keep reading…

    I want us to fix this together.

    Let me tell you this, it wasn’t because they weren’t smart or motivated. It was because they were focusing on doing the wrong things, and chances are you’re making the same mistakes.

    The Turning Point

    So after all of this, I decided to dig deeper.

    I paid attention to what separated the ones who actually started speaking fluently from those who stayed stuck.

    When I focused my teaching on fixing the core issues, the results were quite incredible.

    Learners who had struggled for years suddenly started holding natural conversations in just a few weeks.

    One of my students Sara said the following after implementing my 3 Pillar Chunking Chinese System:

    In only a few weeks, I’ve become more confident at speaking and although I’m not perfect at it, I can now properly practice actively speaking! – Sara

    Another student of mine went from being completely unable to hold any kind of conversation in Mandarin when I first met her, to having conversations that were 98% in Mandarin about Ultramarathons in Morocco and her daughter’s driving test. Pretty impressive right?

    So after getting results like this, that’s when it became obvious:

    To truly speak Mandarin naturally, you only need to master three pillars.

    And you can get my system step-by-step, for free, delivered straight to your inbox here:

    Get The System

    The 3 Pillars

    1. Put Pronunciation First
    2. Deepen Comprehension
    3. Retain What You Learn

    Let’s look at each of these in a bit more detail.

    Put Pronunciation First

    The harsh truth is that most learners overlook pronunciation.

    Mandarin is a tonal language, meaning if your tones or rhythm are off, people won’t understand you, even if your words are technically “correct.” Even if you are understood, natives will find it painful to communicate with you as they have to expend so much energy trying to understand you.

    That’s not to say you need to sound ‘native-like’ or have a ‘perfect accent’. In China there are literally thousands of uniquely different accents. But having clear, easy to understand tones, initials and finals and overall rhythm will be of great benefit to you.

    Getting pronunciation right early builds the foundation for everything else.

    When you can hear and reproduce tones accurately, every new word you learn sticks more easily, and you gain the confidence that you’re being understood.

    Also strangely enough, learning pronunciation well will greatly help your listening abilities in the long run.

    Deepen Comprehension

    If you can’t hear Mandarin the way it’s naturally spoken, you’ll always feel one step behind in conversations.

    To a certain extent, your listening ability is your foundation for your speaking. Listening and speaking go hand in hand.

    Understanding isn’t just about knowing vocabulary, it’s about being able to follow real speech: the rhythm, tone changes, and flow of natural dialogue.

    That’s why the second pillar is all about training your ear to truly understand the language.

    Most learners only ever listen passively , they have Chinese podcasts or shows playing in the background while doing other things. But that alone doesn’t build real comprehension, at least not when you’re a beginner or intermediate. It is certainly helpful, especially when you reach more advanced levels and want to spend more time in the language, But to make progress, you also need to listen actively.

    Here’s how to do it effectively:

    Actively Listen

    Pick short, manageable clips, something you can play multiple times, like a podcast segment, dialogue, or short video.

    Instead of just letting it wash over you, focus your attention:

    • Try to catch individual words, phrases and sentence patterns
    • Pay attention to how speakers connect words together or drop sounds.

    Each time you replay the clip, you’ll start hearing new layers, small pronunciation details, sentence patterns, or filler words you didn’t catch before. That’s how your brain tunes itself to real Mandarin.

    Shadow What You Hear

    Once you can follow along, start shadowing, that means speaking almost at the same time as the speaker, imitating their rhythm, tone, and flow as closely as possible.

    It might feel awkward at first, but in my opinion shadowing is one of the fastest ways to improve both listening and speaking fluency. It also helps bridge the gap between just understanding and actually being able to use what you hear in real conversation.

    It forces your mouth and ears to work together, you’re training your brain to instantly connect sound to meaning and production.

    Even just 5 minutes of shadowing per day can dramatically improve your pronunciation, tone accuracy, and natural speaking rhythm.

    My students often tell me echoing and shadowing practice are their favourite part of my system:

    It is exactly at my level and it is exactly the kind of material that gets me hooked, and it seems very well structured too. I love the shadowing segment!!! – Emilio

    Test Yourself

    After listening or shadowing, take a moment to test what you’ve actually absorbed. A lot of people who just listen passively vastly overestimate how much they understood. Although testing yourself can be a humbling experience, it helps with both overall memory in the language and training yourself to catch onto those small details.

    Ask yourself:

    • Can I repeat or summarize what I just heard?
    • Can I identify key words or sentence structures?
    • Could I respond if someone said that to me in conversation?

    You could even write down a few sentences from memory and then check them against the original. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s awareness. You’re actively building comprehension through feedback and reflection.

    Over time, this kind of active, mindful listening turns Mandarin from a blur of sounds into something your brain automatically understands. You’ll stop translating in your head and start thinking in Chinese, which is a sign of real, deep comprehension.

    Retain What You Learn

    Most learners forget what they study because they only memorize isolated words, not real sentences or situations. Many also don’t have an efficient system to actually ensure they retain what they learn.

    The fix?

    • Speak out loud. Recreate phrases you hear from memory.
    • Use spaced repetition and recall-based techniques
    • Practice producing full sentences from day one.

    When you use evidence-based strategies for retention, your vocabulary becomes usable, not just recognizable.

    Here at Chunking Chinese, we teach learners to learn in context, and focus on key ‘chunks’ and ‘sentence patterns’. Think of these like premade building blocks which can help you effectively put together sentences in the language on autopilot.

    Why Most Study Feels Like Spinning Your Wheels…

    So if it’s this simple… why do so many learners still struggle?

    Because most people spend their time on the wrong activities:

    • Endless vocabulary lists with no context.
    • Rigid grammar drills with no speaking practice.
    • Passive learning (watching, reading) without active use.

    Others go to the opposite extreme, trying to “just speak” without any form of proper guidance, which often reinforces mistakes instead of fixing them.

    Without a system that combines pronunciation, listening, and active use, progress feels painfully slow.

    The Bottom Line

    You don’t need years and years of study or hundreds of apps to start speaking Mandarin confidently.

    You just need to focus on the three pillars that actually make a difference:

    1. Get pronunciation right.
    2. Train your ear for comprehension.
    3. Retain what you learn through active use.

    When these three work together, Mandarin stops feeling like a wall of tones and characters , and starts feeling like a living language you can actually speak.

    To help you actually apply this system, I’ve made a handy free email course that you can join here:

    Join The Course

    Looking forward to seeing you inside.

    All the best,

    Will

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