Learning Mandarin: Tips and Resources from an English Native's Ongoing Journey
Posted on: 2019-11-11 by Will Lehman
If you are interested in learning Mandarin, there are dozens of great resources to get you going. The problem is sorting through all the hype, usualy bound to some commercial product, to find a method that works for you.
As a professor of languages (German/Spanish), and as a lifelong language learner, I naturally have my own preferences, which you may or may not find helpful. I only started seriously learning Mandarin as an adult with a full-time job, so I'm very keen on focussing in on methods and strategies that can be broken down into small(er) time units. I can tell you this, though, with 100% certainty: though some strategies may save you a little time, there is no such way as an easy or fast way for a grown adult to learn a second language...period. If someone promises you, as a famous book series once did, that you can learn a language in "ten minutes a day", then you should promptly walk away before handing over any money. Many students have an unrealistic expectation about how quickly they can achieve fluency in a second language. According to the US government, it takes an average of 2,200 class hours of instruction to reach professional proficiency in Mandarin (about three times longer than it takes for Spanish). So, if you're trying the "ten minutes a day" approach, you can expect to spend a little more than 36 years to reach this level! Of course, you don't need to reach "professional fluency" to have a rich and wonderful experience with the language or even to have a decent conversation with people. The A2 or B1 level is enough for most situations. After just two semesters of college-level Chinese courses (crammed into one semester), supplemented with a weekly or bi-weekly session with a tutor I found on iTalki.com, I was able to have a decent (although halting, difficult, and at times embarrassing) conversation with a Chinese gentleman sitting next to me in a Shanghai-bound airplane. Yes, I made quite a few mistakes, and I didn't understand everything he tried to tell me, but we did have meaningful communication, and that's what most people are looking for.
Keep Motivated!
One of the things that I highly recommend is to have several different sources of input to keep your motivation level high. For example, listening to Chinese-language music or watching videos and films (Netflix has quite a few Chinese-language films with subtitles) will keep you excited about learning the language, which can help to overcome the reluctance to hit the flashcards, books, and other less exciting (but necessary) aspects of language learning. The trick is to have input that's just a little above your current level, but not so advanced that you understand less than 50% of what you hear. If you understand 90% or more of the input, then it's time to find something a little more difficult, to keep you learning new things.
Simplified or Traditional?
With some textbooks, you can choose between "simplified" characters (used in Mainland China and Singapore) and "traditional" characters, which are still used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As the naming suggests, simplified characters are somewhat less complicated (fewer strokes) than their traditional counterparts. The traditional characters are thought by some to be more beautiful (and more authentic) than simplified, but for most Western learners, the simplified are likely going to be more useful in a strictly numerical sense, for the simple fact that over a billion people are learning this system on the Mainland, which is growing increasingly important in the world economy. In the end, of course, you should choose what suits your learning purpose.
If you plan to be a serious, long-term student of any language, I would recommend that you get yourself a good college-level textbook and all the accompanying materials (DVDs, CD's, Premium Websites, etc.) that you can, and then find yourself a private tutor for oral practice and to answer any questions that may come up during your study. This isn't the least expensive method, but it definitely works to get you speaking, listening, and reading (i.e., recognizing characters) relatively quickly. If you want to pursue this method, I have a few recommendations. If you are ready to take the plunge and buy one of these resources, please use the links on this page to buy them through our Amazon Associates account, which will contribute a small percentage of your purchase price to the American Chinese Friendship Society.
Textbooks (all of which include audio CD’s or MP3’s):
New Practical Chinese Reader (2nd Edition). This series of textbooks is produced in the PRC and is used at many universities in the US and Canada. The new versions come with MP3's (for the dialogs and oral practice) attached. There are multiple levels that take you from beginning to a high intermediate level. This is the series I used for the first two semesters. If you have a tutor, you should consider getting the accompanying “workbook” for your textbook.
Integrated Chinese (4th Ed.). I believe this is the most popular textbook at US universities. They have both traditional and simplified character versions. I own several levels of these textbooks, but I always found NPCR to be a little friendlier.
Modern Chinese This is a relative newcomer on the textbook scene, but the books are high quality as are the online materials. It is a strongly story-based series and heavy on the graphics and glossy pages. I picked up the first four books at the ACTFL conference, which cover roughly four college semesters.
Chinese Made Easy. The title is catchy, but a little misleading in the sense that Chinese is not, and cannot be, made “easy” for any learner, period. That being said, the series of 5 textbooks (I only have the first two) seems very good to me, although I only used it as a supplement to my main textbook, the NPCR.
Readers
Readers are great in that they allow you to practice recognizing characters, and the accompanying audio helps give you a feel for how everything should sound. The readers I included here I have purchased for myself, and I use them quite often. They’re ordered easiest to hardest.
Chinese Breeze Series. This series of short stories it excellent! I have about 6 of these “books” (I put this in quotes because the books are really more like short stories) for Level 1 and Level 2 (300 and 500 characters, respectively). I found these stories to be very manageable, and they keep you motivated to keep working, because you want to know how the story ends. These stories have limited number of characters and are simplified to help the language learner, but reviews on Amazon say that the language still seems authentic, even though it is simplified in style and vocabulary.
Graded Chinese Reader 3 Weirdly, this reader is slightly easier than the Graded Chinese Reader 1. In any case, the stories are interesting, but be warned that there is no English text at all (but there is pinyin). One “trick” I have to quickly identifying the characters is to use Google Translate’s “photo” function, with which you can see the translation of the text instantly and make note of any characters that you think are worth adding to your personal dictionary.
Graded Chinese Reader 1 Same as above, just slightly easier.
Audio Only
Pimsleur Chinese. I spend at least an hour a day commuting, and I find Pimsleur language courses to be an excellent way to master some basic level skills with proper pronunciation, which is crucial at the beginning stages of language learning. I used Pimsleur for about a month before I took a trip to France, and I was told while there that my accent was excellent (even though my overall vocabulary level wasn’t particularly high). I did the same for Japanese, and likewise got several positive comments about my pronunciation. I started using this for Mandarin several years ago, because I hadn’t studied Chinese for many years and wanted to make sure that I (re-) started off right in terms of pronunciation. This method is strictly audio and light on grammar, but it’s really a great way to start a language.
Grammar, etc.
A Chinese Grammar for English Speakers This is an excellent book whose authors I met at the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The examples are interesting (and not too obscure or difficult) and it makes great reading. I sometimes pick this up before bed, just to remind myself of some grammar points.
Tuttle: Learning Chinese Characters. This is one of the classics for English-speaking learner's of Chinese and I found it indispensable early in my learning process.
Online Resources
iTalki.com This is a great service to find a Chinese tutor. Prices for excellent, experienced teachers can be as low as US$10 per hour. I’ve had several teachers through this system, and one of my best friends in China, whom I’ve visited several times, is someone I met through iTalki.
DuoLingo This is a free online resource that also has mobile apps for iOS and Android.
ChineseSkill This is also free and similar to DuoLingo, and in some ways better. Use the link to download the app for iOS or Android.
ChinesePod I recently bought a one-year subscription to ChinesePod, which is a basically a series of videos at all levels for language learners. It’s not particularly well organized in the way that a textbook is, but a lot of the videos are interesting in terms of content, and I find that watching them gets me hyped about hitting the books, which is, admittedly, less fun than just watching videos.
The Relative Importance of Reading and Writing
Chinese is notoriously difficult to learn, but there are a few things that can save you a bit of time on your journey to communicative competence. As far as the written language is concerned, it is very important that you (1) be able to recognize Chinese characters’ meanings. For example, you absolutely must know that 中 means ‘middle’ and that 人 means ‘person’ and that 女 means ‘female’, etc. Second most important is that you know (2) how to pronounce the characters that you recognize, of course with the proper tone. So, when you see 人, you should immediately be able to say it out loud: rén (rising tone). In my opinion, memorizing the writing and stroke order of Chinese characters, and the attendant slavish copying of characters by hand in a character-writing notebook, are a waste of time for any learner who is not ever going to need to write out sentences by hand. (Even the first four levels of the HSK test have a computer-based version that does not require hand writing). Many Chinese teachers recoil in horror at this idea, because the ability to write (or paint) characters is a traditional sign of an educated person. In the modern world, however, you basically never have to write by hand if you have your smartphone on you. All you need to do to produce Chinese text for a taxi driver, waiter, or anyone else, is to enable Pinyin input on your phone, which allows you to type in Chinese by the sound of the word(s) and then you select, on your screen, the character(s) that correspond(s) to the word you want to use. Of course, this requires that you both know how the word sounds and recognize the correct characters for that word. If you master (1) and (2) above and keep your phone on you, you will be able to make yourself understood (in writing) even if the person you’re talking to cannot understand your pronunciation (which will probably happen at some point).