I'm Learning Mandarin

Links:

Peak Mandarin Discord Server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p

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In this episode, I dive into one of the most common questions Mandarin learners face:

Do you really need to memorise the tones for every new word?

Drawing from my personal journey of learning Mandarin and my experiences coaching other learners on my Pronunciation Academy, I discuss the challenges many learners encounter with tone memorisation.

I’ll share tips on memorising tones and learning to produce them accurately.

Links:

Peak Mandarin Discord: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p

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In a recent episode, we announced the launch of our Peak Mandarin Discord Server.

In just over a week we’ve seen the server grow into a thriving hub with nearly 200 learners supporting each other to ace their Mandarin-speaking goals.

And in today’s episode you’ll hear our first-ever live Q&A hosted in the server last Sunday, covering how to practice speaking at an early stage of your learning.

Joining me on the q&a panel were Peak Mandarin server moderators, Jered and Lewys, who’ve each been leaning Mandarin for around two years and focussed heavily on speaking during that time.

We had some great questions covering how to find opportunities to speak and get feedback from native speakers early on, in a way that’s effective and stress-free.

Links:

Peak Mandarin Discord server: https://discord.gg/BtT6t7fK

Interview with Karen Chung: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2022/06/26/how-to-achieve-a-near-native-chinese-accent-with-professor-karen-chung-podcast/

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

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Recently a member of our Peak Mandarin Discord server posted a short clip of a native Mandarin speaker saying a sentence in mid-conversation at full-blown speed.

The sentence was: 这么复杂的东西怎么学得会啊不可能的嘛对吧。Zhème fùzá de dōngxī zěnme xué de huì a bù kěnéng de ma duì ba. Something this complicated, how could I possibly learn it? It's impossible, right?

The challenge was laid out for members of the server to mimic the sentence and post their attempts on the thread to receive feedback from other learners.

So I decided to deploy the methods I often use to mimic native speech and give it a go.

In this episode I’m going to break down step by step how I went from struggling to keep up to being able to deliver the sentence with natural rhythm and accurate tones at lightning speed.

A word of caution, this sentence was particularly challenging, so if you don’t have much experience mimicking Mandarin, it’s advisable to start with something shorter and much slower.

Links:

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

Our Peak Mandarin Discord Server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p

Joshua's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jlykes

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On today’s episode, I interview Joshua Lykes, an up-and-coming YouTuber whose recent videos on learning Chinese have been creating waves in the community.

Joshua recently posted an hour-long video documenting in detail his first year of Mandarin learning.

And one of the things that stood out to me about that video Joshua’s use of technology, much of which wasn’t available to me when I first started learning Chinese.

It strikes me that in the last year or two, the sudden exposition of AI has had a tremendously deep impact on how we learn Chinese and that’s only going to increase going forward.

So after meeting Joshua on our Peak Mandarin Discord server and learning about his journey, I decided to get him on the podcast to chat about his experiences using AI to learn Chinese, as well as his hopes for the future of technology and language learning.

Link to Discord Server: https://discord.gg/gvWFSDbj

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One thing I’ve found that’s often missing for a lot of learners

This is something I try and provide here through my blog. But I’d like to expand this further. So today, we’re announcing the launch of our Peak Mandarin Discord community, a space where Mandarin learners can

To join the community you can click this link. If you don’t already have a Discord account you’ll be prompted to create one and then join the Peak Mandarin server.

Once in the server feel free to write a post introducing yourself to the community, share your experiences and get involved in discussions.

To explain more about why we’re creating this online community and what we hope to achieve through it I sat down to chat with three of our community moderators, Lewys, Jered and Philipp.

Links:

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

My blog: imlearningmandarin.com

In my first few years of learning Chinese, there were many occasions

This might take the form of a direct comment from a native speaker

These moments can be pivotal in shaping our learning experience for better or worse.

Recently I was talking about this to one of my students, Lewys, who

So in this episode, we share our experiences of having our egos

Links:

Get 20% off first month of Mandarin Mosaic: https://mandarinmosaic.com/imlearningmandarin

Karl's blog on ChatGPT: http://imlearningmandarin.com/2024/05/19/does-chatgpt-speak-authentic-chinese-the-results-of-my-study-may-surprise-you/

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My guest on this week’s episode is an app designer who has made several appearances here in the past.

Karl Baker, recently launched his new Mandarin learning app, Mandarin Mosaic.

The App seeks to make sentence mining accessible. Like Anki, but easier to use and

And if you’re interested in trying it out, you can go go mandarinmosaic.com/imlearningmandarin to get 20% off your first month.

I caught up with Karl and began by asking him all about his new launch, as well as his plans for the future.

Links:

Peak Mandarin Newsletter: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

My blog reflecting on the summer camp experience: http://imlearningmandarin.com/2024/08/04/5-things-i-learned-from-5-days-of-total-mandarin-immersion/

Will's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@willhartmandarin/videos

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Last week I attended a five-day immersive Mandarin Retreat Summer Camp as a lead organiser.

A group of 14 of us, including learners, organisers volunteers, and native tutors got together in Cheddar, in the south-west of England, and spoke nothing but Chinese for five days straight.

While it’s all still fresh in my mind, I decided to get my colleague and co-founder of Peak Mandarin, Will Hart, to chat about the experience.

Will also attended the retreat as an organiser and in this episode, we chat about what the experience of deep immersion was like and how we plan to make these camps bigger and better in the future.

Links:

Phillipps blog: https://philippmarxen.com/?p=256

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

My Blog: imlearningmandarin.com

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In this podcast and on my blog, I've often discussed how Anki flashcards can be used to boost your Mandarin learning.

Anki is a Spaced Repetition flashcards program that enables you to drill and create flashcards to aid your memory's retention of new information.

And my guest on today's podcast recently decided to take the Anki plunge, setting himself an ambitious challenge to drill flashcards for several hours a day every day, while documenting his progress on his blog.

Philipp Marxen is from Germany and has been learning Mandarin on and off for over two decades.

In this episode, we discuss his recent one-month challenge, including how he structured his learning and what it was like drilling Anki for several hours a day.

Does he recommend the method to others? Listen on to hear more.

If you like this episode please don't forget to subscribe on your favoured podcast provider.

Now onto the episode!

Links:

Follow along with a transcript and translation on: imlearningmandarin.com

Get your free copy of my eBook on: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

Subscribe to Will's YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/@willhartmandarin/videos

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Today's podcast episode features a Chinese learning superstar who should need no introduction.

Will Hart, created waves in the Mandarin learning community when he reached an incredible level of fluency in just 1.5 years while living in the UK during the Covid pandemic.

Will is the co-founder of our learning platform Peak Mandarin. And he's also the subject of my eBook, Lessons from a Chinese Learning Phenomenon, in which I unpack how he used a mixture of immersion and sentence-mining techniques to become fluent in Chinese - and how I put his methods into practice to learn the language myself.

In today's episode, Will talks in Mandarin about his recent attempts to learn Spanish using similar methods to the ones that previously worked so well for him.

As usual, you can follow along with a transcript below, as well as an English translation.

And if you like this podcast, please don't forget to subscribe to your favourite podcast provider.

Now on to Will's Spanish learning adventures!