I'm Learning Mandarin

Links: Bryce's website: https://www.brycehedstrom.com My free Mandarin Learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook -- On today’s episode, I interview Bryce Hedstrom – an award-winning teacher trainer in northern Colorado. Bryce has a varied and fascinating history in language learning and teaching, graduating in Spanish before teaching the language in public schools and at the college level for 30 years. He’s worked with clients in the business world, including Fortune 500 corporations and has received multiple awards for his work implementing methods for language instruction that centre around comprehensible input and storytelling. Moreover, as we’ll soon discover, he’s taken an interest in learning Mandarin, applying similar methods to those that were so effective in his teaching career. With so much to cover in this interview, it was hard to know where to start. So I began by asking Bryce how his fascination with languages all began.

Links: Our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p Our Peak Mandarin Masterpack for learning Chinese: https://www.peakmandarin.com/masterclass Will's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@willhartmandarin/videos -- In this episode, I share our special live q&a session with Will Hart, co-founder of Peak Mandarin. Will should need no introduction to readers of this blog. Two years ago he burst on the Mandarin learning scene when videos of him speaking flawless Chinese after learning for less than two years went viral on YouTube. In the q&a, Will took live questions from the audience in our Discord Server on all things Mandarin learning. Questions ranged from Will’s thoughts on Comprehensible Input to how he went about learning characters.

Links: Peak Mandarin Discord Server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p Your ultimate guide to Mastering Chinese tones -- In this episode, we’re diving into one of the most challenging parts of learning Mandarin: mastering tricky tone pairs. I’ll walk you through four of the most commonly mispronounced tone combinations and explain how to get them right.

In this episode, we bring you the recording of our October 20th session where we tackled questions on how to fix your tones. If you're looking to improve your tones but aren't sure how, this discussion is packed with insights from me, as well as server moderator, Jered. Tune in to hear valuable tips, expert advice, and answers to your questions from the live audience. Perfect for anyone looking to level up their tones! Interested in joining more live sessions like this? Join our Discord server on this link: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p

Links: Peak Mandarin Discord Server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p -- 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 -- 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 -- 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 -- 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 -- One thing I’ve found that’s often missing for a lot of learners is this sense of community, of belonging to a network of other learners who share similar goals and can support each other. 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 hang out, share tips and learning experiences and support each other to achieve our goals. 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 when I’d suddenly be made aware of a huge flaw in my Chinese I had previously been blind to. This might take the form of a direct comment from a native speaker who is less polite than normal. Or it might be an embarrassing failed attempt to communicate in Mandarin. 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 I’ve previously interviewed on this podcast. Lewys has experienced plenty of what he calls – ‘wet fish moments’ some of which affected his confidence and even caused him to give up. So in this episode, we share our experiences of having our egos crushed in the process of learning Mandarin and offer our tips for other learners on how best to avoid similar experiences.

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/ -- 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 -- 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 -- 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 -- 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!

Links: Kristen's Instagram Channel: https://www.instagram.com/learnchinesewithkristen/ My Free Mandarin Learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook My blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- On today’s episode, I speak to Kristen, a Mandarin speaker and teacher from Canada.   Kristen has been learning Chinese since 2013. Like me, she initially began learning outside China, and is full of insights based on her experience of overcoming barriers on the path to spoken Chinese fluency.  More recently, Kristen turned her attention to helping others learn Chinese, teaching the language through her popular Instagram channel. And with over 15,000 followers, she’s become well-known within the online Mandarin learning community for her short reels teaching Chinese grammar points, phrases and pronunciation tips.  My interview with Kristen is full of gems for anyone looking to become a fluent Chinese speaker. In particular, listen out for her tips on learning Mandarin outside the classroom and structuring your learning around your interests. For anyone interested in checking out her channel, I’ve left a link to it in the description.  And as usual, if you enjoy this podcast please don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on your favoured podcast provider.  Now on to today’s interview with Kisten!

Links: My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook My blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- My guest on today’s podcast has a Mandarin can trace his Mandarin learning journey all the way back to the 1980s. Stacy Bridges, from the US, began learning Mandarin at school and has continued studying the language on and off ever since. He recently attended one of our Peak Mandarin Subscriber Q&A sessions on how to go about practicing speaking Mandarin. After the session, Stacy reached out for advice on improving his pronunciation and speaking. We decided to record our conversation which explores his long Mandarin learning journey and challenges with tones and speaking as we thought it might be helpful to listeners facing similar challenges. As usual, if you like this podcast don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on your favoured podcast provider.

Links: Follow this episode along with a Chinese transcript and translation: imlearningmandarin.com My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook -- One of the most rewarding parts of running this podcast and creating Mandarin-learning content is receiving messages from learners whose lives have been changed in profound ways after taking our learning advice. Recently this podcast has featured several of these inspiring stories, and today’s episode features another one. A few weeks ago, Peak Mandarin Co-founder Will Hart and I received an email from a Pharmacy student based in Liverpool called Simon Griffiths. Simon had just finished reading my eBook, Lessons from a Chinese Learning Phenomenon – in which I unpack Chinese learning phenomenon, Will Hart’s, incredible story of Mandarin mastery – and wanted to get in touch to express his gratitude. After reading Simon’s email, Will and I reached out to him, asking if he’d be interested in recording a podcast in Chinese about his inspiring story. So on today’s episode, we hear Simon tell his story in his own Mandarin words, including his advice on how to get hooked on Chinese learning. As usual, if you like this podcast please don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on your favoured podcast provider. And if you’re interested in recording your own podcast in Chinese please get in touch by emailing info@peakmandarin.com and I’ll be happy to support you through the process.

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook My Mandarin learning blog: imlearningmandarin.com Our Peak Mandarin Masterclasses: https://www.peakmandarin.com/masterclass -- Hello and welcome back to the I’m Learning Mandarin podcast.  On today’s episode, I have a really insightful chat with one of our Peak Mandarin students, Lewys Thomas.  Lewys has been learning Chinese for a few years but recently realised despite getting a tonne of input his speaking wasn’t improving.  After coming across my blog, he reached out for help and is now thankfully well on track to acing his speaking goals.  One of the most interesting things to come out of my conversation with Lewys was his admission that when he first saw a video of me speaking fluent Chinese, he felt a pang of jealousy, like I was doing something that was beyond his abilities.  But what he’s since been able to do is to channel that jealousy into something much more productive: curiousity.  And after becoming curious and opening his mind to learning about how we became fluent in Chinese, he began putting these methods into practice himself and things really started changing for Lewys.  So we get into all of that later in the interview but to start with, I began by asking Lewys how his Chinese learning journey all started. 

Links: My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook Karl's Mandarin Mosaic App: https://mandarinmosaic.com/ Episode transcript and translation: imlearningmandarin.com -- On today’s I’m Learning Mandarin podcast episode, app developer Karl Baker gives us his five top tips for mining Chinese sentences. Karl began learning Mandarin several years ago as a way of communicating with his Chinese wife’s family and he’s previously written for the I’m Learning Mandarin blog about using sentence mining to improve his speaking skills. Recently, he’s started developing a new app called Mandarin Mosaic which is designed to facilitate the sentence mining process. As usual, you can follow along with a Chinese transcript below. If you’re interested in recording your own short episode in Mandarin, please get in touch at info@peakmandarin.com and I’ll be happy to support you through the development, production, and recording process. Finally, if you like this podcast please don’t forget to leave a review or five-star rating on your preferred podcast provider!

Links: My free eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook My Blog: imlearningmandarin.com Daniel's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DanielLeoSimpson -- Recently on the I’m Learning Mandarin podcast, I’ve had the fortune of interviewing a number of fascinating learners in our community.  And today’s guest is a perfect example of this. Daniel Leo Simpson is a composer from the US whose music has been played by orchestras around the world.  Daniel began learning Chinese as a hobby a few years ago and recently turned his attention to developing his speaking confidence.  He approached us for help with this, completing all our Peak Mandarin Masterclasses teaching our best methods for learning to speak Chinese fluently.  It was during one Masterclass in particular, that Daniel learned about a language exchange app called Hello Talk.  And as you’ll soon hear, this was somewhat of a Eureka moment for Daniel. He started using the app regularly to meet native Chinese speakers and got in the rhythm of speaking Chinese every day, all of which, combined with the methods he learned in the Masterclass has propelled his speaking confidence to new heights.  Before we got into discussing these recent game-changing experiences, I began by asking Daniel about his background as a musician and composer and how this influenced his interest in languages.