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If you’re a native English speaker, learning Chinese is no small feat. In fact, the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute puts Mandarin Chinese in the hardest category of languages to learn.

But don’t let that discourage you. There are more resources available than ever before to help you learn Chinese fast or even learn on your own. The best way to learn Chinese will depend on your learning goals and preferences.

In this post, we’ll cut through the noise and clutter and give you our top tips for anyone learning Mandarin Chinese, with various learning styles.

If you want to cut to the chase and just see reviews and recommendations for many language-learning resources, check these posts:

Most people start studying Chinese with whatever resource they happen to stumble upon. It’s hard to know what you should focus on. This post will help give you a clearer path forward.

The beginning may feel like a daunting, exciting, and confusing place to be. But don’t worry, everybody started where you are now. There are tons of courses, apps, and websites out there that will make learning Chinese much easier.

This isn’t a long-term study plan. It’s a guide to take you from knowing absolutely nothing or very little and get you up to the lower intermediate level.

For some, this may only take a couple of months. Others will lose motivation and never get beyond this stage.

Learn Chinese Mandarin depending on your learning style with these tips and strategies. How to learn Chinese? by yourself? How to start? Find out here.

How should I start learning Chinese?

Before we begin, you’ll need to think about a few questions.

Why do you want to learn Chinese?

Everyone’s situation is unique. We’re all motivated to learn Chinese for different reasons. Whatever your reason, it’s important to adjust your plan to fit this.

If you only want to be able to talk to your Chinese girlfriend’s parents – is it worth the time to learn to read and write? If you only want to be able to read Chinese novels – should you spend the energy learning to speak?

How much time and money are you willing to spend learning Chinese?

Learning Chinese really doesn’t have to be expensive. That said, a few paid resources will make things that much easier. But, if you’re broke, don’t sweat it. There are tons of free materials available as well.

The more important question: How much time are you willing to spend learning Chinese?

Don’t set unrealistic expectations and burn yourself out. Learning the language is a marathon, not a sprint. More important is building a good study habit that you can stick to, and of course, having fun with it.

How do you learn best?

Do you need to be around other people or can you study independently? Do you need a structured course or are you comfortable pulling materials from different places? You know how you learn best. Do what works for you.

Be realistic about your goals and the time it will take to reach them.

Let’s not make excuses.

If you don’t have the time to study Chinese – that’s fine.

If it’s not a priority for you – that’s fine.

You don’t need to be in China to study Chinese. During this first stage especially – it doesn’t matter where you are. If you were in China, you wouldn’t understand anything anyway.

Now is the time to build a solid foundation.

I don’t plan on teaching you anything in this post.

There are tons of people far more qualified to teach Chinese. However, I doubt that there’s anyone who has tested and researched as many different websites, courses, apps, podcasts, tools, and tutoring services as I have.

I’m going to use those findings, and my own experiences learning the language, to help you figure out where you should put your time and energy. I’m simply going to point you in the right direction.

The rest is on you.

How to Learn Chinese Mandarin with Zero Knowledge?

Welcome to learning Chinese Mandarin! This section is designed for absolute beginners with minimal or no prior knowledge of the language. Whether you can only say “ni hao” occasionally, these initial steps are crucial in establishing a strong foundation for future learning.

Take the time to master these foundational elements. What may seem slow now will translate to accelerated progress and proficiency later on.

Learn the Chinese Alphabet (Pinyin)

Before you start learning new words, sentences, grammar rules, reading, writing, and everything else – you have to learn the absolute basics.

If you were studying English, this would be the alphabet. Since you’re studying Chinese, it’s pinyin.

Pinyin is the romanization of Chinese characters based on their pronunciation. This is the first step in learning Chinese.

Chinese children learn pinyin before learning characters, and so should you. This isn’t to say you should ignore characters as a beginner, just that you have to do this first.

Each Chinese character is represented by a single syllable – composed of an initial and a final.

Take a second to play around a little with this chart but don’t worry if it’s confusing for now.

Learn to Pronounce Pinyin

Chinese has an absurd number of similar-sounding words. The differences in sounds are subtle, and for beginner students, hard to hear.

You can’t just read pinyin like you would in English. Pronunciation is important no matter what language you’re learning. Since Mandarin is a tonal language, pronunciation is a necessary part of speaking Chinese. In tonal languages, the pitch or tone of a word changes its meaning.

It may be tempting to quickly move past this phase in order to begin learning more interesting things, but you need to slow down. In fact, slow the way down.

Nail pronunciation early on. If you do this, you’ll sound more natural than advanced speakers who have been studying for years.

If you ignore pronunciation, it won’t matter how many words you know because nobody will understand anything you say.

As you learn words, sentences and start communicating in Chinese, you’ll be reinforcing the pronunciation habits that you learned early on. Make sure you’re reinforcing the right things.

Resources

I’m very picky about the resources I recommend for learning pronunciation.

The reason for this is that oftentimes writers or video creators try to simplify pronunciation too much. It’s fairly common to see people comparing a pronunciation sound to an English sound that’s “close enough.”

“Close enough” may be good enough for someone looking for survival Chinese before a vacation. But, for someone beginning the multi-year journey of learning Chinese, “close enough” just doesn’t cut it.

Actually, there is so much to tell you about this, just go to my post about learning Chinese pronunciation, I suggest reading that post as it does include a lot of other useful resources.

Learn Chinese Tones

Native speakers won’t be able to understand you unless you master the Chinese tones.

There are a total of five tones in the Chinese language, and you’ll need to learn how to consistently pronounce all of them correctly if you want to speak the language. One of the best ways to practice Chinese tones is by shadowing native speakers.

Tones are one of those things that make Chinese seem very difficult for beginners. Truthfully, they’re not as difficult as beginners often fear.

I’ll often hear people make the same excuse.

“I just don’t have an ear for Chinese.” Of course, you don’t. Nobody does when they start learning. Like everything, it takes some time and a conscious effort to learn to hear the differences in tones.

They are incredibly important and ignoring them would be a huge mistake. Like I said already, tones aren’t terribly difficult. A simple way to begin thinking of them is the “Dude System.”

First Tone: Dūde, the disapproving tone, as to the clumsy roommate who’s just knocked over your three-foot Graphix and gotten bong water all over your Poli Sci 142 reader: “Dude, I can’t believe you spilled my bong again!”

Second Tone: Dúde?, in the concerned but creeped-out way you might address the roommate you discover sitting naked and cross-legged in the dark, chanting “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” and sounding a little brass bell.

Third Tone: Duǔde, scornfully, as if your roommate has asked to borrow 50 dollars so his sensei can align his chakras: “Yeah right, dude.”

Fourth Tone: Dùde!, as if you are exclaiming in triumph to your roommate when coming home from class having gotten a date with mega-babe Elena from your macroeconomics class.

Here is another Chinese resource that has made all of their lessons on Chinese tones free. Their tone pairs videos are especially helpful.

Resources

You’re still going to have to put in the effort to train your ears. I found this free tone training course by Wordswing to be extremely helpful when I first started. I highly recommend it.

Again, you should go to my Learn Chinese Pronunciation for specific recommendations. Remember, you’re trying to build a foundation here, make sure it’s solid.

Many other resources don’t teach the third tone particularly well. So, if the resources you choose to use simply say it “falls then rises,” you should read this article on Sinosplice and this one on Hacking Chinese.

I also liked this article – 5 Lies Teachers Tell You About Mandarin Tones.

Learn to Write Chinese

Should you learn to write Chinese? I hope you’ve asked yourself this question before diving into it.

Again, people feel differently about whether or not it’s worth the time and energy to learn to write Chinese by hand. Your own goals and motivations will need to play a part in your decision.

I decided that the basics are important to know, but that I’m more interested in focusing on other areas. So, my Chinese handwriting is terrible. I’ve had so few instances where I need to write something in Chinese, and when I do, I can reference the character in my phone or ask someone for help writing.

Your goals may be different than mine and writing Chinese could be a priority for you. If so, you have some good tools that you can make use of.

There are a few excellent Chinese programs and apps available for language learners looking to learn to write Chinese. Many of them use SRS (spaced repetition software) and stroke order recognition.

You could also go the old school way, with pen and paper, along with a stroke-order dictionary – Arch Chinese or Pleco will work. This is cheaper, but you lose out on some of the convenience and power of SRS.

Typing Chinese

While it’s very rare that I need to write something by hand, I often find myself needing to type in Chinese. Luckily, this is far easier. You can download a Chinese keyboard and just type in pinyin and manually select the character you’re looking for.

I like typing in Chinese as a means to practice my sentence structure and vocabulary usage. It’s very easy to get your writing corrected by a native Chinese speaker for free. There are a few ways to do this.

Google Translate “might” do the job, but one better option is the app HiNative. You can ask other questions on this app, such as getting feedback on your pronunciation, asking how to say something, for example, and a lot more.

Learn to Read Chinese

The Chinese writing system is logographic, meaning that Chinese characters often represent words and ideas instead of sounds like letters in an alphabet. This means that to read Chinese characters, you will have to memorize them to some extent. Because of this, a lot of people are very intimidated by Chinese characters and the thought of reading Chinese. I personally find reading Chinese to be a very enjoyable experience, and oftentimes easier than understanding spoken Chinese.

But, it all depends on where you place your energy and what your goals are.

In the beginning, you will likely need to use pinyin as a crutch. But the sooner you can move away from a dependence on pinyin and start reading characters by themselves, the better off you will be.

Eventually, you won’t have a choice.

In fact, as you reach higher levels of Chinese, reading pinyin will become more challenging than reading characters and you’ll have a hard time figuring out what the hell the pinyin is meant to say.

Chinese Characters

Like most things related to Chinese, learning Chinese characters seems far harder than it actually is. When I first started learning Chinese, every character was a confusing mess. Luckily, there are some tricks you can use to learn Chinese characters more efficiently.

For starters, you can learn Chinese radicals and how they make up characters. Radicals are a part of a character and usually give a clue to the character’s sound or meaning. In the Chinese language, there are about 200 radicals.

A Chinese dictionary will use radicals to organize characters, and every Chinese character has a radical in it. Knowing radicals and recognizing them within other characters will make reading Chinese a lot easier. It will also make characters easier to remember.

You can also use Mnemonics, which are a popular way to help memorize Chinese characters. Mnemonics combine a memorable image with a Chinese character. This image is associated to the Chinese word and helps make the character more memorable.

A great example of mnemonics for Chinese characters can be found here.

Some great programs that help you read Chinese characters are Du Chinese and Skritter. Both apps do a great job helping Chinese learners start their Chinese character reading journey. 

Character Components

Character components are the pieces that make up all of the characters. Radicals are the components that were used to list characters in older dictionaries. You’ll probably never use a traditional dictionary so the distinction between the two isn’t particularly important.

Learning the components of characters makes recognizing and distinguishing them a much simpler process. I found it much easier to understand how characters were put together after learning the 100 most common radicals. I don’t know if it’s worth the time to learn them all, but it’s worth knowing they exist.

I’ll defer to Olle Linge of Hacking Chinese for this topic. This article focuses on learning characters as a beginner and this one provides more advice for learning characters.

Reading Materials

It has never been easier to learn to read Chinese. You don’t need to read books written for five-year-olds. You can read interesting news articles and stories written at a level that you can understand. Reading Chinese can actually be fun and not a chore.

I wrote a whole article about various resources I’ve found for reading Chinese online.

I’m also a huge fan of the Mandarin Companion books. Level one is written using approximately 300 unique characters. They say it’s meant for students who have had about one to two years of formal study. But, I think you can jump into it earlier.

I read my first Mandarin Companion book within my first six months of studying. It’s not because I’m super smart or anything. In the beginning, I was constantly looking up words, but by the end of the book, I was actually able to read it fairly smoothly.

Completing that first book was really enjoyable and felt like a huge accomplishment.

Chinese Breeze is another popular graded book series, but I haven’t read any of their titles.

What's the best app to learn Chinese?

How to Learn Chinese Mandarin as a Beginner?

Learn Chinese Words

As you get a handle on pinyin and tones, it’s time to start learning Chinese words – lots of words. This is a long-term process that you’ll almost certainly continue using for as long as you study Chinese.

The best way to learn new words is from context. Basically learning words you read or hear while studying or just going about your life.

It’s generally a bad idea to take words from a word list and try to memorize all of them – at least for students past the elementary level.

For beginners though, you still want to learn from context, but I don’t mind taking words straight from word lists. The reason is pretty obvious. It’s hard to learn from context if you don’t have any base words you know.

That said, assuming you’re using a textbook, course, or podcasts, you should add relevant words to your flashcard list (we’ll talk about this in a minute). It doesn’t make sense to add everything though. Just because you heard the word dinosaur, doesn’t mean you need to learn it right now.

It’s time to build your vocabulary with high-frequency words.

SRS – Your New Best Friend

Spaced repetition software (SRS) is basically smart flashcards. Using SRS will save you a ton of time reviewing words and prevent you from forgetting words you’ve already learned.

When you review words, each time you correctly remember the word, the longer the interval between reviewing will be next time. So if you correctly remember a word, next time maybe it’ll be due in two days, then five days, then ten days, and so on for as long as you remember it correctly.

If you forget the word, then the interval will be shortened and you’ll see that card more often.

People often try to add too many cards to their flashcard list, then get discouraged by the huge pile of words they need to get through. Be careful about the words you need to learn and try not to overfill your list.

SRS is best used as a way to review what you’ve already learned from other places. Not as a means of learning everything.

The only time I would say it’s reasonable to use SRS as a means of learning, instead of reviewing, is as an absolute beginner. This is simply because you need to build a solid base of words to build upon.

As you reach higher levels of Chinese, the total amount of time spent on SRS compared to other resources should be fairly small, probably less than 20% of your study time.

Resources

You have a few different resources to choose from when using SRS software. Many courses actually use their own software as well, but I’d rather have a dedicated space for all my flashcards.

There are three main options and different people have different preferences. My favorite is easily Pleco.

Pleco

Pleco is a dictionary app with a ton of extra features. It can do many different things and is something I use on a daily basis. One feature it has is flashcards.

Unfortunately, these cost $10 to access. For me, it’s worth the price. The reason is that I often will look up a word in Pleco, and then want to see example sentences to go with it. Adding words to review here is really easy as I don’t need to switch apps again.

Anki is a much more DIY flashcard app and isn’t specific for learning languages. It’s a lot more customizable as you can add pictures, sentences, audio, and so on.

For me though, I prefer the ease of quickly adding a word over these extra features. Anki is free on Android but costs $24.99 on iOS. You can, however, use it in your phone’s browser to avoid paying.

There are also quite a few flashcard decks already made by other people. But, be careful overusing pre-made decks.

Memrise would be the third choice and one of the most popular options. There are tons of user-made courses ranging from HSK lists, grammar, restaurant menu items, and so on. It’s free to use and a bit more fun and gamified than the other options. It’s pretty great, but again, avoid over-relying on the pre-made lists.

Don’t try to make flashcards by hand or review lists of words written on paper. I know not everyone loves using digital resources like this. But if you don’t use SRS, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time learning and reviewing words.

Grammar

Chinese grammar is fairly easy and straightforward, especially at the beginner level. That said, you’ll still want to spend a bit of time looking at things more closely.

Chinese Grammar Wiki is a great resource for learning Chinese grammar online. Grammar points are organized by difficulty level with lots of example sentences for you to reference.

I also wrote this article comparing a few different grammar books.

Work on your active listening skills

Improving your listening comprehension is another thing that’s going to be with you for the whole time you’re studying Chinese. For most people, it will be the most important of the skills they learn – above reading, writing, and even speaking.

You need to understand what people say to you before you can answer. Otherwise, you’ll end up repeating the same sentences over and over without actually answering people’s questions.

Many people make the mistake of thinking they can just pick up the language by being exposed to it. That’s not going to work. There are countless expats in China that have been here for years and can’t speak any Chinese.

Other people often think that they can just watch TV shows and they’ll pick up the language that way.

Again, that’s not going to work.

You need comprehensible input. Basically, you need to listen to things that you can understand most of. You need resources at your level.

Resources

There are quite a few podcasts you can use for learning Chinese. It’s updated often, so check it out for the latest info.

Learn to Speak Chinese

Like pretty much everything related to learning Chinese, you’ll need a lot of practice to improve your spoken Chinese.

It’s really important that you continue to focus on proper pronunciation with clear tones. Make sure that you’re practicing the right things and building good habits.

Mimicking

At this beginner stage, most of your speaking practice will be mimicking single words, phrases, and simple sentences.

When learning tones, it’s vital that you have some sort of feedback on your pronunciation. Listening back to the recording of a native speaker is great feedback. Mimicking native speakers is a great way to improve your speech rhythm and cadence. It can be very helpful to record yourself speaking and compare it to the original recording.

When mimicking a native speaker, you listen as they say a particular word, syllable, or phrase. After listening several times you then try to mimic what you hear. Then you listen again to the native speaker and compare your pronunciation against theirs. This is one of the most effective ways to learn Chinese tones and develop a natural accent.

It’s important to be a bit hard on yourself. I’ve found Chinese people to be very quick to say that you speak great Chinese, even if this is far from the truth. You’ll need to constantly work on this.

You don’t necessarily need any fancy tools for this. You can mimic lines from a podcast, course, or YouTube video. There are tons of apps you can use to record yourself.

One resource that I think is really great for improving your spoken Chinese is called Speechling.

The free version offers lots of recorded sentences in either a man or woman’s voice. They can be categorized by topic or difficulty level.

The audio of a sentence will play, and then you’ll record yourself saying the same sentence. Right after that, you’ll hear the audio again. This sandwich effect makes it very easy to spot differences in your recordings and the native speakers. This is all included in the free plan.

With a premium plan, you can also submit an unlimited number of recordings each month to be corrected. This provides a great opportunity to get non-biased feedback on your speech.

Improve your Chinese pronunciation with Speechling.

If you have a Chinese teacher or language learning partner, having them give feedback on your tone is also a great option.

Shadowing is one of the exact techniques used in Pimsleur’s Mandarin Chinese course. In every lesson, you shadow a native speaker as you learn new words and phrases.

Teachers, Tutors, and Language Exchanges

Not surprisingly, one of the best ways to improve your speaking (and listening) is by talking with a Chinese person.

You have lots of options available for this and different people will have different preferences.

Tutors

I’ve preferred to pay for a tutor to help me with conversational classes. I don’t like focusing too much on things like grammar or vocabulary because I’ve always felt I could learn those more efficiently, and cheaper, elsewhere.

See our recommendations on Chinese tutoring programs right here:

Language Exchanges

If you don’t have money to spend on lessons, that’s not a problem. It’s definitely not an excuse to not practice speaking Chinese.

The reason I prefer paying for classes instead of doing language exchanges is that I don’t have so much free time. With language exchanges, you’ll be expected to help the other person learn their target language just as much as they help you.

It can be a great way to make friends and learn a language, it’s just likely to be a bit less efficient than paying for classes.

There are a number of places you can find a language exchange partner. See some ideas right here.

How to Learn Mandarin Chinese — Which Ways for Your Learning Style?

Learn Chinese with an immersion-based language course

How immersion helps you learn Mandarin Chinese more effectively

Immersion is a popular way to learn Mandarin Chinese. Language immersion is when you learn grammar and vocabulary by using full dialogues or conversations.

But just a heads up, this only happens after you’ve already begun using whole phrases in conversations, listening practice, and reading. Learning through immersion makes grammar more intuitive, as you start to get a feel for how the Chinese language works before learning any rules. It also makes vocabulary more memorable as you have the context of a whole text or conversation to remember, versus just a word-for-word translation.

With Immersion, you don’t learn Chinese on a word-for-word basis using English translations and long word lists. This is the approach a lot of traditional Chinese courses take. Unfortunately, this method teaches you the bad habit of translating Chinese words from English ones in your head before you speak.

Immersion cuts down on the translation step. Instead of learning the exact definition of each Chinese word, you learn the general meaning of whole phrases and sentences. As you progress through an immersion course, you do eventually learn the grammar behind sentences and will learn each word’s definition.

Download a Chinese learning app

Language learning apps make it possible to learn Chinese anywhere, and they can be a powerful tool in your Chinese learning arsenal. If you want to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese, then you’ll want to pick an app that uses the immersion method to teach you Chinese.

There are quite a few favorite Chinese apps for Chinese language learning. The list is always updates, so check out our Chinese Best Apps post for our most up to date recommendations.

Subscribe to Mandarin Chinese podcasts

Chinese podcasts are a great way to learn vocabulary and grammar, while also working on your listening comprehension skills. If you’re new to the Chinese language then it’s best to start out listening to language learning podcasts.

There are tons of Chinese learning podcasts. See our current favorite podcasts right here.

As you progress through the podcast and reach the higher difficulty levels, you’ll notice that less and less English is used and many advanced podcasts rarely use anything other than Mandarin.

Watch Chinese movies and TV shows

Watching Chinese TV and movies is a great way to learn Chinese. It’s also great for getting a taste of Chinese culture. Here’s how you can use Chinese movies and TV to boost your language skills.

Pick a short clip from a movie or show and play it back a few times without any subtitles. Make note of any words and phrases you understand, and listen closely to the ones you don’t. Use the context of the clip and the words you do recognize to guess the meaning of the Chinese phrases that are unfamiliar to you.

After this, if you know Chinese characters you can play the clip back using Chinese subtitles. Seeing the characters will help you pick out words and phrases that you already know but maybe didn’t recognize when they were spoken.

If you don’t know Chinese characters yet, there’s an app you can use to work around this but more on that in a second.

If you watched clips with Chinese subtitles and are still stumped by any of the words, you can watch the clip with English subtitles.

Repeating this exercise of watching and listening will help you learn new words and improve your listening comprehension skills.

Another benefit of learning Chinese this way is that movies and TV shows will expose you to informal Chinese like slang and idioms. Mandarin Chinese as it’s spoken in everyday life is often different than the Chinese you learn in a typical course or textbook. Shows and movies will help you learn Chinese as it’s spoken on the street.

Speak Chinese with native speakers

Speaking Chinese with native speakers is one of the most important steps you can take in your language-learning journey. You can’t become fluent in Chinese without speaking practice.

Still, many Chinese learners put off speaking for as long as possible. They tell themselves they’ll start to speak Mandarin when they’re ready. They’re convinced that they just need to learn a few more grammar rules or more Chinese words.

The problem is that there will never be a day when you finally feel ready to speak Mandarin. If you’ve never done it before there will always be some self-consciousness and fear at the thought of speaking Chinese. The good news is that once you take the leap and start practicing with native speakers, the fear subsides and your confidence builds up quickly.

How to prepare for your first conversation with native Chinese speakers

Speaking with real people is one of the most exciting and fulfilling parts of learning a second language, and there are some practical steps you can take before your first conversation.

One of the first is to practice some stock Chinese phrases beforehand. For this, you’ll want to imagine some of the questions and topics likely to come up the first time you talk to someone in Chinese.

This might be easier than you think. When meeting someone you’ll likely hear questions like:

  • What’s your name?
  • Where are you From?
  • Why are you learning Chinese?
  • How long have you been learning Chinese?
  • What do you do for work?
  • What are your hobbies?

You should practice answering and asking these questions in Mandarin. You can write them out on a conversation cheat sheet for yourself so that you have a quick reference to look at in case you get stuck while talking to someone.

How to find native Chinese speakers to practice with

If you live in or plan to live in China then finding a native Chinese speaker won’t be difficult. If you live in another country then you might have to think a little more creatively to find Chinese speakers.

Most major cities have language exchanges or conversation clubs. You can use a site like Meetup.com to search for a language exchange in your area. If that doesn’t prove fruitful you can take your search online and look for a language partner on one of Language Exchange platforms. In China, there’s a huge demand for native English speakers to practice English with. So the odds are that you’ll find a lot of Chinese speakers in online language-learning communities.

Another option is to check and see if your local university has a foreign language conversation club. Most colleges have a foreign language program or even an exchange student program, so you might be able to find a native speaker there.

Sign up for online Chinese classes

One of the best ways to learn the Chinese language is with one-on-one classes with a teacher. These days more and more language learners are opting to take online lessons via a video chat program like Zoom or Skype.

A professional Chinese teacher will likely have spent a lot of time teaching their native language to foreigners. As a result, they will know the common mistakes a native English speaker makes while learning Chinese, and what the most difficult aspects of the language might be for them.

Most importantly your teacher will also know how to help you overcome these common hurdles of the Chinese language. He or she will likely have some tricks up their sleeve to help you with things like mastering the Chinese tones, remembering characters, and understanding grammar.

There are excellent Mandarin Chinese classes we can wholeheartedly recommend. See our Best Online Courses for Learning Mandarin for the most up to date recommendations.

Listen to Chinese music

If you’re learning Mandarin Chinese, then listening to Chinese music can be a fun and effective way to learn new words and practice your listening skills. Mainland China has a long and varied musical history.

There are long-standing traditions for both Chinese folk and opera going back hundreds of years. If you’re looking for something more modern, China produces its fair share of pop music as well. There’s plenty of Chinese EDM, hip-hop, pop, and rock to be found.

How music can help you learn Chinese

A simple way to incorporate music into your Chinese learning is to listen to a favorite song and then read through the lyrics. You can then look up any words you don’t know. You can then memorize the song to help you remember the new words.

Another fun way to practice Chinese using music is lingoclip.com. Lingoclip lets you play Chinese songs and tests you on the lyrics in real-time. You’re prompted to fill in the blanks of the lyrics as the song plays using pinyin.

Read Chinese books

Due to the writing system, reading in Chinese is going to be more difficult than other languages. If you’re a beginner reading Chinese can feel intimidating.

Not to worry though, it’s perfectly fine to start out reading pinyin. Pinyin is a transcription of Chinese words using letters from the Latin alphabet. Pinyin also uses dashes above letters to denote tones. While you’re not as likely to encounter pinyin in China (though kindergarten and early school-age children are taught to use it), it’s still the best way to start reading Chinese as a beginner.

After you start reading Pinyin, it will be time to move on to Chinese characters. As we mentioned before it’s best to start by learning radicals. Not all characters will be determined by their radicals, but many will.

Fortunately, there are a lot of tools available dedicated to teaching you how to read Chinese characters. One great resource is the MDBG Chinese dictionary. With this dictionary, it’s easy to copy and paste simplified or traditional Chinese characters to look them up. There’s even a writing feature that lets you write a character into the dictionary to look it up as well. This dictionary also uses Pinyin if you need it!

Another free tool to help you read in Chinese is Nlptool.com. It includes a built-in web browser that has a popup English-to-Chinese dictionary, making it easy to read through Chinese web pages. Nlptool also includes word segmentation, an example sentence search.

How to Learn Chinese by Yourself?

Learning Chinese on your own is not an easy feat, but it’s possible. By gathering all your pinyin and vocabulary knowledge, you can make it possible to learn grammar on your own. However, know that this journey will take a lot of effort and hard work on your part.

Structure Your Learning

I hate textbooks, but they’re the default way to learn new skills for a reason.

You don’t have to follow it religiously, but it can be a very useful reference. Integrated Chinese and NPCR are the two most often recommended ones you’ll find. You can also find PDF versions online with some simple googling.

The Hacking Chinese blog and book are both very helpful. I’d recommend the book because it’s a lot more structured and that’s something you really need when you start studying Chinese independently. Either way though, both have a ton of useful information that can save you time.

A course is a great way to add structure too. Online courses are actually affordable as well, with there being quite a few options to choose from. I’ve already written a fairly long post comparing the different online courses, and telling you which ones to avoid. So, I’m going to avoid repeating myself here.

Get Started

Learning Chinese is a long process and has a steep initial learning curve. Just get started.

It can take months before you feel like you’re really able to understand or say much. That’s okay. If you build a solid foundation in the beginning – it will get easier and more fun.

That’s not to say it will become less challenging – just that you’ll face different challenges. I hope this guide has been a helpful resource and will give some insight into that difficult question – “How do I start learning Chinese?”

I’m still learning myself and have a long way to go. Take everything in this guide with a grain of salt and figure out what works best for you. If I left off anything important or you feel I’m completely wrong about something – please let me know.

6 thoughts on “How To Learn Chinese (Mandarin) – An Extensive Guide With Focus On Getting Started”

  1. I have been living in Taiwan for 3 months. Originally I was supposed to move to South Korea but, Covid19 has really done a number on my work plans for 2020. Now it looks like I will be here for another year. I started searching for resources when I got the news. I found your comment on a reddit thread and followed it here. Thank you so much for providing so much information! I’m trying to dedicate 1 hour a day to studying. I will likely also try to find a tutor or online class. Hopefully I’ll be able to communicate on at least a basic level if I work at it consistently.

  2. Pingback: Becoming a Certified Teacher While Teaching in China

  3. I’m glad you found it helpful. I wish I could take credit for the Dude System, but it was borrowed from elsewhere. I found it to be a clear way for English speakers to quickly grasp the differences in the tones. Thanks for taking the time to comment!

  4. OMG! I have been trying to explain why I spend so much time pronouncing words… I have talked myself blue on creating an example for the tones. Reading your Dude System… I am ecstatic! Thank you so much for that and all of your other tips.

  5. Hey,

    I’m not at all a fan of Pimsleur (review), but it might be pretty good for your situation. It’s pretty much entirely audio and will give you lots of opportunities to practice speaking. It’s really expensive though for what you get. Maybe you can find a used copy or download from somewhere?

    I like Glossika (review) more and think it would be a really good option once you understand a bit more Chinese. It’s all audio focused and provides a lot more speaking opportunities than the other courses. But, it’s a bit too hard for beginner students.

    ChinesePod is my favorite of the courses I’ve mentioned. The lessons are usually around 15 minutes long, give or take. They center around a dialog, playing it once at the beginning, and again at the end of the lesson. In the middle, they discuss the important vocabulary, grammar, and so on. To avoid the interruption of having to change tracks, maybe download however many lessons you want to listen to any given day and just put them in a playlist. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really provide the speaking opportunities.

    There’s not really a clear best choice that I know of. While I personally love ChinesePod and didn’t like Pimsleur, given your opportunities to practice speaking as well as listening, Pimsleur may be best for you. One thing though, I’d recommend spending a bit of time working on your pronunciation before starting a course that has you speaking a lot. Here are the best pronunciation resources I’ve found.

  6. I work by myself in a workshop all day every day, and as such I have hours and hours during which I can listen or talk as much as I want, but can’t easily watch videos or use written materials. I’m looking for recommendations for a Chinese language course that is as audio-focused as possible. It’s not like I don’t have any time at all for written, interactive, or video materials; but not more than any other busy person. But as I said, I have most of my working life during which I can listen and talk to prompts. I see a lot of little short snippet-type language podcasts, but I don’t want little short snippets; clicking on the next track or trying to figure out which lesson I should listen to next interrupts my work flow. I keep up my German by listening to audio books in German, but I am a total beginner in Chinese.
    What would you recommend that is as audio-based as possible?

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