To celebrate 4 amazing years of studying Mandarin Chinese, here are 4 unconventional tips that you may find useful.
1. Guided Meditations — This is the newest addition to my study toolkit. It’s been great for 一石二鸟 (killing two birds with one stone). When done properly — following the breath, keeping good posture, observing passing thoughts and returning to the meditation — it’s a way to let Mandarin enter my mind without judgment, anxiety or pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I love speaking/listening to Chinese, but it’s not always a relaxing experience since my mind is working on overdrive to discern meaning. When meditating with guided audio in Mandarin, however, I don’t get hung up on not understanding something. I simply listen to the music of the language, follow the guide when I do understand, and return to fundamentals of meditation I’ve built from my time practicing.
My go to app for this is Insight Timer. I find the user interface light-years behind Headspace, but there’s a plethora of free guided mediations to make up for the noisy design. And there’s a Chinese language setting. These are a few of my favorites:
2. TV/Movies/Radio/Books/Music/Etc. — The flowchart below depicts how I learned to love reading. Apply this technique with all sorts of Chinese content until you find something you don’t want to put down.
Here are my favorites:
- TV – 海绵宝宝 (Chinese Spongebob Squarepants — enough said), 舌尖上的中国 (‘A Bite of China’ — explores Chinese 博大精深 cuisine with mouth watering cinematography), 爸爸去哪 (‘Where’s father?’ — good, clean, family good-fun)
- Movies – Anything by Zhang Yimou, Journey to the West and Dragon (these two are on Netflix as of writing this post)
- Radio – Voice of America — daily world news report in Mandarin. (Stitcher radio)
- Music – Wang Feng, Wang Lee Hom, my Chinese Spotify Playlist
3. LingQ — This is the closest I get to formal study these days. LingQ, created by badass polyglot, Steve Kauffman, is a language learning platform that focuses on developing reading and listening skills. This was originally recommended to me by my friend, Joe, whom learned Mandarin wayyy faster than me or anyone I’ve ever met. You can see both Lingq and Joe on my vlog.
4. Pretend your pet speaks 普通话 — Gotta get the reps in speaking out loud and flexing those mouth muscles. I talk to myself all the time, but for some reason I find talking to Cody (大狗) or Miles (白狗) to be more entertaining.
Do you have any unconventional study strategies? Let me know in the comments.
此致
敬礼,
Tom 🙂
