Links:
Read a blog by Lewys, the student I interviewed in Mandarin on the last episode, about his journey to conversational Mandarin in 12 months here: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2025/03/12/lewyss-6-month-transformation-to-conversational-mandarin-video/
Learn more about my coaching programme here: https://imlearningmandarin.com/gym
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So, over the past six months, I've been coaching Katharine, a busy working mom from Wales who wanted to learn Chinese to connect with her friends and help her son with his Chinese homework.
And unlike most people who come to me for coaching, Catherine was starting from ground zero. She tried Duolingo for around a week, but quickly realized that she needed a more systematic approach that would actually enable her to reach her goals.
So, Katharine has a demanding career. She's raising a family and she lives in the UK. Hey, so moving to China or dedicating full days to study isn't really an option. And so we set a very specific goal for her first 6 months, which was to establish a rock-solid foundation when it came to pronunciation, tones, and sentence structure.
So that meant rather than cramming thousands of random words from HSK lists, focusing on the words that she needed to use herself to talk about, the things that she was interested and wanted to talk about, and making sure she could say those things really well.
So making sure that her pronunciation and tones were really good for the things that she wanted to say. And so that's what she's done for the first 6 months, collecting phrases that she actually wants to say and building her own kind of personalized immersion environment where she's immersing in those things that she wants to talk about all the time while walking the dog, commuting to meetings, etc.
So, in a moment, we're going to hear a clip of Katherine reading a script that she wrote about whales, entirely in Chinese with excellent tones.
And after you hear that clip, I interview Katherine in English about her experience over her first 6 months of learning Chinese. So, now let's listen to Katherine in Chinese on the topic of Wales, where she's from.
💬 Links:
🎯 My Coaching Programme: https://imlearningmandarin.com/gym
📹 Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io0UWFtVIwk
📹 Lewys’s 6-Month Progress Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Oxh1eA9xs
Can you learn Mandarin to a conversational level in just one year while working full-time and raising a family? In this video, I share Lewys’s inspiring one-year Mandarin learning journey - an example of what’s possible with the right approach.A year ago, Lewys joined my coaching programme with one question in mind: how much Mandarin can a new dad with a full-time job realistically learn in a year?Lewys works as a senior accountant and has a young daughter, so finding time to study was always going to be a challenge. Yet, through consistent effort, a structured plan, and regular coaching, he managed to make remarkable progress.This episode documents his one-year results and includes our final interview, conducted entirely in Mandarin. It’s an honest and inspiring look at what can be achieved with the right mindset and method, even when time is limited.If you’re learning Mandarin and want to see what’s possible, this story is for you.
Links:
My Discord server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p
My blog: imlearningmandarin.com
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In this episode, I share my personal experiences and practical tips on how to use language exchange to supercharge your Mandarin speaking skills.
I talk about:
When I think it's best to start looking for a language exchange partner.
Where I’ve had the most success finding partners.
How I structure my sessions using a simple Green, Amber, Red system to match different stages of learning
If you're looking to build real fluency through conversation, this one's for you. Don’t forget to check out the I'm Learning Mandarin Discord server — a growing community of nearly 400 learners supporting each other on the road to fluency!
https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p
Links:
My website: imlearningmandarin.com
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In this episode, I discuss one of the biggest challenges Mandarin learners face: improving listening skills.
I explore why this aspect of language learning often feels so frustrating, including the psychological hurdles unique to Mandarin and the sheer amount of vocabulary needed for smooth comprehension.
I share practical strategies to overcome these obstacles, focusing on the power of consistent exposure through both extensive listening (broad, varied content) and intensive listening (focused, repeated study of specific material).
Links:
My website: imlearningmandarin.com
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On today's episode, I'm going to talk about a genre of Mandarin learning content which in recent times has exploded on the internet.
And that is what I would broadly term as Mandarin learning snake oil.
I break down how you can easily tell the difference between Mandarin learning advice given in good faith versus snake oil, basically designed to scam you.
Links;
Notebook LM: https://notebooklm.google.com/
My website: imlearningmandarin.com
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In this episode, I’m sharing a tool that’s completely blown my mind, it might be one of the most impressive things I’ve ever come across for language learning. It’s called Notebook LM, and it’s a website run by Google.
Here’s what makes it so powerful: you can feed it any content: websites, text, even audio, and it will generate a podcast-style conversation between what sound like two real human voices. The result is super chatty, natural, and surprisingly hard to tell it’s AI-generated.
I first discovered NotebookLM a few months ago and started using it to make casual English podcasts. At the time, I remember wishing it supported other languages, especially Mandarin, because it just seemed like it had so much potential for language learning.
Well, that’s now changed, NotebookLM recently rolled out support for a bunch of new languages, including Mandarin. So today, I’m going to walk you through how this tool works and how you can use it to supercharge your Mandarin learning.
Links:Sign up for the I'm Learning Mandarin Newsletter to get updates as soon as new spaces become available at the I'm Learning Mandarin gym: https://imlearningmandarin.com/Find out more about the I'm Learning Mandarin gym: https://imlearningmandarin.com/gymChris Blogpost Month 1: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2024/1...Chris Blogpost Month 2: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2025/0... Chris's Blogpost Month 3: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2025/0...Chris's Blogpost Month 4 & 5: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2025/0...--A few months ago, I received an email from a Mandarin learner named Chris Foley.Chris had been studying the language for several years and could already hold conversations. After marrying his Chinese wife, he set an ambitious new goal: to sharpen his spoken delivery, especially his pronunciation and tones, in time for his Chinese wedding ceremony in 12 months. Soon after, he joined the I’m Learning Mandarin gym, with me as his coach, and committed to documenting his journey through monthly blogs and interviews at the 6-month and 12-month marks.In this video, I speak with Chris entirely in Mandarin to reflect on his progress at the 6-month milestone.
My blog: imlearningmandarin.com
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In this episode, I delve into the question: Is Taiwan a good place to study Mandarin? I draw on my experiences of living and studying in Taiwan and give it an overall rating out of 10 across three criteria:
1. Overall as a place to live.
2. Quality of teaching.
3. Immersive opportunities.
Links:
My blog: https://imlearningmandarin.com/
Mandarin Retreats: https://imlearningmandarin.com/uk-mandarin-immersion-retreats/
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New vocabulary learned:
1. 甜筒
Pinyin: tián tǒng
English: Ice cream cone
甜 = sweet
筒 = tube/cone (refers to the cone shape)
Together, this means an ice cream cone.
2. 中焙 / 中深焙 (used in the context of coffee roasting)
中焙
Pinyin: zhōng bèi
English: Medium roast
中 = middle / medium
焙 = to roast (especially coffee or tea)
This is a medium roast — a balanced roast level often used for drip coffee.
3. 原路折返
Pinyin: yuán lù zhé fǎn
English: To return by the original route / retrace one’s steps
原路 = original path / the same road
折返 = to turn back / go back
Often used in navigation, or metaphorically in life to mean going back the way you came.
4. 知难而退
Pinyin: zhī nán ér tuì
English: To retreat in the face of difficulties / to back off when realizing something is too hard
知 = to know
难 = difficulty
而 = and / yet / but (classical-style connector)
退 = to retreat / withdraw
Refers to making a wise decision to step back after recognizing a challenge is too tough to overcome. Sometimes used to describe prudence, sometimes cowardice, depending on context.
5. 隐眼 (shortened form of 隐形眼镜)
Pinyin: yǐn yǎn
English: Contact lenses
隐 = hidden
眼 = eye
Short for 隐形眼镜 (yǐn xíng yǎn jìng) = invisible (contact) lenses
Colloquial and very commonly used in Taiwan and among young people.
Today, I'm going to talk through a really simple method that you can use to use AI to generate your very own Mandarin tongue twisters .
Recently, I started using a method with my students where we would create our own tongue twisters centered around their specific pronunciation problems.
Today, I'm going to explain in three simple stages how I've been creating these tongue twisters with my students and how they use them to improve their pronunciation.
On today's episode, I'm going to play my speech which I recently made at the Asiaglot conference in Taipei.
The speech is called The Inconvenient Truth About Mandarin Learning. And in it, I talk about my own Mandarin Learning Journey and some of the methods that I initially followed, which were a combination of traditional methods and also comprehensible input methods.
I go into how these methods worked to varying degrees, but there were certain obstacles that I came up against which I wasn't able to find any solutions to when turning to traditional education or comprehensible input.
And I go on to talk about what the solutions that I did find involved, and how that really helped me on my Mandarin learning journey.
The audio recording quality of this speech that I gave at Asiaglot was not the best, but I've tried to salvage it a little bit through some editing. So hopefully it's good enough that you can hear it pretty clearly.2
Links:
Discord server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p
My Asiaglot experience: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2025/03/30/my-experience-at-asiaglot-asias-hottest-multilingual-conference/
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This week on the I'm Learning Mandarin podcast, I discuss how you can use Deepseek as a game-changing tool to become fluent in Chinese.
As we've previously covered, while tools like ChatGPT are helpful for various aspects of Mandarin learning, they often fall short when it comes to generating truly natural, colloquial speech.
This is because their training data seems to be heavily weighted towards more formal, sometimes translated sources.
Native speakers often point out that while ChatGPT's Mandarin is usually grammatically correct, it just doesn't sound like how real people talk.
That's where Deepseek, the Chinese version of ChatGPT, really excels.
Despite some of its limitations, such political censorship and data concerns, there is no doubt that it excels at generating authentic spoken Mandarin, which is exactly what we Mandarin learners need when it comes to improving our conversational skills.
So, how can you effectively use Deepseek to level up your spoken Mandarin?
Listen to the episode to find out!
Join the I'm Learning Mandarin Gym: imlearningmandarin.com/gym
As an ILM podcast listener, you can get 50% off your ILM Gym subscription when you use this discount code at checkout (offer ends April 9th): IMLEARNINGMANDARINPOD
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Want to transform your Chinese from mediocre to excellent within months? Join the I'm Learning Mandarin Gym and hire me as your one-to-one Personal Trainer: imlearningmandarin.com.gym
As an ILM podcast listener, you can get 50% off your ILM Gym subscription when you use this discount code at checkout (offer ends April 9th): IMLEARNINGMANDARINPOD
Join the I'm Learning Mandarin gym here: imlearningmandarin.com/gym
As an ILM podcast listener, you can get 50% off your ILM Gym subscription when you use this discount code at checkout (offer ends April 9th): IMLEARNINGMANDARINPOD
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On today’s episode I interview my student Lewys entirely in Mandarin Chinese.
Lewys is a 31 year-old accountant from wales who lives in the UK with his Chinese wife and young daughter.
You may remember him from an interview I recorded with him last summer in which we discussed the difficulties he’d faced learning the language.
At that point, Lewys had been learning Mandarin for around two years in order to communicate with his Chinese mother-in-law and extended family.
He’d tried most of the apps and classes everyone tries. But nothing really worked. Here’s a clip of what he sounded like at that time.
He was close to giving up. But instead, last year he contacted me for help after coming across the I'm Learning Mandarin blog.
And in today's episode I document his progress over 6 months on my coaching programme, supporting him to transform his spoken Mandarin.
If you’re impressed with the results that Lewys was able to achieve on my coaching programme while holding a full-time job and having a young child, then listen on.
Because today I’m announcing the launch of the I’m Learning Mandarin gym, enabling you to transform your spoken Mandarin from mediocrity to excellence within months, with me as your Personal Trainer.
When you sign up to the gym, you’ll benefit from an in-depth, structured study plan, one-to-one coaching sessions with me, homework exercises, regular feedback on your performance via voice recordings, and continuous support, ensuring you’re virtually guaranteed to exceed your Mandarin speaking goals.
Interested in finding out more? Go to imlearningmandarin.com/gym for all details and information about the programme or click the link in the description.
Links:
My blog: imlearningmandarin.com
Clare's page: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/languages/staff/1258/prof-clare-wright
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On today’s episode, I interview a long-time member of the I’m Learning Mandarin community who also happens to be a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Leeds.
Professor Clare Wright has pioneered research into second language pedagogy, with a particular focus on Mandarin.
She is particularly interested in discovering why some learners on Mandarin courses seem to do so well at reaching communicative levels quickly while others lag behind.
I first met Clare in 2018 when she interviewed me for her research into what motivates Mandarin learners to study the language.
We’ve kept in touch ever since, and in this interview, we discussed what Mandarin learners and educators can learn from her research to improve their outcomes and reach their goals.
Asiaglot will take place on March 22-23 in Taipei. To get a third off tickets go to asiaglot.com and select the 'Early Bird Weekend Ticket' option. The use the following code at checkout:
IMLEARNINGMANDARIN800
My blog: imlearningmandarin.com
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Mandarin involves a lot of hard work and sometimes we can start to question whether it's worth the struggle. But staying the course and persevering through the hard times has enabled me to have all sorts of life experiences that I would otherwise never have had. Today I'm going to talk about four of the coolest experieces I've had that made it all feel worthwhile.
These might not mean much to anyone else, but they felt cool to me:1. Studying at NTU2. Leading Mandarin Retreats3. Being mistaken for a native speaker4. Giving Keynote Speeches
Check out the episode to hear more. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast provider!
Links:
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In this episode, I reflect on the past year during which I've been coaching Mandarin learners from all around the world to nail their speaking goals.
I discuss four attitude shifts that I've identified help learners make swifter progress.
If you like this episode don't forget to subscribe.