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 -- 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 ...
Nov 13, 2025•16 min
💬 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 ...
Oct 30, 2025•10 min
Links: My Discord server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p My blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- 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...
Jun 19, 2025•12 min
Links: My website: imlearningmandarin.com -- 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, vari...
Jun 11, 2025•10 min
Links: My website: imlearningmandarin.com -- 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....
Jun 04, 2025•8 min
Links; Notebook LM: https://notebooklm.google.com/ My website: imlearningmandarin.com -- 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 ...
May 27, 2025•14 min
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/gym Chris 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://...
May 21, 2025•20 min
My blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- 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.
May 08, 2025•12 min
Links: My blog: imlearningmandarin.com --
Apr 30, 2025•12 min
Links: My blog: https://imlearningmandarin.com/ Mandarin Retreats: https://imlearningmandarin.com/uk-mandarin-immersion-retreats/ -- 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 le...
Apr 23, 2025•10 min
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....
Apr 16, 2025•8 min
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 ab...
Apr 09, 2025•24 min
Links: Discord server: https://discord.gg/b9PAyKwT9p My Asiaglot experience: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2025/03/30/my-experience-at-asiaglot-asias-hottest-multilingual-conference/ -- 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, coll...
Apr 02, 2025•10 min
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 --
Mar 26, 2025•21 min
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
Mar 19, 2025•12 min
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 -- 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 ...
Mar 12, 2025•26 min
Links: My blog: imlearningmandarin.com Clare's page: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/languages/staff/1258/prof-clare-wright -- 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 w...
Mar 05, 2025•30 min
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
Feb 26, 2025•10 min
My blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- 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 Ma...
Feb 19, 2025•9 min
Links: imlearningmandarin.com -- 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.
Feb 12, 2025•9 min
Links: Skritter: https://skritter.com/ I'm Learning Mandarin: imlearningmandarin.com -- Today on the podcast, I’m speaking with Jake Gill from Skritter, one of the most well-known apps for learning to write Chinese characters. Skritter has been around for years, helping learners improve their handwriting and character recognition through a unique combination of spaced repetition and stroke-by-stroke feedback. For many students, particularly those focused on writing, it’s an essential part of the...
Feb 05, 2025•37 min
Links: My Tones Mechanic newsletter: imlearningmandarin.com Mandarin Companion: https://mandarincompanion.com/ Jared interviews me on his podcast: https://mandarincompanion.com/you-can-learn-chinese-podcast/63-the-truth-about-vocabulary/ -- Today, I'm joined by a special guest on the podcast, Jared Turner from Mandarin Companion . If you’re learning Chinese, you’ve probably heard of Mandarin Companion’s graded readers, which make it possible to read Mandarin from an elementary level. I used them...
Jan 29, 2025•35 min
Links: My Tones Mechanic newsletter: https://imlearningmandarin.com/ Ninchanese: https://ninchanese.com/ -- On today's episode, I’m joined by Sarah Aberman, co-founder of Ninchanese, an app that makes learning Mandarin fun and accessible through gamified lessons and interactive tools. We talk about her personal journey learning Mandarin and the inspiration behind creating Ninchanese....
Jan 22, 2025•26 min
Links: Tones Mechanic Newsletter: imlearningmandarin.com Dong Chinese: https://www.dong-chinese.com/ -- On today's episode of I'm Learning Mandarin, I speak to Peter Olson, the founder of Dong Chinese. Dong Chinese is an all-in-one Chinese learning app that enables learners to learn sentences in context using spaced repetition. In the episode, we discuss Peter's own background. Peter was actually born in China before leaving at an early age without learning much of the language, before later mov...
Jan 15, 2025•19 min
Links: Tones Mechanic newsletter: imlearningmandarin.com Outlier Linguistics: https://www.outlier-linguistics.com/ -- Ash Henson is the co-founder of Outlier Linguistics , a company dedicated to creating tools and courses that make learning Chinese and other languages more effective and engaging. Outlier specialise in facilitating the language learning process by breaking down the complexities of the language, including Chinese characters. And Ash is particularly well placed to do this. He holds...
Jan 08, 2025•32 min
Links: Karen's website: Happy Mandarin My website: imlearningmandarin.com -- Today's guest is Karen Cheuk, an inspiring educator behind Happy Mandarin , an organization that helps children learn Chinese in a fun and engaging environment. Karen was born and raised in Hong Kong and went on to study at Cambridge University on a scholarship. After graduating and having a daughter, she was inspired to create Happy Mandarin. She noticed that existing Chinese classes did not strike the right balance be...
Dec 18, 2024•23 min
Links: Glossika: https://ai.glossika.com/ The I'm Learning Mandarin blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- In this episode, I talk with Michael Campbell, a true language enthusiast and the founder of language learning app, Glossika . Michael has dedicated a significant portion of his life to understanding and mastering languages, having lived in Taiwan for most of his life and become proficient in many Chinese languages and dialects along the way. In this wide ranging interview we discuss how growing u...
Dec 11, 2024•29 min
Links: Mandarin Blueprint: https://www.mandarinblueprint.com/ My blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- On today’s episode, I interview Phil Crimmins. Phil is one of the two minds behind Mandarin Blueprint, a Mandarin learning course with over 4000 videos taking learners step-by-step all the way to Mandarin proficiency. Phil's journey with Mandarin is fascinating. He graduated from Sichuan University in China with a bachelor's degree in the Chinese language. But he left unsatisfied with the traditional...
Dec 04, 2024•31 min
Links: Amanda's website: https://www.misspandachinese.com/about/ Let's Learn Chinese with Miss Panda album: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7glqGNHQOnHMV7pNKbMTSU My website: imlearningmandarin.com -- Welcome to the podcast! Today's guest is Amanda, better known as "Miss Panda," a renowned expert in Mandarin language instruction. Amanda boasts over 30 years of experience teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) and Mandarin Chinese. She's also a published author, consultant, and the...
Nov 27, 2024•24 min
Links: Jorrit's Kaohongshu blog: https://kaohongshu.blog/about/ My free eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook My blog: imlearningmandarin.com -- In this episode, I have the pleasure of chatting with Jorrit, a Dutch blogger and the creator of the Kaohongshu website, about his Mandarin learning journey. Jorrit opens up about learning the language, living in China, and the challenges of maintaining his abilities after returning to a non-Chinese-speaking environment. We also explore the sto...
Nov 20, 2024•15 min
