I'm Learning Mandarin

I'm Learning Mandarin is a podcast that dives deep into the questions that matter to Chinese learners. Host, Mischa Wilmers, talks to the world's leading scholars and draws on his experience of self-studying the language to fluency. Visit the Im Learning Mandarin blog. Popular posts include: Your Ultimate Guide To Learning Chinese Tones: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2024/09/16/its-never-too-late-to-learn-chinese-tones-heres-how/ How Long Does It Take To Learn Mandarin: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2024/09/09/reality-check-can-you-actually-master-mandarin-in-six-months/

Last refreshed: December 3rd, 2025 at 12:14 PM ⓘ

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Episodes

“Wow! Your Mandarin is Awesome!” Decoding Chinese Politeness

#9 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠⁠⁠⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠⁠ -- Anyone who has learned Mandarin will be familiar with how encouraging Chinese people tend to be towards those of us who take an interest in their language. For the most part this is great. All we have to do is say 你好 in order to be showered with praise and encouragement. But at times it can also be quite tricky to navigate the unwritten rules of Chinese polite culture. To the new Mandarin learner, it isn’t always clea...

Dec 08, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 9

Benjamin Zephaniah on Learning Mandarin Chinese

#8 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠⁠⁠⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠⁠ -- For Today’s podcast I had the honour of interviewing a very distinguished guest. Benjamin Zephaniah is best known as one of Britain’s favourite poets. He is also a political activist, playwright and novelist who has been listed as one of Britain’s 50 greatest postwar writers by the Times newspaper. One of the lesser known aspects of Benjamin’s life is his interest in foreign languages and in particular Mandarin. In hi...

Nov 11, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 8

Expectations Vs Reality of Learning Chinese (With Luke Truman)

#7 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠⁠⁠⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠⁠ -- On today's podcast I discuss how expectations often differ from reality when learning Mandarin. My guest is YouTuber Luke Truman who has been documenting his journey of learning Cantonese and Mandarin for four years. His experiences have given him some really interesting insights into studying using immersive methods, the limits of learning through input alone, how to improve pronunication and much more. Links: Luke's...

Oct 29, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 7

Learning Mandarin with Graded Readers

#6 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠⁠⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠ - On today’s episode I discuss a topic I have previously blogged about: graded readers. For those who aren’t familiar, graded readers are books intended for beginner-intermediate language learners. They are typically set at different levels according to the number of words used. They enable Mandarin learners to start reading extensively with as few as 100 characters and I benefited from them immensely in the past. My guest...

Oct 17, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 6

The Key Predictors of Mandarin Success

#5 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠ -- On today’s episode I discuss learning Mandarin with a man who has not only learned the language for himself, he’s also observed the trajectories of hundreds of other learners over the years. Max Hobbs is Marketing Director at the leading Chinese language school, LTL Mandarin. He first came into contact with Chinese while backpacking in 2014 and he has since continued to study Mandarin whilst working. His position at the ...

Sep 25, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 5

Overcoming the Intermediate Plateau

#4 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠ -- As an intermediate Mandarin learner, one of the main challenges I face is acquiring lower frequency words. In any language the most frequent few thousand words account for over 90% of words used in daily conversation. Mandarin is no different and, although I typically understand the vast majority of words in a sentence, it’s those rarer words which can throw me off. So how can we overcome the intermediate plateau and lea...

Sep 10, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 4

Learning Mandarin in a Global Pandemic

#3 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠ -- The global pandemic has had a profound influence on the way we study languages. On the downside, restrictions have made it difficult to travel abroad. Yet the ongoing crisis has also led to record numbers of people taking on a new language. On Today’s episode, I explore the theme of learning Mandarin during a global pandemic with Chinese learner and friend of the podcast, Adam Morris. I first met Adam on a dream trip to ...

Aug 28, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 3

Learning Characters with Hack Chinese

#2 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on ⁠imlearningmandarin.com⁠ -- One of the most daunting aspects of learning Chinese is the sheer number of characters required for basic literacy. It’s estimated that comfortably reading a newspaper requires around 3000 characters, whilst an educated native speaker will typically know in excess of 7000. Memorising such a high number of characters is not an easy task. But modern technology has made it easier than it once was. In the past, Mandarin learn...

Aug 15, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 2

Acquiring Mandarin: Naturalistic Immersion or Structured Learning?

#1 Sign up to the Tones Mechanic newsletter on imlearningmandarin.com -- Traditionally, highly structured approaches were favoured in classroom environments. But it’s fair to say today’s online language learning community has waged war on this idea. Language should be all about fun, enjoying yourself. The influential linguist Stephen Krashen argues that the most effective way to acquire a language is to expose yourself to content which you can comprehend and immerse yourself in activities which ...

Jul 25, 2021•25 min•Season 1Ep. 1

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