Before you begin
Update: We’re republishing an updated version of this article, which was originally published in 2012.
This article introduces my plan to learn Chinese fast, where “fast” doesn’t mean that I hope to learn how to speak Mandarin within two months. Conversely, I intend to optimizing my time and efforts to learn Chinese by only studying an hour per day.
My goal is to be able to read Chinese newspapers, understand a talk show and have a “normal speed” conversation with any Chinese person. I want to achieve this purpose within one year.
Chinese is the sixth language that I’m learning so this plan is based on my past experience.
Also, I’m a big fan of SRS (spaced repetition software). If you are just starting to study Mandarin or you never heard the word “SRS” before, you should definitely keep reading!
My plan to learn Chinese
Commitment
I’m a lazy pig. However, when I pay for a gym I can easily motivate myself to train three times per week. So I thought that I could use the same strategy and I bought a Chinese course.
This is also what Napoleon Hill suggests in his book “Think and Grow Rich“, which is probably the best book that I ever read on goal achievement.
The idea is that we will only pursue our goals if we have invested some resources on them (time, money, face and so on). For the same reason, I also decided to make a public commitment and monthly update my progress on this website.
Immersion
I’ll watch at least two hours of Chinese television per week, hopefully, a good movie. I’ll upload the lessons of my language course and some Chinese music – so far I only got a couple of albums by the Fenghuang Chuanqi – on my iPod.
I will speak with local people in Chinese even when they try to switch to English (my Chinese is bad and people often get bored). This doesn’t include working time, as I have to speak English at work.
Context
If “sugar” then “sweet.” If “fire” then “smoke.” Our brain recalls information by generating connections. This is a well-known concept among the people that study memory.
This means that when we try to memorize Chinese characters one by one, we are slowing down our learning process. We can learn much faster by studying short sentences that provide a specific context for the characters.
I’m not saying anything new. I found this concept over and over again and this is the way kids learn a language. Also, Chinese characters change their meaning according to the context.
As an example, take the characters 小 (which means “small”) and 心 (which means “heart”). If you put them together you obtain the Chinese word 小心, which means “be careful.”
This is not an exception. It’s just how Mandarin works: changing the order of the addends you’ll get a different result.
By now it should be obvious to anyone that studying the Chinese characters one by one isn’t so effective. However, there are still a lot of people that choose to do so (I’ve been there too).
Memorize the most common 3,000 Chinese characters
I’ll use a free software called Anki to learn and revise Chinese characters through flashcards with a clever scheduling called SRS.
In order to exploit the “context” rule, I downloaded a deck of flashcards called Mastering Chinese Characters, which is composed of 14,000 sentences.
Smart.fm, the company that released it (you can download it for free once you installed Anki), claims that the deck contains the 98% of characters used in newspapers.
This deck mostly contains sentences so I can learn these 3,000 characters in the right context.
This should allow me to learn the WORDS used in the newspapers. Again, a Chinese word is often composed of two or three characters.
UPDATE 30/11/2015: The decks I was using aren’t available on Anki anymore; however there are plenty of decks to choose from on the Anki Database.
Anki’s screenshot: you can see how the flashcard for a question (on the left) and an answer (on the right) appears.
Evaluate my results
In order to achieve any long term objective, we need to set measurable short term goals. My weekly measurable goal will be to learn fifty new flashcards per day, to complete a lesson of my Chinese course and watch a Chinese movie in Chinese.
Also, I’ll try to talk in Chinese as often as I can. I may modify my goals if, after a while, I find them too easy or too difficult.
Frequently asked questions
Besides, they will help you to pronounce words and tones correctly, which is crucial to be understood. When you have learned the basics, you should start speaking with Chinese people earliest possible and further develop your language skills by expanding your vocabulary.
Another example is Pleco, one of the most popular dictionaries and tools in the market. The same as it goes with Waygo, you simply hover your phone over the text using your smartphone camera and the application pick up every word.
As mentioned, there are also many useful applications available. A great way of improving your speaking and listening skills is to visit local language meetings. Here, you can become friends with Chinese who are often more than willing to help you speaking Chinese on a weekly basis.
Photo Credits: Photos by Sapore di Cina
Hi Furio, if you watch lengthy movies you will remember almost nothing. A better approach is to watch just a sentence or fragment and digest the language in soundbite sizes. You may give a try to Cinema Sponge (http://cinemasponge.com) that provides exactly that.
Hi, thank you for the suggestion
It was beneficial for the lazy person like me with high dreams. Thank you for such a wonderful and helpful resources.
thanks!
It was okay going through the way…but it is very beneficial for the lazy people with big dreams to achieve. I would be looking forward for some more effective Chinese lessons for the lazy people.
Hi there, we published many article on Chinese learning!
Glad to find here. I would be glad to help somebody learn Chinese.
Good article. I will be facing many of these issues as well..
: )
Furio,
Really enjoyed this write-up. Personally I’ve come to place in my language study where I’m not certain which strategy is going to be most useful. When I originally started down the path I thought that fluency in Mandarin might be valuable as a professional skill, but now I’m not so sure. So instead I began to think of it more as a personal goal, but when it doesn’t reap me any income in the interim, I start to question how much time I should be willing to dedicate.
A while ago, someone on a forum said that someone’s Mandarin ability is inversely proportional to the amount of income one makes, and thinking about that, it seems mostly true? The idea has been haunting me lately.
Well, it comes down to motivation!
If your motivation is based on “I want to learn Mandarin to make more money”, than I agree with the fact that is proportional inverse to your income.
Personally I never needed Mandarin for work, so it was more a personal life goal. And in this case, you must find the motivation on quality life improvement (even small things like “being able to read the ads on the subway” can help).
Hi there! Thank you for the good resources. I’m a big user of Anki, but could not find the deck you’re referring to here. Is it still available somewhere? Thank you!
Hello Bruno,
unfortunately that decks aren’t available anymore. I shall update the article!
The Anki deck I use is called SpoonFedChinese, which contains several thousand phrases and sentences organized in order by HSK level from lowest to highest. It presents the phrases randomly in simplified Chinese characters for you to translate into English or English to translate into Chinese. The Chinese is always provided with an audio rendering. It’s perfect! I would also add my two cents about other programs – the free ChineseSkill (panda logo) provides a great number of exercises of several kinds, including practice drawing the characters.
Hi Furio,
You website is so timely. I have been trying to get some research done on how to start learning mandarin and become conversational by same time next year. In addition to all the invaluable tools and resources you have provided on your blog, I also came across this interesting TEDEX talk. Its called the First 20 Hours to learn something really quickly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY. I am planning on employing this discipline in combination to all that you and other readers have suggested.
Will keep posting the progress on my blog.
Best,
PalB
Good Luck : )
great post. started learning Chinese from today. I will piublish my progress weekly blog.
arindam
Hey Arindam, thanks for the visit and good look with your study : )
hello
my Skype is fuqin_instrument.
If you want to learn chinese ,pls add me
Hey, what you’ve done so far is inspiring. I’ve been using the same deck for a few weeks and have been happy so far. I’ve been going at the furious pace you started at, but I imagine I’ll succumb to boredom and difficulty eventually and have to scale back. Right now I’m in the middle of nowhere USA for work and I’m hoping to finish with the first 3 decks by the end of May when I move back home.
I have one question about that deck since you’ve used it so much, what do you do with the cards that are character sound on the front? I’m getting really annoyed with distinguishing between all my shi4 cards. I was thinking about deleting them and just going with sentences both ways and written character front cards.
Hey Chris, yeah you can block the “audio cards” if you find them annoying.
About the pace. I started with 50 new cards per day, but after two months I was spending more than an hour per day to review my deck. I then scaled down to 20 cards per day and finally to 10 per day.
At the moment I barely add new cards as my goal for 2013 is to learn how to write the characters.
So I’m using Skritter (www.saporedicina.com/english/skritter-review/) and I only use Anki to review my old cards.
Nice read, Just passed this onto a colleague who was simply doing a
little research on that. And actually bought me lunch since I stumbled upon it for him smile So okay rephrase
that: Thanks for lunch!
Haha thank you for your visit Swen.
You own me a coffee then : P
This is a really nice site! I have been traveling in china for a little more than a year and I find I struggle with many of the same things you mention in your posts. Especially forcing myself to speak the language. It seems I always use English as most people here can speak a little. Also I too became frustrated after learning hundreds of words and characters I still could not understand written words. (Words change meaning when combined)
. So your posts really addressed the issues I was having in learning the language and I felt better knowing I was not the only one struggling.
One suggestion that I have for your readers as an alternative to Anki is Trainchinese.com. This is a great site with apps for your mobile device that allow you to study anywhere on the go with spaced repetition. You can build your own lists of words and study on your phone computer or iPad
Thanks again for the great info and insight that you have posted!
Hey,
thank you for reading and commenting! I’m glad you found the article useful and I will take a look atTrain Chinese App as soon as possible : )
I’m so glad I happened to find your website! I’ve read many language learning sites but you have some unique strategies. Thanks so much for sharing them. I just started Mandarin 2 weeks ago and hope to achieve fluency in 2 years. However, I hope to be pretty functional in Mandarin in one year’s time. I will check back to see your progress. Wish you all the best!
Hey PoChu,
thank you for reading and commenting.
Let me know how Anki works for you : )
nice post furio… i’m learning Chinese too, almost always feel hopeless.. may be like you say, have to use it often. http://www.learnchineseeveryday.com sometime i learn from that website.
hey lemon,
thank you for the comment.
By the way, I just published a list of resources that may help you:
http://www.saporedicina.com/english/learn-chinese-online-25-excellent-free-resources/
Furio,
This is an excellent strategy for language learning. I’m thinking about posting my own goals for learning Korean on my blog. Thanks for the inspiration!
Sarah
Yeah,
it will push you to study a bit every day ; )
Hi,
Very good post Furio
You might also want to check out http://www.memrise.com which offers a different perspective to learning mandarin. I am also only of those who gets into learning Chinese and then can’t continue or try a different tool every other week!
Cheers,
Nrupesh
Hey Nrupesh,
thank you for reading!
I checked the website and it seems interesting as it’s based on mnemonics… Sort of implementing Remember the Hanzi’s idea with 2012 technology ; )
Hi, I also want to say how great memrise has been for building Chinese vocabulary. They have a new Mandarin 1 course, and it’s very good. If you upgrade to the pro account (which is a negligible amount of money) you can even see videos of native speakers saying the phrases you’re learning and focus on listening skills.
I’ve also used memrise to learn the first 500 characters, and this kind of drilling technology is perfect for such an enormous task. It’s so good that after about a month with it, I could read basic menus in Hong Kong!
Another similar app is Quizlet. I like with both that the community can contribute and write tips for remembering words. I also can use it to make sets specific to my English classes and then tell the students to play on their own. In the classroom there is a game called “Quizlet Live” in which everyone can log in on their phone and play against each other!
Hope you’ll check them out and possibly recommend them here!
Hello Kathryn,
yes, Memrise has become a great tool, we reviewed it here: http://www.saporedicina.com/english/best-apps-to-learn-chinese-on-your-smartphone-or-tablet/#chineseapp-5
Very good advice! If you want listen to Chinese music maybe you like Kenji Wu. He has a western style.
(sorry if bad English)
Hey Jonathan,
thank you for the advice, I will try to find them : )
Right now I’m listening to 二手玫瑰, which are quite cool!
Interesting post… If I need it someday, I will take it into account…
Hi Diego, thank you for reading ; – )
Some great tips Furio, and as I need to get back on-board the Learning Chinese train, well timed for me to read!
I think your goals are just ambitious enough to push you without fatiguing you. This is where I often go wrong — I tend to get really hyped about study, do it hardcore for a week or two (occasionally longer, but rarely) and then I burn out. Ultimately, as you mentioned, I too am a lazy animal and tend to return to my natural position after I’ve lost momentum.
I’ve used Anki in the past and Smart.fm. I’m also a proponent of SRS. Am going to go download Anki again and get started myself.
With Chinese films, do you intend to watch them with English subtitles? Chinese subtitles? No subtitles?
Hey Ryan,
thank you for your comment! Glad to see I’m not the only lazy laowai on the Middle Kingdom : – P
My problem with “burning out” is a bit different: I usually start slowly then tend to push my limits every time to avoid getting bored. The results is that after a while the everyday task becomes to difficult and I… burn out. This is especially true for running and swimming but I know I will have to watch out also with Chinese.
About the movies, so far I’m not very organized. I watched what I already had at home, that is “12 monkeys” in English with Chinese subtitles, “A world without thieves” and “The flowers of war” in Chinese with Chinese subtitles (but in “The flowers of war” they mostly speak English as the main character is a white devil that has no clue about Mandarin). I guess the best would be Chinese language with both Chinese and English subtitles as I’m not at all able to follow Chinese subtitles right now. I should invest some time looking for it.
Here a link you may find interesting:
The website hosts a lot of interviews with Chinese professors. You get both Chinese and English subtitles and you can even download the mp3.
Am I the only one not being able to see the above-mentioned link? I’m interested in watching Chinese movie in both English and Chinese subtitles but can’t find one.
Jae
Hello Jae,
I think the link was cut automatically cause, during the years, the website disappeared. However, here you find more suggestions: http://www.saporedicina.com/english/learn-chinese-online-25-excellent-free-resources/
If you like crime/action/thriller movies and a certain really cute guy, go search up “The Witness” which is a Mandarin movie with English subtitles. (BTW, the cute guy I was talking about was 鹿晗 (Luhan) who you probably will recognize if you like K-Pop)