I'm Learning Mandarin Mi Kai

My free Mandarin learning ebook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook



Follow this Chinese podcast along with a transcript and translation: imlearningmandarin.com



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In today’s episode, I talk about the recent history of Chinese
attitudes towards foreigners speaking Mandarin and how this differs from the English-speaking world.

It’s always struck me that the way Chinese people react to foreigners speaking their language can have a major impact on our learning journey.

On the one hand, it feels nice to be showered with praised as a beginner for saying a few basic words.

But on the other hand, this can get old quickly.

And the culture of treating foreign Chinese speaking as an entertainment spectacle, with international Chinese speaking competitions broadcast on TV to a whole
nation can seem odd for learners who’ve never encountered it before.

So today I discuss the origins of these attitudes and the reasons why Chinese people tend to react the way they do when they hear non-native speakers speak Mandarin.

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook



David's blogpost, Why Chinese is So Damn Hard: https://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html



My blog: imlearningmandarin.com



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My guest today is David Moser, an Associate Professor at Beijing Capital Normal University. He’s had a fascinating and varied career in academia teaching courses in Chinese history and politics and authoring books on Mandarin grammar and the unification of the Chinese language. 



There’s so much we could have spoken to David about. But for this interview, we decided to focus two main areas:



The first is his story of self-studying Chinese to fluency. It began in the US in the 1980s and ultimately led to a series of amazing life experiences in Beijing, where he became a national star, performing in front of up to a billion people in live televised comedy sketches. 



The second point of focus is a piece David wrote called Why Chinese is So Damn Hard. It’s possibly the most widely read blog post on Chinese learning ever written and also one of the inspirations for me starting my own blog and this podcast.



The blog is a tongue-in-cheek lament on the difficulties and frustrations we all face when we take on the Chinese language. I’ve included a link above.



I hope to have the opportunity to get David back on the podcast to discuss his academic career in future. But for now, I give you, round 1 of my interview with David Moser. 

My free Mandarin learning eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook



Transcript: imlearningmandarin.com



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In today’s episode, I tell a story in Chinese about bullying and language learning based on personal experience.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ll be posting these shorter Chinese episodes every two weeks, in between the longer interviews with Mandarin scholars, learners, and experts.

One of the things I’ve found is that setting yourself a goal to
record and post podcasts speaking Chinese is a brilliant way to improve
your speaking skills. When you know other people are going to hear your recording it pushes you to work harder on your delivery!

So that’s why I’ve decided to open up the podcast to listeners who are interested in recording and producing your own short monologues in Chinese.

If you’re at an intermediate to advanced level and would like
to have a go at recording an episode in Chinese please get in touch by emailing info[at]peakmandarin[dot]com.

You’ll be supported through the process of developing your idea as well as recording and producing an episode in Chinese to be published on I’m Learning Mandarin.

Finally, before you listen to the podcast, I recommend installing the browser plugin Zhongwen Chinese-English Dictionary (available on Firefox and Chrome) so you can look up any characters or words you don’t know by hovering over them.

Now on to the episode!

My eBook: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook

Emmanuel's Full Chinese app: https://www.fullchinese.com/

My blog: imlearningmandarin.com



My guest on today’s podcast is computer scientist and educational technologist, Emmanuel Roche. 

Emmanuel has more than 35 years of experience learning Chinese. He began his Mandarin odyssey in the late 80s, studying the language at university. But he quickly became frustrated at how inefficient teaching and learning methods were at the time. 

Most of his classmates gave up, but Emmanuel didn’t. Instead, he developed a lifelong passion for Chinese, using his background in computer science to create technological solutions to make Mandarin acquisition a more efficient process. 

In recent years he’s created an app called Full Chinese, which helps learners reach native-level proficiency in Chinese reading. It’s used by learners around the world and has even been integrated into Chinese Studies classrooms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

I chatted to Emmanuel about his challenges learning Chinese, the story behind his Full Chinese app and why he’s trying to bridge a divide between academic linguists and language learners. 

Peak Mandarin Newsletter: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook



Transcript and translation: imlearningmandarin.com



Recently I decided to commit to producing the I’m Learning Mandarin podcast once a week instead of fortnightly.

The plan is to continue posting guest interviews and discussions about learning Mandarin once a fortnight. Then, in between each interview, I’ll post shorter episodes in which I speak in Mandarin about a topic.

Today’s episode is the first one in the series of these Chinese
monologues. In it, I speak about my experiences living in Taiwan last year and offer three things all learners should know before going to Taiwan to study Chinese.

Peak Mandarin Newsletter: https://www.peakmandarin.com/free-ebook



Isaac's Mandarin from the Ground Up podcast: https://www.mftgu.com/

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On today’s podcast, I speak to language teacher and podcast host, Isaac Myers.



Isaac has a fascinating Mandarin learning backstory which involves extensive travel around Taiwan and China and working at Google training language models for speech recognition systems.



Through his podcast, Mandarin from the Ground Up, he teaches Chinese using the same imitation techniques we all used to learn our first language.



All of which gives him a unique perspective and makes his insights on learning Chinese well worth listening to!