I have published a book!

My book is finally out! It’s called Hacking Chinese: A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin and is available both as a paperback and as an e-book. You can get both versions of the Hacking Chinese through Amazon, but before you hasten off to get your copy, read on because there are launch offers available, including a free, unabridged audio version read by me!

What is the Hacking Chinese book about?

The book is about how to learn Mandarin Chinese, but most of what I talk about also applies to learning other dialects or even other languages. If you’re not sure what I mean by “how to learn”, please read any of the 300+ articles available for free here on Hacking Chinese.

The book is more than a collection of articles, though. It covers some areas I haven’t written about online and it’s a lot more structured. The book spans 246 pages and contains seven chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Hacking Chinese
3. Learning characters, words and grammar
4. Improving listening and reading
5. Improving speaking and writing
6. Managing your studies
7. Epilogue

There’s a big difference between a comprehensive guide and hundreds of loosely connected articles, even if some of the content is the same. The book will help regular visitors to connect the dots and avoid missing the forest for the trees. New readers will benefit from a comprehensive narrative, rather than scattered articles. The book is suitable for learners on all proficiency levels, including teachers.

Please note that this is not a textbook! I will teach you how to learn, but you need to do most of the actual studying yourself. The book of course contains Chinese to show what I mean, but the purpose of the book is not to teach you more words and grammar patterns, it’s to teach you how to do these things more effectively. Think of this book as a cookbook that gives you recipes for how to learn; you still need to do the cooking yourself.

What special launch offers are available?

If you buy the paperback and post a picture of yourself with the book on social media before the end of April, you get one of the following (your choice):

1. An unabridged audio version of the book for free (recorded by myself), totalling almost six hours of audio. Listen while you jog, commute or do the laundry.
2. $20 off my course, which also contains the audio book as part of a larger package, including video presentations with related exercises.

If you have already bought my course, you get $10 off the paperback immediately without having to do anything apart from sending me an e-mail with the name you used to purchase the course. You need to do this before you buy the book, otherwise I can’t give you a discount.

The paperback version of the book is set to $18.88 to be as auspicious as possible in a Chinese context, but the actual price might vary depending on where you live. I don’t even pretend to understand exactly how Amazon arrives at the end price for products. The easiest way to find out is to view Hacking Chinese: A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin on Amazon. As you can see, there is also a cheaper Kindle version. The only way to get the audio book is through the launch offer above.

How is the book different from the course?

If you’re not familiar with my course, you might ask yourself what that contains that isn’t in the book. The big difference is how the content is presented and how it’s meant to be used. Apart from the book in digital and audio form, the course also contains many hours of video presentations where I talk about the most important aspects of how to learn Chinese. Each video episode also has concrete step-by-step guides and exercises that you’re meant to complete. In short, the course is easier to access and gives you much clearer calls to action. If you just like to read, though, the book will do fine.

More about the book

This is from the back cover:

Learning Chinese can be frustrating and difficult, especially if you study the wrong way. Teachers and textbooks show you characters, words and grammar, but they don’t tell you how to learn! Courses also leave out important things, so if you don’t take responsibility for your own learning now, you will regret it later.

授人以魚，不如授人以漁

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

This book helps you become an independent learner by answering key questions about how to learn Mandarin:

·  How can you learn characters effectively?
·  How should you practise the tones?
·  How can you become fluent in Mandarin?
·  Which are the best tools for learning?
·  How can you fit Chinese into a busy life?

By applying the strategies in this book, you will accelerate your learning. You still need to study of course, but by using the best methods, learning Chinese becomes much easier and more fun!

If you have any other questions, just leave a comment or send me an e-mail!