Do you want to boost your Chinese learning? Or maybe help a friend or family member to succeed with their studies? Until next Tuesday, you’ll get...
Year: 2026
Black Friday discounts on Hacking Chinese courses: Learn more for less
I’ve published more than 550 articles and 270 podcast episodes about learning Chinese, but most people don’t want to read a million words to find...
Bite-sized learning isn’t enough to learn Chinese
This is what I read when I want to read something familiar that never ends. I’ve read about 4000 pages so far, still twice that to go. It’s the...
Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 7: How to navigate different types of listening in Mandarin
Listening is an essential skill in language learning, but not all listening situations are the same. By recognising different types of listening...
Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 5: Becoming a better listener as a student of Chinese
Listening comprehension in Mandarin is challenging, perhaps the most challenging part of learning the language. Many things need to come together to...
Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 4: Learning to process spoken Mandarin quickly and effortlessly
To understand spoken Chinese, we need to both extract information from what we hear, but we also need to use what we already know to interpret it....
Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 3: Using what you already know to aid listening comprehension in Chinese
At first glance, listening comprehension seems to be about extracting information from spoken language. That is indeed part of it, but speech never...
Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 2: From sound to meaning in Mandarin
To understand spoken Chinese, we need to convert sounds to meaning. We need to identify sounds of particular interest in Mandarin, combine these and...
Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 1: A guide to Chinese listening comprehension
Understanding spoken Chinese is challenging form most learners. There are many reasons for this, some general to listening comprehension in a...
The best Twitter feeds for learning Chinese in 2016
Learning Chinese can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re faced with the infamous Great Wall of Chinese (text). One way of making it easier is...