About Language Pathways
A language pathway is a guide that will take you from beginner to advanced. I will not be teaching you Chinese in this guide, rather, I will be teaching you how to learn Chinese. The amount of resources available can be overwhelming, and you can waste a lot of time and money just trying to figure out how to study. That is why this guide will recommend high-quality resources and provide detailed information on how to use them. Language learning is a journey that looks different for everyone, but remember that consistency and time are the keys to becoming fluent in a language.
Keep in mind that learning a language is a long journey. Despite the claims you see online, there is no way to learn a language in a few months or even a year. Those people are usually trying to sell you something, and if something seems too good to be true, that’s because it usually is. Language learning is a long, winding path that takes time and consistency to traverse, but it is also a fun experience. The goal is to get you to a place where you can enjoy all the things you do in your native language in a different language, such as movies, books, and video games. There will be times when it’s frustrating and you feel like you’re not making progress fast enough, but that’s something every language learner goes through. I’ll share a little secret with you. Most of the videos you see online of polyglots who learned a language in a few months are fake. All you need to do to make one of those videos is memorize some common phrases and edit the video to cut out the mistakes. Don’t compare yourself to those people. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You don’t know how much effort someone has put into studying. Time in a language is the biggest factor in your ability. If you can only study 15 minutes a day, but someone else can study an hour a day, after one year, the person who studied an hour a day will be better than you, not because they are better at learning a language, but simply because they have more time in the language. Remember that any time you put into a language is not time wasted. You are progressing and learning, and you will see the results further down the line. Good luck on your journey, and have fun!
Beginner
So, you’ve decided to study Mandarin Chinese. Welcome! This will be one of the best things you’ve ever done, while also being one of the hardest. Chinese is a notoriously difficult language, but this guide will help you create a plan that keeps the language interesting while you progress through it. Most people who start learning Chinese never make it past the beginner phase, but with some time and dedication, you can absolutely do it! The beginner level will take you through the basic grammar and vocabulary of the Chinese language. By the end of the beginner level, you should be ready to comfortably move on to more interesting resources such as articles, TV shows, and podcasts. The beginner level will take most people 6 months to a year to complete, but you may do it faster or slower depending on how much time you study each day. Take your time, and don’t rush the basics. Having a solid foundation will save you a lot of headaches down the road. Language learning takes a lot of time and patience, so don’t compare yourself to other people. The only journey that matters is your own. The road ahead is long, but you will have a lot of fun along the way!
Keep in mind that the resources in this guide use simplified characters, as mainland Chinese is the most commonly studied variety of Chinese. Unless you currently live in a country that uses traditional characters, I highly recommend learning simplified characters first and then traditional characters later. It is pretty easy to learn how to read traditional characters after you have learned simplified; it just takes a little bit of practice.
Now, before you can start studying Chinese, there are a few things you’ll want to prepare ahead of time. The first thing you need to do is install a Chinese IME on your primary devices. An IME will allow you to type in Chinese, which is critical for your language learning. As a foreigner, there are very few circumstances where you’ll have to write in Chinese by hand, but a lot of circumstances when you’ll need to type. I recommend focusing on learning how to type rather than learning how to write unless you enjoy writing by hand.
Next, you’ll need to install Anki or another good SRS flashcard program. Anki is the gold standard when it comes to language-learning flashcard programs. It’s open source, highly customizable, and free on most platforms.
Finally, the last step before diving into Chinese is learning pinyin and tones. Pinyin is the phonetic system used to type Chinese and also how you will learn to read Chinese characters. This can seem intimidating at first, especially since Chinese is tonal, but with consistent practice, you will be able to learn it. It is important to learn pinyin before studying grammar and vocabulary because it will affect your ability to pronounce words. You will pronounce words significantly better if you understand the phonetic system, and pronunciation is vital in Chinese because it heavily influences your ability to be understood.
After you learn basic Chinese pronunciation and begin learning actual Chinese, you’ll see that Chinese characters, or hanzi, will be introduced very quickly. Don’t let hanzi scare you, they aren’t as difficult as they seem, and you don’t have to memorize all of them immediately! There are also lots of tools available to help you slowly build up your reading and writing abilities! Most resources for learners will provide you with the pronunciation in pinyin over the character, which will allow you to read characters you haven’t learned yet. Flashcard apps like Anki will help you build up your reading abilities through spaced repetition. Character familiarity and the ability to read are built through exposure, so stick with it! It will get easier! I love reading in Chinese, and once you’re past the early stages and used to learning characters, you learn to love the efficiency and uniqueness of a character-based system!
Before diving too deep into learning Chinese characters, aka hanzi, it helps to understand how they work. One character is always one syllable and, for the most part, one reading. For the few characters that have multiple readings, you will pick those up through practice and context. Chinese is generally very consistent. The hanzi themselves are made up of smaller building blocks called components or radicals, many of which are characters themselves. While Chinese can seem overwhelming at first, the truth is that there aren’t that many core components, and once you start recognizing them, you’ll notice the same shapes and patterns appearing again and again!
Some of the simplest characters are pictograms, which are stylized representations of real-world objects. For example, the character 木 means “wood” or “tree,” and when you place two 木 together, you get 林, which means “forest.” Add a third 木, and you get 森, meaning “dense forest.” These characters build on each other in both meaning and form. Other characters are combinations of simpler ones to represent abstract ideas. Take 休, for instance, which means “to rest” and is made up of 人 (person) and 木 (tree). It’s a visual metaphor for a person resting under a tree. Another common character type includes both a meaning component and a sound component. For example, 洋 (yáng), which means “ocean” or “vast,” contains 氵, the water radical, and 羊, which means “sheep,” and is also pronounced yáng. In this case, the water radical gives a clue to the meaning, and the sheep component gives a clue to the pronunciation. Many characters that include 羊 are pronounced with some variation of yang, which can be a useful pattern to recognize as you learn more characters. Even more complex-looking characters can almost always be broken down into smaller, familiar parts. For example, 没, which means “not have” or “did not,” contains the water radical 氵, along with 几 and 又. Recognizing these smaller pieces can make learning new characters much easier.
Most dictionaries and language learning tools will show you how each character is structured, including its components and stroke order. If you’re curious, it’s easy to find detailed breakdowns. That said, I personally don’t recommend trying to memorize all the components or radicals in isolation right away. I found that I naturally picked them up over time just by learning characters in context. The more you read and write, the more these pieces start to make sense without needing to drill them on their own. While I personally memorize characters based on shape and overall picture recognition, if you find that difficult, check out the video linked below from Mandarin Blueprint for tips on how to use mnemonics and memorization techniques to better remember hanzi.
Now you’re ready to start learning Chinese. The goal of the beginner level is to build a foundation that will allow you to use fun, native sources. This level is the most study-heavy because you’re starting with nothing. You need to learn vocabulary and grammar to grasp the basics and move on to more interesting resources. I recommend starting with a textbook. I know studying with a textbook doesn’t sound very fun, but I promise it’s not as bad as it sounds. The reason I recommend starting with a textbook is that it’s well-organized and will gradually introduce you to the language. While you won’t get fluent just by using a textbook, it can take you up to an intermediate level pretty quickly. You won’t be tied to the textbook forever. In fact, your goal should be to move away from textbooks as soon as possible.
In textbook resources, you’ll find the Anki decks for the HSK textbook series. Start by reading the lesson in the textbook before working your way through understanding the vocabulary and sentences in the deck. You can adjust how many new cards you study each day depending on the time available to you. Your focus with these flashcards should be on understanding the words and sentences. If you’re stuck on a card, move on. It’s better to get more input than to obsess over details. You’ll pick up on these details over time.
You will also want a good Chinese-English dictionary to support you along your language-learning journey. You will use dictionaries a lot, especially as you advance to native material. I often use dictionaries to help me make flashcards or to find example sentences. A good dictionary is a tool you will never move on from. You will use it even when you are very advanced.
You’ll hear it over and over again, but consistency is the key to fluency. Now that you know how to learn a language, you need a plan. Below you’ll find a notion planner with a suggested study schedule. You can copy the example or create your own schedule. To access the schedule template, open the link below and click on the “start with this template” button in the upper left corner. If you already have a Notion account, it will add it automatically. If you don’t have a Notion account, you can make a free one. At this stage, I recommend studying for about an hour a day with thirty minutes of textbook study and thirty minutes of Anki. In addition to studying, you should also get some exposure every day by watching or listening to media in Chinese. The planner is fully customizable, so you can change it to match your lifestyle. Having a plan is great, but it’s also OK if you’re not always able to stick to it. You should check off your calendar even if you are only able to spend a few minutes studying. This will remind you that you are making progress, even if it’s only 10 minutes a day. Keep your expectations reasonable and stick to them! You will achieve your desired level of fluency one day!
In regards to speaking, I don’t recommend speaking a lot at this level unless that is something you would really like to do. As a beginner, you should mostly be focused on listening. You can’t speak if you don’t understand. Instead, I would recommend shadowing and mimicking what you hear. All the Anki flashcards you study have audio, and reading the study material out loud after hearing it spoken is a great way to get used to the sounds of a language. You can also record yourself and compare your pronunciation to the flashcard audio.
Once you have worked your way through the textbook and beginner flashcards, you’re ready to move on! You don’t have to know every single word and grammar pattern from the textbook and flashcards to move on. You’ll need to hear the grammar patterns and words you’ve learned a few times in context before they really sink in. Chinese is also very different from English, so you’ll need a lot of input before you feel comfortable in the language. That’s normal. Often, basic grammar is some of the most complex and can take a lot of time and repetition to learn. If you understand most of the vocabulary and sentences from HSK 4, then you understand about 1,500 words and are ready to move on!
Intermediate
Congratulations on making it to the intermediate level! Give yourself a chance to look back and see how far you’ve come. When you first started this journey you knew nothing, now you should be able to read and understand simple paragraphs and know about 1,500 words. Now it’s time to move on to the fun resources! When you first start using more complex and native sources, you will struggle. This is normal. It’s called the intermediate plateau. The intermediate plateau is when you know a lot of words and basic grammar, but you still can’t understand native material. A lot of people become discouraged when they hit this plateau, and they get stuck at the intermediate level for years. But, you need to keep going. Don’t be afraid of material you don’t understand. You need to stretch a little bit to learn. This guide will help make the transition to native material as painless as possible.
Below you will find an example of an intermediate learner’s schedule as well as a link to the intermediate Notion planner. You’ll notice that this planner looks a lot more interesting than the beginner planner. That’s because your priority at the intermediate level is input. You can’t speak if you don’t listen and you can’t write if you don’t read. Your highest priority should be listening to Chinese, then reading, studying vocabulary, speaking, and lastly writing. We’ll go into detail on all of these later. You can alter your schedule to fit your lifestyle. If there’s a day when you’re busy, your study time may be just one YouTube video. Don’t try to cram everything into one day though. Know your limits and how much you can handle. Studying for six hours is no good if you forget everything you learned. Make a balanced schedule and stay consistent. That’s the key to success.
Remember that fewer resources are better than more resources. Don’t jump around watching different TV shows or listening to different podcasts. Find one resource for each category you like, then stick with it for a while. Listen to a single podcast’s episodes or read one book during your study time. This will allow you to focus on the specific vocabulary and grammar used in that resource. Fluency comes in pockets, so every time you switch to a new resource, you’ll be confronted by a bunch of words you don’t know. It’s also always a good idea to re-read or re-listen to content. This will help you remember the vocabulary and grammar better, as well as allow you to pick up on pronunciation and tones.
Active vs Passive Study
Your study schedule should be a balance of active and passive learning. Active learning is when you make an effort to break down and understand Chinese content such as studying flashcards or grammar. Speaking and writing are also active activities because they require active recall of the language. Passive learning is when you listen to or read Japanese without focusing on the study aspect. Instead, you are focused on the content itself and getting as much input as you can. During passive study, you may use a dictionary to quickly look up words, but you’re not concerned with remembering or even understanding everything. The same resource can be used for active and passive learning. For example, if I read an article and stop at every sentence to look up all the words I don’t know and make flashcards out of those words to study them, that’s active learning. If I read an article, and quickly look up some of the words I don’t know, but then continue reading as soon as I’ve seen the definition, that’s passive learning. With active learning, it will take you much longer to get through a resource, but you’ll remember it better and learn more new vocabulary and grammar. With passive study, you’ll get through a resource much faster and get more input, but you won’t learn as much new vocabulary or remember it as well. Your study time should be a balance of the two because both have their benefits and drawbacks. Since active learning can be very draining, I recommend about 1/3 of your study time be active learning, and 2/3 of your study time be passive learning.
VPN
Before we dive into any specific resources, let’s talk about VPNs. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is an application that will allow you to access region-locked content. While I usually highly recommend VPNs for language learning, Chinese is the one language where you really don’t need one. Chinese content is generally not region-locked, and you can easily access most Chinese websites and apps from outside of China. In fact, most VPNs don’t even have servers in China, so you couldn’t change your location to China even if you wanted to. However, if you want to access region-locked content from Taiwan or plan to travel to mainland China and would still like to access websites such as YouTube and Instagram, then I would recommend getting a VPN.
Listening
Listening to Chinese is your number one priority from here on out. To speak and understand Chinese like a native speaker, you’ll need to listen to the language as much as a native speaker. When studying a foreign language, many people wonder why it’s so hard to learn another language, when their native language was so easy to learn. What they forget is how much time they’ve spent listening to and learning their native language. From the moment you’re born, you are surrounded by your native language every single day. If you hear your language for a minimum of 8 hours a day, that’s about 3,000 hours a year or 15,000 hours by 5 years old, and that’s a low estimate. Most people listen to their native language for most of their waking hours. This includes TV, video games, music, and talking with other people. Then in school, you take classes in your native language until you graduate. Children are not inherently better at language learning, they are just more likely to be in an environment where they need to learn a language, and they are also ok with not understanding everything. The mistake a lot of adults make is to give up and go back to their native language when they can’t understand something. You need to be ok with not understanding everything, that’s part of the learning process. Your comprehension will get better as you progress, especially if you use content you like. Listening to Chinese should be fun! It shouldn’t be a chore. As you improve, you’ll be able to enjoy all the things you enjoy in your native language in Chinese!
To make the transition to native content easier, extensions like Trancy and Language Reactor exist to help you along the way. Their main purpose is to assist with your comprehension of Chinese by allowing you to click on words in the subtitles of Chinese videos for an instant translation. They also allow you to add dual subtitles so you can have the Chinese and English subtitles at the same time. I highly recommend installing the Tracy or Language Reactor extension to help you watch videos in Chinese.
Everyone likes TV shows and movies, and they are fantastic for language learning because they provide dialogue in context. If you have the subtitles on, you can practice reading at the same time. When you first start watching Chinese TV, I recommend variety shows and non-historical c-dramas, that is c-dramas that take place in our current time, since these will be much easier to understand and the vocabulary will be more relevant for daily conversation. Start by watching TV with dual subtitles provided by Trancy, then as you improve, switch to using only Chinese subtitles. When you first switch to Chinese-only subtitles, you should start with dramas you’ve seen before in your native language, as these will be much easier to understand than other content.
YouTube is a global platform with creators from all over the world making it one of the best platforms for language learning. There’s something for everyone on YouTube, and it’s a great place for free content in naturally-spoken Chinese. Bilibili, the YouTube of China, is another great platform for free Chinese content.
Podcasts are great for passively listening to Chinese while you do other tasks. There are so many great podcasts for every level that you’re sure to find something you like!
Reading
Reading is a great way to pick up new words and vocabulary at your own pace, and it will dramatically increase your comprehension of both written and spoken Chinese. You should try to read about four times a week for 20 minutes at a time. When you first start reading, you’ll struggle a lot, especially with hanzi, but that’s why there are lots of tools available to make reading easier and more fun! I usually read on my phone because it’s the most convenient for me and it makes it easy to look up words, but you can read on any device you like, as long as you’re reading.
There are lots of reading resources out there, but as a beginner, you should start with articles aimed at non-native speakers. As you improve, you can slowly move on to web novels and manhua. While it may be tempting to immediately jump to the stuff you want to read, you should take it slow. Start with something you’ve already read in English, it will help your comprehension a lot. If you start with something you want to read, you’ll be frustrated by your speed and lack of understanding. It’s better to save those materials for later when you’re better at reading.
Vocabulary/Flashcards
At this level, it’s still a good idea to make and study flashcards because it will help you remember new words and grammar patterns. You can either use a premade deck or make flashcards out of words you’ve come across during reading or listening. This will ensure that they are commonly used words. You should also have sentences on all your flashcards, so you can learn the word in context. You can use Anki to study with or a dictionary like Pleco that has built-in flashcards. Just make sure all your flashcards are in one location and you review them regularly. I recommend studying flashcards for 10-15 minutes every day.
Speaking
Even though you’ve learned a lot of Chinese, you probably still don’t feel ready to talk. That’s ok. It takes a lot of time to speak a language easily. Shadowing will help you become familiar with speaking Chinese and develop a good accent. Before you start shadowing, you should brush up on your Chinese pronunciation and tones so you know what to look out for when you practice. You should practice shadowing twice a week for no more than 20 minutes at a time because of how tiring it can be.
If you are really excited to start talking and ready to go for it, you can use a language exchange website to connect with native speakers and practice your conversation skills. However, this is not necessary at this level.
Writing
Writing isn’t very important at the intermediate level, instead, you should be focusing on reading. If you would like to write, I recommend using a language exchange site, as mentioned above, for connecting with native speakers, so you can practice sending messages in Chinese. This will be more helpful for your Chinese than trying to write journals or essays at this point in your language journey.
What To Do When You Don’t Understand A Sentence
While most of the resources introduced above can easily be paired with pop-up dictionaries and other comprehension assistants, not all sentences will be understandable to you even if you know all the words. When you come across new grammar, the meaning may not be immediately clear. At this level, you should learn new grammar patterns as you come across them, so you can learn common grammar in context. The article below goes into detail on how to look up unknown grammar patterns and use grammar resources.
And that’s everything you need to know for the intermediate level. Once you can easily understand a variety of daily conversation topics and feel comfortable using tools to look up Chinese words and grammar, you’re ready to move on to the advanced level. You should know about 5,000 words at this point and that means you’re ready to start using what you know!
Advanced
Welcome to the advanced level! Very few people make it this far, so you should be really proud of yourself. You’ve come a long way since you first started. This is the level that never ends because learning a language never ends. There will always be parts of the language you don’t know. This is true even for native speakers. Instead of trying to learn everything, you should focus on areas that are most relevant to you and place your goals and attention there. If you want to be able to speak at a business meeting then you should read a lot of business-related articles and practice writing and speaking using business Chinese. If you want to be able to easily understand c-dramas, then you should watch a lot of c-dramas and even practice writing your own script. You will build pockets of fluency that will all come together to make you better at the language, and it will be easier to acquire new areas of fluency as you progress. You know all the basics at this point, now it’s just a matter of practice and exposure.
At the advanced level, you should mostly be consuming media made for native Chinese speakers. You should also focus on output such as writing and speaking now that you are familiar with the language. If you look at the schedule below, you’ll see that it looks very similar to the intermediate schedule. This is because you should still be getting lots of input, but the input should be more difficult. However, writing and speaking should also now have a place in your weekly schedule. These are both draining and time-consuming activities, so start simple and do each for just 30 minutes once a week then work your way up to doing these activities for longer or more often. This is the point in the language where you get to see all your hard work pay off as you start to have conversations and easily consume native media.
Listening
Listening is still your top priority even at the advanced level, however, you should be consuming content intended for native speakers almost exclusively. If you’re still using dual subtitles when watching shows, it’s time to get rid of them. You should be relying minimally on your native language at this point, only using it to occasionally look up new words or difficult grammar. Anything in Chinese with audio is a listening resource, so it’s up to you to decide what resources are most relevant for you and suitable for your abilities.
Reading
Reading at this level will mostly consist of books and articles intended for native speakers. I highly encourage you to find your own sources for articles that interest you. If you’re looking for sports articles, search 体育 and look through the websites that pop up. Bookmark any of the websites you like so you can return to them later. I recommend doing this for every topic you want to learn about in Chinese.
Speaking
You should now have a solid foundation and understand enough Chinese to start talking. I recommend continuing to shadow at least once a week until you can easily mimic native speech. You should also start reaching out to natives to schedule practice sessions and improve your spoken Chinese. As you progress, you should try to connect with Chinese speakers who can’t speak English, so you can fully immerse yourself in conversation.
Writing
Writing regularly will increase your ability to think in and process Chinese. It will help you build your vocabulary and expand your grammar capabilities. I recommend starting a journal or a blog where you can keep your writing and track your improvement. You should try to write at least once a week.
Vocabulary/Flashcards
While studying vocabulary and flashcards is always useful, it’s not as necessary at the advanced level. As an advanced learner, you should be able to pick up new words through reading and listening, and then practice using them through speaking and writing. If you enjoy flashcards and find them useful, then continue using them. If you are burnt out from flashcards, take a break from them and focus on immersion.
Congratulations! You now have all the tools and information you need to achieve fluency in Chinese. As you continue on with your journey finding new resources and learning new topics, I wish you the best of luck. New pathways and opportunities will open for you as you continue to progress and learn. 加油！
