I'm Learning Mandarin
My Asiaglot speech: The inconvenient truth about Mandarin learning
Apr 9, 2025
Dive into the intriguing challenges of learning Mandarin as the speaker shares their personal journey. Discover the mix of traditional and comprehensible input methods they explored, revealing obstacles faced along the way. Uncover effective strategies like controlled output training and the value of feedback from native speakers. Learn how targeted techniques can significantly enhance pronunciation and fluency. It's an engaging reflection on the complexities of mastering a language and the creative solutions that can pave the way to success.
23:49
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Quick takeaways
- The speaker's initial challenges in Mandarin learning highlighted the gap between traditional education methods and practical communication needs.
- The transition to an immersive, comprehensible input approach significantly improved the speaker's language skills, emphasizing the importance of targeted output training for pronunciation and sentence structure.
Deep dives
Personal Journey in Mandarin Learning
The speaker details their initial experience with learning Mandarin, which began with evening classes and the Duolingo app. Despite two years of study, they found themselves struggling to communicate effectively during a trip to Taiwan and China, realizing that their methods were not producing the desired results. This led to a critical reassessment of their approach and an exploration of how adults learn languages, particularly inspired by linguist Stephen Krashen's input hypothesis. The speaker's experience highlights the gap between traditional learning methods and real-world application, prompting a search for more effective strategies.
