🧧 5 Years Learning Mandarin Chinese
Am I Fluent Yet?: Reflecting on the past 5 years of studying Mandarin.
After only finding Mandarin resources when looking for resources in Cantonese, I decided to put Cantonese on hold and start learning Mandarin. My plan was to eventually go back to studying Cantonese through Mandarin.
It’s been 5 years and thanks to more resources, I have been able to reach an intermediate level in Mandarin by self-studying! For the majority of those years, it was my only focus language. I think this is what allowed me to progress and stay consistent even though I was only putting in a few minutes of study each day due to other priorities such as my university studies.
📝 Skills
Through self-study, it was easy to get listening practice with all the dramas and content available online. In order of ability, I would say listening is my strongest skill followed by reading, speaking and writing.
🎧 Listening
With consistent listening, I found my skills improving with each drama I watched. In English, I prefer reading to watching shows but I knew it would be important to get exposed to the sounds of Mandarin if I wanted to improve my listening. I can comfortably watch youtube videos, dramas and listen to podcasts without too much issue. When speaking with others, I can understand what is being said even if my speaking abilities are not at the same level.
📚 Reading
I’m always eager to read in any language. Once I started reading characters with the help of Du Chinese, I found reading just pinyin to be detrimental to my pronunciation. I’ve read different books and a few graded readers. Now I focus on reading magazine articles written by Path to Chinese and native materials.
💬 Speaking
I didn’t speak Mandarin until after I reached 1 year of study. I recorded myself speaking off the top of my head and to my surprise I could actually say a few sentences. I started by only being able to speak for 1 minute to now speaking for over 10 minutes during my audio recordings.
I only have a handful of experience speaking with others. I’ve had a few phone calls, 2 iTalki lessons and 1 in-person conversation at a Chinese bookstore. Although my speaking isn’t perfect, I have received good feedback from the people I spoke to. I could understand them and they could understand me so that’s all that matters, right?
✏️ Writing
Even though I occasionally practiced my writing on apps such as Tandem and Slowly I didn’t focus on improving this skill. Since last year I have begun to improve my writing skill. I journal in my Hobonichi and also write articles for Path to Chinese.
⌛ Time Spent Studying
The only year I tracked my studies consistently was 2020. It’s interesting to see in this graph (below) the trend of my study time increasing during the end of a semester (Apr-June, Dec) and decreasing during exam periods (Oct-Nov).
Using the number of hours put into studying a language feels more accurate to me than years. 5 years seems like a long time but looking at the hours, it’s easier for me to be realistic about my progress. A few hours of study a week will not result in fast fluency.
In 2020 I averaged 32.1h of study a month. If I were to estimate my studies over these past 5 years, I would say I studied for an average of 20-30 hours a month which means I have somewhere around 1200-1800 total hours of study. Although this number is an estimate, I believe it is accurate since I know I still have a long way to go to improve all my skills. I’d also rather underestimate my time spent than overestimate.
In terms of time, it’s not very long. It tells me though, that even with under 1 hour of study a day I can still make progress as long as I’m consistent. With more time, I can improve even faster.
And if you’re wondering, no, I wouldn’t say I’m fluent, yet.
❓ What’s your language journey been like? I’d love to hear!
Read my 2023 language goals here to learn how I plan on improving my Mandarin.
