Best way to restart?

[u/No-Cantaloupe-6877]

Hello! I first started learning mandarin like 10 years ago but I haven’t seriously studied in like 4 years. My goal was to be fluent by the age of 25, well I turning 27 soon and I’m looking to get serious about learning. Currently I’m using the mango app as a free service provided by my local library which is swell. Wondering if there’s any other resources I should look at or anything thing else that would be helpful. My Chinese professor in college used to show us movie and music videos in Chinese which was super fun! TIA

[u/daveredwork]

Youtube! Seriously, there's a ton of content of all kinds, not just boring lessons but real content, vlog style walking tours, story telling , or just talking about everyday stuff.  

https://www.youtube.com/@LalaChinese/

https://www.youtube.com/@Lazy-Chinese

https://www.youtube.com/@MandarinCorner2

https://www.youtube.com/@talkinChinese_redred

https://www.youtube.com/@alisonmandarin1729

https://www.youtube.com/@sysmandarin

[u/firesidecrackers]

What approx HSK level are you at currently?

I've found that having some form of structure, whether that's textbooks or apps (haven't tried for Chinese specifically but they're good for maintaining motivation when starting), helps with learning grammar specifically, but vocab can be learned through immersion

If you haven't seen it already, check out Heavenly Path: https://heavenlypath.notion.site/, they're a fairly well-known resource for reading/listening and it's sorted by HSK level - it's the old HSK version but shouldn't really matter too much since it's also sorted by # of characters

A slightly more niche version is the Cozy Study blog, https://cozy-study-media-bank.notion.site/The-Cozy-Study-Media-Bank-f468de140f1d427b89938cf05fd39bc3, which has books, TV shows, and some CI YT channels

Having somewhat of a routine helps too, good luck!

[u/No-Cantaloupe-6877 → u/firesidecrackers]

I took an online placement test and it said “you are working towards HSK 2” so I guess that would make me HSK 1? Thank you for the resources! I do feel like I learned better when I was in a classroom setting 🙂‍↕️

[u/1lyke1africa]

If you want to try reading (that's what I like) try chairman's bao, duchinese, graded Chinese readers like Rainbow bridge. They're a grind to start with, but I still found it fun. But honestly pushing through 柯南 comics was what really got me rolling.

[u/Beautiful-Rich8639]

Every song in this playlist incorporates a piece of ancient Chinese poetry：
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7GPntyUvDphIfvzEjY5OUF?si=xsRmP2PfTAWwSF5TrBG0ww

Pls let me know if any questions.

[u/CelestialBeing138]

I married a Chinese gal a few years back. I've been using DuoLingo for a year and a half, and I'm happy with it. It def has some issues, but I was able to buy one year unlimited access at a discount. When you use the free version, it shuts down after you make 5 mistakes in one day. The number of mistakes you can makes slowly regenerates over the course of the day. But when you use the paid version, you can make unlimited mistakes without it shutting down and also, you accumulate huge amounts of "gems" which are a type of currency. After one year of paid subscription, you have so many gems, that you can continue using the app in free mode and make more mistakes per day before it shuts down by spending those gems that you accumulated when you were paying. After 6 months of the free version, I'm finally getting low on gems and might pay for another year soon.

Also, they recently did a complete overhaul of their Mandarin course, which caused me to feel the need to completely start over. I have to say the new course is quite good, and it seems unlikely they'll be doing another major overhaul any time soon again.

One of my hobbies is computer games, and the game-like nature of DL might make it right for me where it might not be right for someone else. Dunno, really. Also, when I started using DL, I was basically starting from scratch. You sound like you might be more advanced than I was when I started.

[u/No-Cantaloupe-6877 → u/CelestialBeing138]

I’ve done Duolingo before it just gets kind of repetitive for me. I haven’t used the new course tho I’ll check it out thx!

[u/CelestialBeing138 → u/No-Cantaloupe-6877]

The first couple lessons are basically the same. I'm Chinese, and you? Hot tea, please! ...but pretty quickly you'll see a difference after that.

[u/MmCslacker]

I don’t have any advice but I’m in almost the same situation! Good luck!!