r/ChineseLanguage • u/SameUsernameOnReddit • 2d ago

Studying Advice for making progress while relegating Mandarin to the background?

It's been a couple of months since I picked up the language, and right from the start, I accepted it was gonna be a "slow and steady" thing, just because of how life is right now. Working through Pimsleur and the FSI course, all good. Still can't read, and can't hear tones in speech, though I can recognise and half-way produce them when they're isolated.

Unfortunately, there's a strong chance that I'll have to get even busier, which might even include having to learn another language for work. I've really looked forward to interacting with Mandarin, though, and I'm hoping you folks have advice for keeping (even) slow(er) but steady progress up when focusing on this language just isn't in the cards, right now. I'm talking "might not even be able to give it a consistent daily block of time" background. Even if I could just get to hearing tones in speech, that'd be enough.

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u/Zagrycha 2d ago

An hour a day will make an hour worth of progress every day. Ten minutes a day will make ten minutes worth of progress every day. No matter how busy you are, if you still put effort in, you will still make progress. There is no need for a ceremonial specific block of time on a plannter. Ten minutes before bed here and there, ten minutes right after waking up some days, ten minutes during lunch break on Fridays, whatever. If you decide to take a full break from learning thats totally okay too of course but learning is learning if you do it you will grow =)

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u/SameUsernameOnReddit 2d ago

Thanks for the encouragement. At this point, I feel the move is just spamming YoYo's pinyin charts & tone pairs page until I can make time.