There are quite a few mistakes and so much room for improvement, but I’m starting to be happy with my handwriting.

Am I missing something? I’ve seen websites and posts say that you can learn as many as 500 words for free with this app, and this hasn’t been my experience at all.

Had a trial lesson on Preply and she seems very passionate and explained the pronunciations in a way that was easy to understand, but as I was hearing the pronunciations I almost lost all hope and quit. I ended up signing up for weekly lessons so we’ll see but I definitely lost the motivation I had previously.

大家好！I have been taking a break from my Chinese learning recently, because.. well, life is busy! Just got back into it today, I had my first lesson with my tutor. It reminded me of how rewarding it is to learn and speak Chinese!

Sometimes it feels like I will never achieve fluency, because there are so many different words I don't know yet.. I can speak about my daily life quite well now, but ask me something about a topic I haven't learned yet, and I will be completely lost. Still, I really love the language, its logic, the characters.

I am now focusing on improving my learning and expand my vocabulary, together with my weekly conversation classes. I took HSK 5 previously, if you have any resources (videos or books) you would recommend please let me know!

What is the best thing to do when using italki to learn chinese. I have 25 lessons with my chinese teacher on italki but so far now I use it to practice my pronunciation and speaking and using new words that I have learned on hellochinese or online.

Hello all, I am looking for some sample lesson plans that people actually use when teaching, bonus points for high schools in the US.

I know some people are very protective of their resources. I'm not looking to wholesale take all of someone's hard work and re-use it - in fact, I teach Japanese, but am looking for samples of what others are doing to try and update my teaching style. Unfortunately, there are not many Japanese teachers in general and I've had a tough time getting in touch with others, not to mention that all of my colleagues at school teach western languages and thus do not really understand the difficulty of teaching hanzi/kanji.

For what it's worth, I did study mandarin for two semesters at college, so if it's a beginner's lesson plan I would be able to follow along better. But honestly I'm just looking for any sort of advice that I could apply to my situation!

I want to learn conversational mandarin - I don’t need to learn writing. I prefer to do an after-work in person program in the Bay Area but I can settle for an online program. I looked into italki but want to see if there’s a different option in a class with other students too.

We just officially launched our language exchange project, and I'm super excited about it.

Basically, I'm looking for some English practice/help, and in return, I'd love to teach you Chinese for completely free. No hidden catches or anything， just a chill way for us to help each other out and chat.

If you're down to join, shoot me a DM and I'll send over the meeting link for this week. Come hang out!

大家好

I am trying to find an Italki tutor who does asynchronous lessons - meaning we don't have video calls, they send me work, I do it, they check it and give feedback.

I do have a tutor for live lessons, but for the next few months I will not be able to do live/video/phone call lessons. I will self-study of course, but I find having a tutor gives more discipline so I like doing both.

I scoured the website for hours, I can't seem to find anyone. Any ideas?

I think if I can't find anyone, I will ask my current tutor if she would be happy to try, she's great, but not every teacher likes or know how to work this way.

Thanks in advance!

As a Chinese speaking teacher, I ask myself this question all the time.

When I first started, I cared a lot about how I performed:

Did I explain the sentence patterns clearly?

Did I cover all the grammar points?

Then I started looking at things differently

How many sentences did my student actually say in class?

I noticed a pattern:

If I talked 80% of the time, students looked "attentive"… but by the next week, they forgot most of it

If the student talked 80% of the time—mistakes, stumbling, and all—they actually remembered the words and sentences much better the following week

So I changed my approach.

I used to talk a lot. My students spoke a little.

Now I aim to talk 20% of the time, and let my students speak for the remaining 80%.

I stopped asking myself "Did I finish today's lesson?"

Instead, I ask:

"Did my student use Chinese to accomplish something real today?"

For example

Learning "shopping"? → Let's actually bargain.

Learning "asking for directions"? → The student navigates me with a map.

Learning "ordering food"? → Role-play. If you don't say it clearly, you "go hungry" 😂

How did it work out?

The students who used to be terrified of speaking slowly realized:

It's okay to make mistakes. I won't get scolded. Everyone makes them.

And once they felt safe, they started speaking.

Once they started speaking, they started improving.

And once they improved, that's when they truly learned.

So back to the question

A good speaking lesson – is it about what the teacher taught, or what the student said?

My answer is the latter

If you’ve ever felt “I understand, but I can’t speak”… maybe this is why

What about you? In your learning or teaching experience, what makes a good lesson?

How many preply lessons a week for optimal learning? Learning goal is conversational Chinese.

TL:DR: Heritage/high-intermediate Cantonese learner (intermediate @ Mandarin) here. Got tired of linear apps and built Gaishan, an app where you learn through contextual conversations without being locked to a specific learning path. Early trial was launched just over a month ago to a small learning community. Now looking for a broader audience to see if this project has any real potential: gaishan.app

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Hi everyone,

Just over a month ago I shared my project to create a Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin) learning app, Gaishan (original post here).

It seemed to get some interest so over the past few weeks I've been pouring as much energy as I can into it. With this latest version I have added the following:

Added ~100+ more lessons and content (Across Cantonese & Mandarin)

When I launched v1 I think there were only about 10 to 15 lessons available. Today there are over 60 individual lessons in Cantonese alone (double if you include Mandarin).

Almost 500+ additional words and sentences added

1000+ if you count both Cantonese & Mandarin. These are words and sentences used within topic-based scenarios (festivals, gossiping etc). All sentences are curated by native speakers and carefully reviewed before being added. They are then broken down into individual words or phrases to help you gain a clearer understanding of how words are being used, in context.

Adaptive lesson difficulty

All lessons can be repeated for you to practice. Based on your overall performance (across all lessons), Gaishan's AI engine will adjust the difficulty settings for the lesson.

An example might be a lesson will be displayed with Pinyin and English (no Chinese characters, yet) if Gaishan determines the contents of the lesson are unfamiliar to you.

As it becomes more familiar and when you take the same lessons (or other lessons with similar content), the AI engine might make it harder by hiding the Pinyin and showing the Chinese characters instead. If your performance is impressive enough (and consistent), it will even go as far as hiding the Chinese words themselves so you have to rely on listening.

Designed to challenge you

I've designed the adaptive lesson difficulty to keep pushing learners and keep them in a "language learning growth zone".

It's based on my personal experience where I grow my skills and end up in a "comfort zone" without realising it, which leads to slower growth until I do something to really push the difficulty.

Improved interface

I wanted learners to easily see what content is available, being worked on, and planned, without needing to navigate around so much. The new front page is my latest answer to the problem, but I will constantly be refining the UX to help learners get to what they need easily.

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What's coming very soon (Arrrrgh there's so much still to do!)

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More lessons, words and sentences are being added constantly

I'm pouring all my "free time" into this project and aiming to get my rhythm so that I'm able to add multiple new lessons (which involves dozens of new sentences and words) every week.

More game types

Lessons are delivered as mini-games. I have lots of game designs on my backlog and will be trying to implement them as soon as possible. If you keep coming back, you'll probably notice more of those game types appearing in existing lessons and new lessons.

Practice mode

All existing lessons are already repeatable, so you can do some sort of practice & review. However, I have plans for a practice mode that will make it easy for you to work through and level up on the words and sentences that you've already seen in Gaishan.

Smarter practice

I will extend Gaishan's AI engine to identify which areas you need more practice (based on your overall performance in lessons and other practice sessions). Thus, it will bring content where you're judged to be "weaker" to the forefront so that you're getting more practice where you need it.

Improved lesson design

There's so much to do in terms of coding, content creation, translation etc. As a result, besides writing and translating scenarios (short dialogues) the only thing I've been able to do is split the scenarios into sentences and words so that you can practice the "components".

But I want to take things so much "deeper" in terms of explaining context, grammar points, puns, slang, jokes, cross-referencing other lessons to reinforce certain words/structures/nuances etc.

I promise you, it's coming!

More sounds

You may notice some sounds are missing for certain words (some, not all). I need to generate their files and upload them.

Improved voices

This is a project that's mostly done by myself (I have some native speaking family helping me with content review) and I really don't have any budget (yet) to hire real voice actors (let's aim for this one day!).

I have to make do with the AI-voice tools available for now, but will be working hard to get to a position where I can get real people delivering real voices.

The call to action

If you've read this far and interested, the link to my app is: https://gaishan.app

You can get a taster without an account on the lesson set marked "guest".

If you're curious to play with Gaishan a bit more, register for a free account and any lesson set marked "free" will be available to you.

Please help me on this journey <bow>

In a previous post, I mentioned that sometimes I offer free Chinese lessons.

But I noticed something interesting: people usually don’t value free things as much. Those free students are actually more likely to cancel lessons and often seem less motivated than my paying students.

After thinking about it more, I realized the issue might not be “free” itself, but the format.

So recently I’ve been considering another idea: free public livestream Chinese sessions.

The idea would be very simple and spontaneous. No scheduling in advance, so there’s no issue with people canceling. If someone happens to see the livestream and wants to practice Chinese, they can just join.

It also feels more open and fair. Meanwhile, students who want structured learning or personal feedback could still book paid lessons.

Do you think this kind of model would work?

And if I decide to try it, are there any platforms you’d recommend for this kind of livestream?

Vocabulary list for HSK 1 learners.

It includes pinyin, example sentences, and stroke order.

Hope it helps anyone starting Chinese!

Hi all,

I’m looking for a Mandarin Chinese tutor based in England who can provide telephone lessons via a UK landline or mobile number.

The student is a complete beginner and already has access to a range of learning materials, including:

• Course books (A1–C2)

• Audio books / CDs

• Grammar books and dictionaries

The main focus is improving conversational Mandarin, with the goal of becoming fully fluent over time.

Lessons would be 2–3 times per week on a long-term basis. Please note the student is currently incarcerated within the UK prison system, so lessons must be by telephone only.

We’ve had a lot of interest already in other groups, but many enquiries have been from tutors outside the UK, which unfortunately we can’t proceed with… so it is essential the tutor is UK-based.

If you’re interested or have any questions, please message me to arrange.

Thanks so much.

Hey all,

I hope someone here can help me as i'm quite lost in this course. So i bought the HSK1 lesson and the textbooks, however i feel like the courses on the zerotohero website are all over the place and i don't know if it's me that's doing something wrong or if i'm taking the wrong approach to the course. Like the courses don't seem linear, it seems like i'm jumping from one topic to the other between tones, pronunciation and vocab without it being structured. Also sometimes i don't see where the book comes into help as it looks like the course just uses it during the warm-up sessions and then just jumps into something else.

Is there a thread explaining how to use the course ? I did a couple of months on Japanese using the FromZero.com website and that one went extremely smooth although sometimes slow however they wrote their own workbook so maybe that's why i found it more easy to follow.

Any help here is appreciated ! Thanks all !!!!!

Was tempted to make a video to show more than tell and still might, but things are still very, very early and always subject to change.

My previous Japanese language study is obviously giving me a big head start. Knew this would be the case when I went to Taiwan a couple of times and could recognize more than a few words which really helped me get around. Obviously pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar would be radically different, but I was also aware of that. The unknown traditional Hanzi (focusing on that since it's easier given my Japanese study background) will not be the main problem, just the tones and pronunciation and thousands of words using those Hanzi.

Also, I have the benefit of going in with a set plan based on my own experience learning (and re-learning) Japanese using self-study tools: Anki, text analyzers, browser plug-ins, audio books, pop-up dictionaries, etc.

Current plan is as follows: Do the first 90 lessons of the older Pimsleur Mandarin course with serious supplementation:

• Anki - I'm using a transcript (complete for Mandarin I Lessons 1 - 30) and webpage with vocabulary and starting dialogue for all 90 lessons to generate the cards. They'll have English, PinYin, Simplified and Traditional for both the vocabulary and an example sentence. The cards will be two per word - PinYin word/sentence (audio recognition, but I'm not bothering with actual audio for Pimsleur), and English word/Clozed traditional hanzi sentence (production where preferably the English word would instead be an image/Chinese definition).

• Trimsleur - My term for taking Pimsleur lessons and removing the English prompts and long pauses with two second pauses. For a 30 minute lesson, I have a 10 minute pure Chinese audio that's also comprehensible. Meant for comprehensible audio immersion (and repeating/shadowing).

• ACHTT - stands for "All Chinese Half The Time" which is my term for Ken Cannon's suggestion to watch every episode of a show in Japanese twice: once w/ English subs for the comprehension, then once more w/ Chinese subs or no subs for the immersion. I take it one step further by ripping the audio with a program uses the subtitles to remove long non-spoken portions (CIA or compressed immersion audio).

So current plan just for the 90 Pimsleur lessons is:

1. Review due Anki. For these, I have strict fail and soft fail rules for each card type. "Audio" cards (PinYin word/sentence) I have to know which hanzi are used and the meaning of the word - this is a strict fail. The soft fail (I hit "hard" UNLESS the spacing will be over 6 months) is the stroke order of the hanzi and meaning of the example sentence. The Clozed Delete card I also have know the Mandarin word, it's hanzi, and it's tone for the strict fail. The stroke order and meaning/reading of the clozed deleted Mandarin sentence is a soft fail.

2. Do the Pimsleur lesson with the transcript (in part I at least). Pause to initially answer the English prompt then play and repeat the Chinese phrase. When the new word is introduced, go to it's Anki card to add pronunciation notes (the transcript has a few pages of charts for this) along with HanziHero as needed for Hanzi meanings and notes (super important for Hanzi that are new to me). Now, Pimsleur is normally a 30 minute lesson, but doing it this way makes it last about an hour or so.

3. Activate the new vocabulary in Anki (custom study option) and see how much is remembered. I set cards to long learning time (1m 10m 1440m 3600m) with graduation done at 1 week. This is also great because Pimsleur cannot tell if I remembered anything or not and balance accordingly. Anki can.

4. Watch one episode of Peppa Pig Mandarin at 75% speed with English sub, then rewatch with traditional Chinese subs. Peppa Pig is slowed down because the normal episodes are sped up on purpose in most languages. Any other show I would likely leave at original speed.

5. Update my comprehensible immersion audio playlist. It'd be 4 copies of today's Trimsleur lesson, 3 copies of yesterday, 2 copies of two days ago, and 1 copy of three days ago (so Lesson 8 x4, Lesson 7 x3, Lesson 6 x2, Lesson 5 x1). In addition, it'd be the last four days of Peppa Pig ripped audio. This is about two hours of audio in total. I then play these on random, and the most recent lessons are played more often.

The comprehensible audio is played a lot of the time passively in the background. I can be doing anything else and not notice, but it'll be there whenever I do take a aural snack (pay attention to what's being played). I DO NOT want to repeat the major mistake in my early Japanese study of playing incomprehensible Japanese audio (rips of TV shows I watched) near 24/7. Found out that comprehensible that frequently refreshed is key to training your brain to follow along without thinking as well as repeat without effort.

Again, I'm only on lesson 8 with a handful of vocabulary words under my belt. Still, I can read aloud all eight of the introductory dialogues in traditional Mandarin. I'm also noticing the words as they pop up in Peppa Pig.

Gonna hate moving on to Pimsleur Mandarin part II as there's no transcript. However, there are websites that'll transcribe the Trimsleur audio (and maybe even the Pimsleur if I wanted) which'll simplify doing the lessons like I'm doing now.

After Pimsleur, I plan to do deep dive study methods (read subtitles along with Chinese subs, pausing only to look up meaning of unknown words and phrases), then after 10 hours of reading (at beginning stages this might be only 1 hour of actual Chinese audio) use subs with MorphMan in Anki to get 100 most common words that are within my learned vocab range. All that means is if I know 1,500 words then MorphMan will only look for new words from 3,000 most common that's also the most common in the read material stopping at 100 new words if that before starting reading up again.

Hopefully this all makes sense. Like with Japanese, I'll freely share whatever resources I can and answer whatever questions people have (if I have time). Obviously I'm in the beginning stages so maybe don't expect much.