Do you crave adventure? Do you love history and delicious food? Have you ever wanted to get to know the world’s most populous country? Would you like to traverse the Great Wall? Have you ever thought about surfing in Taiwan? Then Chinese is for you.
How are you going to learn?
Duo Lingo: This is an excellent starting point for anyone who is looking to learn Chinese. The app will help you to cover the basics and gives you the opportunity to listen, read, write and speak in Chinese.
Chinese Made Easy Text book and workbook series: I can’t recommend this set enough comes in a 5 text book set with each level consisting of a Text Book with Cd’s, Work book and a teacher’s edition also with a CD. Packed full of useful information and dialogues this set starts out with characters and pinyin and moves to solely character based as it progresses through the levels.
Italki: With Italki you can either organise a professional teacher, a community tutor or a language exchange partner for yourself. The professional teachers cost a little more than the community tutors and the language exchange partners are free. If you are using a professional teacher or a community tutor, Italki takes care of the time differences, the scheduling and the payment once you have completed your lesson. I would recommend signing up and talking as soon as possible, even if you give yourself a script to start with. As Benny Lewis says the sooner you can get talking the faster you will learn.
Chinese Pod: Get amongst it!! Chinese Pod has some excellent learning resources, they have a series of podcasts organised from beginner through to advanced. You can find them on your favourite listening apps. I use Spotify, and generally listen to them while I am doing the dishes, driving to salsa lessons or mowing the lawn. There is a stack of resources on their website that back up each of the pod casts with extra grammar and vocabulary tips as well as activities and further resources.
Some great you tube channels
Peggy shares some great language learning tips and her videos are really entertaining as well
These guys interview people on the streets about a wide variety of topics. This is a great way to get some authentic Chinese listening practice.
These guys have some fantastic longer videos. They dig deep into a significant number of contemporary issues. I usually listen to them while I am doing the dishes.
Steve has some great tips on how to go about learning languages.
Awesome Bloggers
Olle has some great tips and techniques on how to learn Chinese; he also has a stack of great stuff on how to use Anki on his blog including methods of killing leaches and other cool concepts.
Once you have been leaning languages for a while you will have heard of this guy so he will need no introduction. However just in case you have been living under a digital rock. Benny travels around the world learning languages in three months and is well known for his start speaking from day one strategy.
Jp has some great tales to tell from his various adventures out learning languages. Jp’s blogs are always well worth a read and are thoroughly entertaining. He also has a stack of useful learning links and resources on his website.
The main thing to remember that learning a language takes time, I have been working away at Chinese since 2009 and I am still going in 2025. Chinese is a super difficult language to learn, but with the right tools and strategies you can become proficient. The most important concept is to get started and keep going. I believe that you can do it!!
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