How to Overcome the 8 Painful Mistakes in Learning Mandarin

Chinese characters, also known as Hanzi, can look intimidating for beginners.

When starting to learn a new language, there is a lot to consider – which resources to use, whether to take classes or self-study, how many hours to dedicate to studies each day and so on. Because of all these decisions one has to make, it’s easy to start off on the wrong foot. However, that’s not going to happen to you!

Why?

Because I’m going to outline the top 8 mistakes people make when starting to learn Mandarin and how you can avoid them.

Feel free to skip ahead if one of these struggles really resonates with you:

Struggling through Chinese characters
Spending too little time with the language
Not maintaining a balanced learning regime
Neglecting learning about Chinese culture and people
Thinking they’re not ready to talk to Chinese people
Neglecting the importance of tones
Not studying consistently
Not understanding the language learning process

We’ll start with…

1. Struggling through Chinese characters

For reasons that are beyond me, many people want to launch into studying Chinese characters right from the get-go. I think many people have this idea in their mind that if they diligently spend time memorising characters each day then eventually they’re going to be able to read Chinese. This is not the case!!

First of all, if you do try to rote learn characters for days on end you will most likely drive yourself to the edge of insanity and even if you are able to keep a clear head you will soon realise that it’s extremely hard to learn Chinese characters without a core knowledge of the language first.

So, I would suggest an alternative approach – don’t even look at a character for the first few months. Spend a couple of days learning Pinyin (the Romanised form of Chinese) and focus your efforts on listening and building up a rudimentary knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. Once you have this, learning characters is going to be much easier.

2. Spending too little time with the language

Many people underestimate the benefits of simply ‘spending time’ with the language. This could mean listening to Chinese songs, watching subtitled movies in Chinese or anything that exposes you to Chinese in some way.

The power of this is illustrated through studies such as the one conducted by Victoria University in New Zealand, which shows that simply listening to a foreign language, even if you don’t understand a word of what is being said, can help your brain create new neural pathways. The study states that our ability to learn new words is directly related to our level of exposure to the different sounds of the language.

Listening to Chinese radio or watching Chinese movies shouldn’t replace actual study of the language but rather supplement it.

3. Not maintaining a balanced learning regime

I personally think it’s really important to diversify your resources and materials when learning a new language. Some people that I’ve met insist on sticking to one textbook but there are benefits to learning from multiple resources.

For one thing, you can cover more content this way. Also, it often helps to learn one thing from multiple perspectives (e.g. see a new word used in multiple contexts).

Make no mistake, there are numerous resources out there, both free and paid, for learning Mandarin and it would be foolish to not make use of them.

Another reason to work from multiple resources is to avoid boredom!

Lessons in textbooks tend to all be structured in a similar way and the last thing you want is to find yourself losing motivation due to becoming bored with your materials.

Try to incorporate a bit of listening, speaking and reading/writing (even if it’s in Pinyin) into your daily study regime and use different resources for each. This way you can build up all of your skills at once while looking at the language from different angles.

4. Neglecting learning about Chinese culture and people

Understanding Chinese culture will help you to communicate more effectively. It’s common for learners to want to replicate how they speak in their native language when speaking Chinese. For example, in English we tend to say ‘please’ a lot to be polite. But in Chinese it’s often not necessary to use 请 (‘please’) when wanting to be polite.

When a young child comes up to you and addresses you as 叔叔(‘uncle’) or 阿姨 (‘auntie’), you should know that they are showing you respect.

Little things like this can help you in social situations and can go a long way towards improving your Chinese communication skills.

Along with helping improve your knowledge of the Chinese language itself, taking the time to learn about Chinese culture, people and history can also help you to cultivate a deeper interest in these topics which can in turn motivate you to improve your Chinese.

5. Thinking they’re not ready to talk to Chinese people

If you think you’re almost ready to start talking to native speakers then you probably have been for a while. Many people shy away from real Chinese practice (no, talking with your teacher does not count!). Hell, I was extremely nervous to speak Chinese with natives but seeing as I was living in China, I kind of just had to!

It’s pretty common for us to doubt ourselves. We’re naturally afraid of failure and so will come up with all sorts of excuses to put off speaking Chinese with natives. All I can say is embrace the Nike philosophy and just do it.

What is the worst that could happen? The person you’re talking to doesn’t understand you? You mess up your tones? You don’t understand him?

Uh, so what?

It’s all part of the process. Just remember that mistakes help us learn! Seriously, making mistakes is actually one of the best and fastest ways to progress in a language and that’s exactly why Benny the Irish Polyglot says he aims to make 200 mistakes per day when learning a new language.

6. Neglecting the importance of tones

Yes, tones are challenging, yes you might still be understood without pronouncing them correctly and no this shouldn’t lead you to neglect them!

What typically tends to happen is people forget about the importance of tones once they are satisfied that native speakers can understand them.

By not devoting enough time to the tones in the beginning, you will most likely develop bad pronunciation habits (such as pronouncing a first tone like a second tone or vice versa) and these are difficult to correct later on.

Also, while you may find that Chinese people understand you regardless of your bad tones, it’s likely that this won’t hold for every Chinese person you meet. Eventually your bad tones will come back to bite you and when this happens you’ll wish that you had learned them correctly from the beginning!

Like anything, tones become easier the more you practice them. Lots of listening practice is the best way to develop an ear for the tones and corrected speaking practice, with a Chinese native speaker, is critical!

Do yourself a favour and don’t take tones lightly.

Trying to learn all the Chinese characters can be frustrating when you don't have a solid foundation — If you find studying Chinese frustrating, you are not alone. Studying consistently and seeking guidance is the key.

7. Not studying consistently

Studying consistently, every single day, is really important when it comes to acquiring a new skill because it allows for more effective learning!

Sitting down and having a marathon study session once, twice or even three times a week is nowhere near as effective as studying for a short while every single day.

Why?

Because it’s been shown that people tend to remember what they learned at the beginning and end of a study session and forget what they learned in-between. By studying for a little bit every single day, you can do less but retain more!

Studying every day is a commitment and it will require you to be focused and dedicated. But, if you’re passionate about learning Chinese, this shouldn’t be a problem for you at all.

8. Not understanding the language learning process

Infographic Illustrating the Seven-Step Language Learning Process

It’s well understood that the more languages you know, the easier it is to learn others. I believe that one of the reasons for this is that people who have learned languages before understand the language learning process better than those who haven’t.

Let me explain what I mean by the ‘language learning process’.

There is a general trend to language learning and it goes something like this:

We begin studying the language and everything is exciting and new. Every new word we learn sets the motivation to learn more and more.
Thanks to all the new words and phrases we’ve learned, we’re able to have simple exchanges and it feels amazing to communicate in a previously alien language!
Things begin to slow down. We’ve reached a point where we can no longer rely on memorised phrases and we are having trouble creating our own/improvising.
We begin to delve into slightly higher-level resources and it’s really tough going at first! The content is hard, and learning is more of a grind.
Our brain has begun to adapt to all this new input and we’re once again feeling confident about our abilities – things are making more sense than they did before, and our vocabulary had grown a lot.
Things stagnate again. We’ve hit a plateau where we feel as though we aren’t progressing anymore. It’s frustrating but we soldier on nonetheless.
Our efforts have paid off and once again we can feel our skills rapidly improving. Suddenly things become clearer and we’re using words/patterns previously foreign to us with ease! Our vocabulary has grown enormously, and the language is rolling off our tongue.

You see, learning a language is made up of many ups and downs. During the ups we feel motivated and can feel ourselves making progress. During the downs, however, it often feels as if our learning has stagnated and our progress has ground to a halt – this can be very demotivating if you’ve never experienced it.

What is really going on, however, is that the language has entered somewhat of a ‘gestation’ phase where it is growing inside of us. Our brains are adapting and subconsciously absorbing all the new patterns and sounds.

Where many beginners fail is giving up during a ‘down’ phase, while more experienced language learners understand that this is normal and that things will inevitable get easier.

Now that you’re aware of these eight common mistakes that people make when learning Chinese, you’re already better equipped to tackle your studies in a smarter way!