P.S.: I know that you disagree with me saying that native speakers who can’t explain their own language are sometimes not helpful to beginners. However, in my experience with people trying to learn German, they had tons of questions for me about why certain things are the way they are. For example, certain prefixes mean certain things when you put them in front of different verbs and native speakers seem to know what that means even if the word is made up, which puzzled my German-learning friends. And I had absolutely no idea how to explain it to them, so I tried to give them examples of other cases where this prefix does a certain thing and explain it that way. Unfortunately, they typically didn’t know these examples yet, so I left them even more confused, hahaha. I think the underlying issue is that native speakers know certain things because they’ve seen lots of examples and have subconsciously discovered a rule that explains it all, but they can’t express that rule. So, they end up throwing the full complexity of their native language at the beginner, hoping that they will “see the light” the way they once did, but end up confusing them more.

Loved this article! A lot of what you’re pointing out here is not just true for Mandarin, but applies equally well to other foreign languages, even the ones more closely related to one’s native language, if the goal is to reach native speaker level (or get close to it) as opposed to “just” reaching a functional level. I’m a native German speaker and I had English and a bit of Mandarin in school, which laid the foundation, then a language buddy for English in undergrad, plus more Mandarin classes, until I finally ended up going to Beijing for 2 years (2014-2016) and the US (2016-now). I learned a ton in China, but because I primarily develop my language skills through reading, which is rather difficult to do for Mandarin, I’d say I could have gone even later than I did and it would have been more efficient.

One argument I might add to your list here is that native speakers are often “useless” to a beginner, or even an intermediate learner. Most native speakers have no clue how their own language functions because they don’t have to, they just “know it”. To beginners they won’t be helpful because they can’t explain why certain things are the way they are, and to intermediate speakers, who may attempt to copy their way of speaking, their presence might even be detrimental if they speak a dialect that isn’t standard and the learner can’t recognize that yet. Unless that dialect is the goal, of course… Personally, I aim for a fairly neutral accent in all languages I learn, so it has been incredibly helpful for me to go to China and the US after having spent a significant amount of time learning the local language at home. It enabled me to “detect” dialects, slang, and native speakers, who are simply less educated and don’t adhere to the standard language I am attempting to learn. I think it’s vital for any language learner to know which register they’re drawing from in a particular situation and to be able to switch between them as desired. However, I do realize that most people may not care that much and are learning a language to be understood, not to become a faux native speaker, so this is me speaking as a perfectionist. 🙂

In general, I believe that the primary goal in cracking another language should be to determine what type of language learner one is and to figure out how to max out one’s strongest skills before traveling. In my English-learning journey, that kind of preparation enabled me to bring my speaking skills up to a functional level and beyond as soon as I had more access to native speakers, even though speaking is my weakest skill and I pretty much refused to open my mouth when learning at home (got me some horrendous grades in English in high school, hahaha). The next time I’m in China, I intend to do the same!

I thought the timing was perfect, for many of the reasons you mention in the article. I had already learned basics and it was a huge boost in motivation. The hour long subway commutes also ensured I had plenty of time every day for vocabulary review 🙂

Another big factor about how much Chinese you learn abroad is, I think, who you surround yourself with. If I had been spending time with other foreigners who were not interested in learning Chinese, I may not have progressed much. Conversely, if I had had no teachers or language learning peers in China, the native speakers around me probably would not have had any patience with me and I wouldn’t have progressed as well either. With a few dedicated teachers and a group of peers, however, we were all able to get the social support we needed to progress very rapidly, especially in speaking. Without having any precise way to measure this, I would estimate that my Chinese improved as much in those two months as it had in the previous two years.

Starting with listening and speaking is fine! The difference between French and English is that if your native language is closely related to French or shares a lot of vocabulary with it, you can pick things up fairly easy. That just doesn’t happen when learning Chinese. I don’t want to give a specific number of words or whatever you should learn, but at least enough to be able to talk a little bit about yourself.