{"id":1088,"date":"2022-12-19T22:31:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T21:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2022-12-29T18:56:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T17:56:08","slug":"learning-efficiently-vs-learning-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/learning-efficiently-vs-learning-quickly\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn Chinese efficiently, not quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The internet is full of stories of people who learn Mandarin quickly. Maybe it’s three months, maybe six, maybe a year.<\/p>\n

Ignoring the hype and self-promotion that is often involved, I think such stories can be instructive. Many people believe it’s impossible to learn a language quickly as an adult, but this is of course wrong. Showing that something is possible is a good thing it itself.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I also think that such stories can have the opposite effect. It’s easy to look at a polyglot who moves somewhere, immerses completely in the language, and dismiss the whole project, because you can’t\u00a0 go abroad and only have a few hours a week to spare. There’s too much distance between us and what they’re doing, which might make us feel daunted rather than inspired<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast<\/a> to listen to the related episode:<\/em>
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