Wednesday, March 30, 2011

What's the biggest fear in learning Mandarin Chinese

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"How long do I have to learn before I can go out there and start conversing in Chinese?"

Have you ever wondered about this yourself? It is actually one of the most frequently asked questions by our students.

Well, first and foremost, you gotta know how to pronounce the words right .... wait .... what .... ok, you've learned pinyin and the 5 tones.  GREAT!

Let's move on to learn some basic vocabulary such as I, you, he .... huh .... you know how to say "Nǐ hǎo".  That's WONDERFUL!

Then, I should go ahead and talk about some basic sentence structures .... zzz .... so you know about "subject - verb - object"? And you've already learned to use the particle "ma" to ask questions? EXCELLENT!

Ok, in that case, please allow me to ask you a question in return ...... what's holding you back?

That's right!   Nothing!   Absolutely nothing!

You don't have to be perfect in order to start speaking Chinese.  In fact, if you don't start practicing, you will never be perfect!

Most students are used to stay in the passenger's seats.  That's where they are in class, and that's where they feel safe.  But you can actually jump into the driver's seat and start speaking Chinese from the day you learned to say "Nǐ hǎo".

Moreover, by conversing with other Chinese speakers, you can refresh your memory on the vocabulary and grammar you've learned.  You can even expand your vocabulary this way.

The biggest fear in learning Mandarin is fear itself.

Get rid of it, and we believe everyone can converse fluently in Mandarin Chinese.