Mandarin From the Ground Up (MFTGU) is an audio guide to the process of learning to speak Mandarin Chinese. In step-by-step lessons and practice sessions, you will start speaking Chinese the same way we all learned our first language: through listening, imitation, and intuition.

Frustrated? It’s not your fault

If you have tried to learn Mandarin in the past without much success, it isn’t your fault!

First of all, learning a language is hard. Period. It takes persistence, patience, motivation, and, yes, you also need a method that really, actually works.

Many approaches to language learning don’t work because they are based on the assumption that knowing a language is the same thing as being able to speak it. This is a false assumption. In truth, we humans learn to speak languages routinely without knowing anything at all about them. Just ask any five-year-old to explain the grammar of the language that she speaks. Clearly, not knowing about the grammar doesn’t stop her from speaking fluently.

Another way that many language learning classes, apps, and study methods fail us is that they take a “right/wrong” approach to language, trying to get us to make fewer mistakes. This is usually based on the faulty assumption that fewer mistakes equals better, more fluent speech. The unfortunate outcome of this assumption is the halting, hesitant speech of students who have learned to be afraid of saying the wrong thing. If we observe how real people — including children — actually learn to speak languages fluently, we can see that mistakes aren’t the problem. Indeed, making mistakes is an important part of the process.

What makes MFTGU different?

MFTGU won’t quiz you or waste your time with games that don’t help you reach your goal of speaking fluent Mandarin.

We will repeatedly listen to natural, conversational Mandarin Chinese dialogues. We will use English like a scaffold — to build up mental images to associate with the sounds of Mandarin. Then we will remove the scaffold, leaving just the sounds of Mandarin and your understanding of what they mean.

By repeatedly imitating what we hear, we will train ourselves to intuitively understand the material, without needing to mentally translate it into English. Through this process, we will gradually begin thinking in Mandarin.

Along the way, I will also offer ideas and insights that will help you turn your Mandarin learning practice into something sustainable that works for you.

Can adults really learn to speak a new language?

Of course! It is tempting to believe that there is a golden period during childhood when our brains soak up a new language like a sponge, and that only those with extreme talent (or extreme desperation) manage to learn a new language later in adulthood.

On the surface, this seems to be supported by the numbers: while we seem to succeed almost “effortlessly” at acquiring new languages we are exposed to in childhood, most of us struggle with language learning as adults.  However, there are good reasons for this difference, which don’t require “innate capacity” as an explanation. In fact, under the right circumstances, adults can naturally learn languages much faster than children. So why do so many of us still struggle? To understand why this is so, we must look more closely at the real differences facing most adult and child language learners: 

Degree of Necessity

Infants learning their first language have the distinct advantage of having no previous language to fall back on. From the very first, they are constantly listening to the sounds of the language or languages being spoken around them. Similarly, if a child is later immersed in another language environment, she will quickly begin trying to use the language to communicate, usually because she has no other choice. 

Adults, meanwhile, are resourceful, autonomous, and proficient at solving problems and avoiding inconveniences. For better or worse, this also makes adults great at avoiding the inconvenience and frustration of trying to communicate in a new language.

Fear of Embarrassment

When a child makes a “grammatical mistake,” we hardly bat an eye. If a child says something silly, we may laugh, but not in a ridiculing way. Young children are usually much more focused on getting what they want than they are on making a good impression.

The typical adult language learner, however, is usually beset by fears of being laughed at, criticized, or corrected. Is it any wonder that adults often find the prospect of learning a new language scary?

Rigidity of Identity

Children have the advantage of being born scarcely knowing who they are. They develop their language ability simultaneously with their thinking ability and their sense of personhood. 

Adults, on the other hand, tend to have busy lives filled with obligations, habits, and relationships. These things can all exert a stabilizing, sometimes even stifling influence on who we are and who we might yet become. Most of us also have a relatively solid self-image that it can be frightening to question or alter.

This point is especially relevant when it comes to fluency and pronunciation. Just think of how one’s accent or dialect is so much a part of one’s identity. All the more with language. If and when we begin trying to faithfully imitate the sounds of a foreign language, most of us experience an almost visceral sense of unease (“This isn’t me! I don’t sound like this!”) 

The “Phonetic Filter”

The one real, physical advantage that children have over adults when learning a language has to do with hearing ability.

As children, our hearing goes through a process of refinement. During this process, we learn to hear the sounds (phonemes) of our own language with ever increasing sensitivity. We simultaneously start “tuning out” the sounds of other languages, treating them as noise. 

If a child is exposed to a new language before this process is complete, the child’s listening is usually able to adapt fairly well, with relatively little effort. Adults have a harder time “retuning” our ears. This is one reason that people tend to have stronger accents when speaking languages they learned later in life.

Fortunately, this obstacle can be surmounted. Adults do routinely succeed at retuning their ears to hear and distinguish the sounds of another language clearly, thanks to the power of brain plasticity. It just takes concerted, effective practice. Especially when addressed early on in the language learning process, this is only a minor disadvantage, and poses no obstacle to learning a language fluently.  

Language and life 

These differences all point to a simple truth. The very adaptations that help us get along in our adult lives can turn into liabilities in the context of learning a new language. However, by the same token, they can also be what make learning a language as an adult such a fulfilling and life-changing enterprise.  Learning a language is a chance to break outside of our comfort zones; to revisit how we see ourselves and how we present ourselves to the world; and to take an honest look at our motivations and goals. In short, learning a new language not only helps us understand ourselves better, it also helps us to grow into the person we most want to be. 

So… can we just get started? 

If the above sounds overwhelming, never fear. You don’t need to worry about this now. Mandarin From the Ground Up is full of advice and encouragement to help you along the road to developing a self-sustaining, fulfilling Mandarin learning practice that works for you.

Learning a language should be fun. So, let’s get started, shall we? 

Here’s the first lesson.