Ivy League Professors Reveal Secrets 10x Your Mandarin Learning

Been working with 90 students in our pronunciation boot camp, teaching at a grad school, and I managed to film an interview for you all with 9 brilliant Chinese teachers in the US that I know when I went to an annual meeting! (Forgive my weak and shaky right arm)
And I got a bunch of great advice from them that other teachers won't tell you! They'll help you speed up your Mandarin Chinese learning, and maybe more importantly, avoid wasting your time on ineffective stuff! If you wanna learn with the BEST professors that you can find in the world -
Our next "Finding Your Mandarin Voice" 3-month boot camp will start as early as September. Join the course today at RitaChinese.com and be the first one to secure a spot!
Improving the accuracy and fluency of your spoken Mandarin Chinese is a totally different process from forming muscle memory for the sounds, as you are putting together the scattered words and sounds in your mind and putting them in a certain linear order that native speakers can understand easily and correctly.
To "think in Chinese" and express yourself without needing to think about the words or the structures, this is the fastest and safest way to reach a much higher level of Chinese proficiency: ritachinese.com/speakinga
Consume authentic Mandarin content, talk about in-depth topics about the modern and historic Chinese world, and use the language like a real 中国通 here: ritachinese.com/speakingc
00:00 - 04:03 Beginners NEED to Focus on This
04:03 - 07:25 The most common mistakes
07:25 - 10:15 Break through the 'intermediate plateau'
10:15 - 13:39 Must-avoid Mistakes
13:39 - 16:27 Does Chinese have grammar?
16:27 - 19:29 Recommendations
Remember, with Fàn Lǎoshī, Chinese makes perfect sense!
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🙌Chinese Tidbits (Vocab/Flash Cards/Pop Quiz/Listening Exercise) on Instagram: / rita_mandarin_chinese
😎Personal Account: / rita_van

[@Fematika]

Wow! Didn't expect to see my teacher (黄老师) in this video! Thanks for this.

[@nadaelfazary3870]

Me too!

[@RitaChinese]

这么巧！Such a small world😁

[@RitaChinese]

@@nadaelfazary3870 wow 好巧😄🙌

[@xinyuehuang6417]

😂😂😂😂😂

[@CultureNuggets]

Oh my goodness, how exciting this is to see that this conference took place right here at home in Michigan!! I'd love to attend next year!!

[@mayk6549]

Thank you, Fan Laoshi! I really appreciate your effort in bringing together the knowledge of all those experienced teachers in one video! A great help as always❤❤

[@MarkusBlue]

So so helpful!!! Thank you!!

[@luisaguilar5343]

This channel is awesome. I just started trying to learn Mandarin 2 weeks ago and have been using free apps to get started. I look forward to one day passing the HSK 1

[@simonchen5250]

Great video! It touches on a lot of the points that us as learners often miss, but from the collective perspective of many different experienced mandarin teachers! Always looking forward to more great Rita Mandarin Chinese content~

[@willaa25]

This video is really insightful, helpful and encouraging. Thank you!

[@RitaChinese]

Glad you find it helpful🙌😄

[@QuizmasterLaw]

Hi Rita! :) I have yet to see ANYONE do 字正腔圆 as a lesson in English and i love that song so much and i bet you do to!

[@heathcliff4722]

It’s super interesting to watch because I am a French teacher for native mandarin speakers, and all those advices are exactly the same I give to my students. I guess it is the same everytime you learn a language completely unrelated to your mother tongue.

[@alandeutsch9987]

Yes I agree it's like this for most languages. I do have to say though that (and I talk more extensively about this in another comment) learning writing is more important in Chinese than other languages because in languages with an alphabet you can sound out an individual word, thus allowing you to recognize it in text, but if you hear a Chinese character, there's no way you'll be able to recognize it in text. Learning writing/reading forms the bridge between listening and reproduction (speaking).

[@andypierce6593]

Yeah. Pronunciation is the one thing that you need to get right from the beginning. Tones included. After that it’s exposure, which thankfully is so much easier now than, say, 20 years ago

[@alandeutsch9987]

I would have to disagree slightly about the importance of writing. I lived in Shanghai from when I was 9-18 so I managed to pick up the pronunciation quite well and some basic writing and reading as well from Chinese classes. But when I stopped taking chinese classes, or at least, stopped taking chinese classes that required writing, I found that my reading capability went way down, to the point that I could barely recognize basic characters. At the same time, I could understand quite advanced conversations, but I wasn't able to reproduce it myself. I'd have ideas of what characters meant and how to use them in my head from all those years of listening, but I still made frequent mistakes and messed up tones because I didn't have a firm understanding of what each individual character meant and what it sounded like. If you asked me to point to a character, that I could easily recognize when spoken, on a page, I wouldn't be able to do it, because I hadn't formed the connection between listening and speaking. That connection, if you ask me, is formed through writing/reading. Writing allows you to recognize every single character when reading (in addition to being able to communicate with people by hand which is cool), and reading allows you to understand the meaning of character combinations and put them in context. Then, once you have the reading and writing down, listening will add further context, finally allowing you to speak with confidence. I've begun learning how to write the 3000 most frequently used Hanzi and I can already see the improvement to my reading and speaking. I think this might apply less to students of Chinese as they are sure to be exposed to ample writing practice, but it's still important for them to not forget that writing is the backbone of chinese. It's especially important to kids like me who grew up around chinese speakers but received little to no formal chinese education, that we learn to write.

[@xuexizhongwen]

If by writing you mean writing by hand, I'd have to disagree. Reading is extremely important, but handwriting is not. My speaking and listening are advanced level, reading is just below advanced, but there are only a few characters I can write from memory. I can type just fine using pinyin, and if I really need to write by hand for some reason, I can type it first and write while looking at the screen. So I personally haven't found it at all necessary to learn to handwrite characters from memory. But maybe it is helpful for some people.

[@nunoalexandre6408]

Love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@labake6657]

真是干货满满！谢谢Rita老师

[@RitaChinese]

太好了，你觉得有收获就好😊

[@jytan740]

second language is chinese but long time nvr use, most common problems is zh ch sh and z c s, pronounciation

[@RitaChinese]

Yeah they are def tricky consonants, since they are not pronounced like how they look like. And the vowels "i" paired with them just make it more confusing😅

[@timcrnkovic8991]

This just shows that it is nearly impossible to generalize when it comes to the opinions of pedagogy regarding language learning. If you ask 5 different experts, you get 5 different responses. For the question of what should be the priority for beginners, I saw: pronunciation, listening, speaking, learning characters, watching TV, and imitating native speakers rather than doing what the textbook tells you to do. Essentially, they should prioritize everything. At least none of said that beginners should "do what works for them." As a beginner, I *do not know* what will work for me so that is not very useful advice.

[@RitaChinese]

For beginners, I think it’s pretty obvious that most teachers emphasize *the sound* of Mandarin, instead of the written system, especially not handwriting characters. Pronunciation and tones are a lot more prioritized than other aspects. Maybe it’s more obvious in the “what to avoid” part. Of course we’re open to further discussions, and tbh it’s hard to come to a simplified “conclusion” on any in-depth discussion, although I understand it’s not what human brains really like.

[@readjordan2257]

​@@RitaChinese personally im glad i went the opposite way. Some people are naturally better at written chinese than listening and speaking. Which was good for me because there are no asians where i lived in the US. Every communication i wanted to practice was through text. Eventually I had moved and could easily practice listening and speaking, but i think many professors just assume characters must be difficult for everyone as it was for them growing up. But even this isnt true for some students and may put an unnecessary barrier for them. Some people hold onto abstract visuals easier than phonetics. For example, i learned 100 chinese characters a day for 5-6 days a week (i was learning during work time at my heavy labor job, thats why i had the time) and consistently scored 95-100% on flash card tests on pleco. Traditional chinese was also easier than simplified because its like a suduko for people like us, the more initial information there is, the more identifiable it is. Im not super smart or anything like that, thats not my point. My whole point is just to clarify that some few students are the exact opposite and really need to go the written route before the spoken route to achieve in mandarin.

[@xuexizhongwen]

@@readjordan2257 I think the point is more about handwriting characters, rather than learning to recognize characters (which, of course, along with pinyin, is all you need in order to be able to type in Chinese). Recognizing characters is definitely very important, but writing by hand is not necessary to accomplish that. I'm curious: when you were learning to recognize characters in the beginning, did you not assign any pronunciation to it? Just a meaning? If so, I find that very interesting. I think it's certainly possible to do it that way, and then learn the pronunciation later (the opposite of how native speakers learn), but from my point of view, it would just be extra work. And if you assign an incorrect pronunciation to it, you would have to relearn the correct way, also costing extra work. So I still think it would be ideal in the very beginning to spend time mastering pronunciation first before even touching characters. Then you can learn them while associating the proper pronunciation with them. But perhaps for some people other methods work better. I agree that characters are not that difficult to learn, and that traditional characters are far easier to learn, in the vast majority of cases. Especially if you learn a bit about why the character is written the way that it is (I mostly use Outlier dictionary for that). In fact, I only know traditional characters, although I'm slowly starting to pick up on simplified just from seeing it sometimes.

[@readjordan2257]

@@xuexizhongwen all I'm saying is learning to speak a language is different for everyone, some people need the opposite path to succeed the same way. Also pinyin is incorrect. I also memorized Zhuyin in an evening. When i learned words, i learned to read. Because traditional chinese is much easier to learn than simplified, when i memorized characters, i simultaneously learned how to read, as 80% are sight&sound. This is also the benefit of traditional chinese. Its like a sudoku puzzle. The knes with more numbers are easier. The ones with less are more difficult and not as pleasant to look at most of the time. Theres a few simplified characters i find more appealing. But i have ADHD so the aesthetics are what help me "breathe" in a mental way, increasing focus. I also would say the manual labor helped. The extreme physical stress and constantly occupied hands made it super easy to focus. Anyway, you kind of missed the point with everything I'm saying. Im just saying some people walk the same path to the same destination as everyone else, but they need to do it the opposite way. In order to be a teacher at all, you have to recognize this , whether or not you can supply it. Not everyone needs to be a persons student and that's totally good.

[@readjordan2257]

@@xuexizhongwen so no it wasnt extra work. If its the way you learn, then its much less work. It will always be work, but its has much more solid inertia.

[@dalfireasha]

I definitely think speaking and listening should be stressed more for at least the first year. Then slowly start integrating learning characters. I'm not saying don't include any reading and writing, but there should definitely be way less emphasis on these 2 aspects. I really feel learning characters should not come until you're at an intermediate level. Definitely have the characters present but with pinyin, only include them at first to differentiate homophones initially. Kind of a passive learning with reading and writing, and then slowly increase learning these 2 principles more with speaking and listening.

[@CultureNuggets]

What's the name of this conference??

[@nswrth]

我很認同胡老師講的：“中文的語法應該比較像是“詞法”……。” 還有位女老師說：“對美國學生來說 中文的語法算很簡單“ 這我也認同 尤其是我學了西班牙語後發現西語的語法（性數）真的是比中文和英文複雜很多

[@newcreation1cor517]

我现在是一位西班牙语老师在美国。我教得就是基础，但是我一直想中文比较容易多了！西班牙语的语法太难

[@nswrth]

@@newcreation1cor517 🥰

[@Metapuff1]

《小欢喜》确实不错！

[@pamelabaldwin5136]

I AM INTEREST IN YOUR PRONUNCIATION CLASS. SENT ME SOME INFORMATION. THANK YOU

[@RitaChinese]

Hey glad you’re interested! You can check out the website www.RitaChinese.com for more information!

[@magdolnavida2717]

I became sooo sad watching this vid 😢😢😢 don't get me wrong, it was a fantastic one, as always, but I realised 事倍功半 that's what I have done till now...I am quite good at reading and writing and enjoy learning and practicing the characters but highly slow me down, I know...but I really so much like it...what should I do...I know I should improve my speaking and it's not that I can't speak but most of the time I choose to be silent or not dare to speak up, or if I dare,then it's so slow, bacause I don't want to mess up the tones so I rather slow down... Dear Rita, thank you for your hard work and for doing this vid, I've learnt a lot from it! Lots of love from Hungary ❤️

[@alandeutsch9987]

You have the opposite problem of me lol. My speaking is great but my reading/writing sucks

[@magdolnavida2717]

@@alandeutsch9987 yeah, maybe that's how it works...you have to make a choice...I don't know...but I envy you... How come your speaking is good? How could you reach it? Do you /did you have a lot of opportunities to use the language? Because I think that's the keypoint of it and I don't have enough place or platform of speaking...

[@xiaoyuanhu6036]

看到视频里有密大的老师想到我当年在密大旁听的中文课：我当时因为写作课essay要求于是选择去explore密大的200level中文课，我发现对非中文母语的同学比较难的是连读和连读中声调的模糊。那天正好那节课的老师出差了，由另外一位老师代课。同学问老师去哪了，代课老师回答：“去西雅图了”。但是对于中文母语者来说西雅图很容易连读成“夏图”，所以班里大部分同学都没听懂。老师重读了好几遍，直到最后一字一顿的说西-雅-图大家才听懂。我觉得大家没听懂很大一部分是因为连读，但是还有一部分是因为在快速说话时声调会变得模糊很难分清其中的不同，而这个在平常教学中涉及的比较少。（我单纯是喜欢研究语言，非中文专业，一点拙见）

[@ilovelaos]

Ni hao zhongguo laoshi, I'm from Laos nice to meet you

[@CarmenOfSpades]

In my experience having taken Chinese classes taught by multiple professors in two well-known US universities (albeit over a decade ago), the quality of Chinese language education in the US is very poor. I remember the classes being almost exclusively taught in English with very little Chinese ever spoken. By comparison, when I took a Japanese training class in Shanghai (aimed at Chinese students), I was surprised to see that from the very beginning the classes were almost entirely in Japanese, with some of the teachers not even being able to speak Chinese. We were basically thrown in the deep end, and came out all the better for it. At the same time, I remember my second-level French classes in the US doing the same thing. So whatever problems students of Chinese have, it seems the teachers share as much responsibility --- at least that's what my experience has shown me. I guess I'd also have to mention that pinyin is not an ideal system for English speakers (or speakers of other languages which use Latin-based alphabets), since it's very hard to separate sounds associated with the "letters" based in pinyin with those that we (as English speakers) would otherwise immediately associate with them. I honestly feel like learning zhuyin at first would have helped me with my pronunciation when I was starting out. Obviously pinyin was never meant for "us" (English speakers), but the reality is it has a lot of problems when being used as a language learning tool when not in the proper environment. But yeah, td;lr, Chinese teachers should speak more Chinese in their classes. If the students don't catch up then fail them until they do. It's really not that hard.

[@pt6792]

I feel like most Chinese teachers WANT to speak English.

[@williamjohn6939]

At times, I often find that female teachers have clearer pronunciation and it makes me want to reconsider having a female over a male. Do you think it makes a difference if I obtain my “Chinese voice” using a female teacher vs a male? I use two male teachers from different areas of China. I took a lesson from a female teacher before, but am only now starting to see a pattern. Men speak like they have marbles in their mouths. But, females tend to speak too fast. It’s a conundrum I’d like some advise with…

[@xuexizhongwen]

I would try to emulate the way a man speaks, otherwise you will sound feminine. There are men who speak clearly. You just have to find them. I totally know what you mean, though, about the marbles in the mouth. Just find at least one person you want to sound like, and try to emulate him.

[@TheFiestyhick]

Ideally, model dudes, but female voice modeling hasn't harmed me, in the form of recordings. I happened to get most support from women and i ask them to record some of my lessons and I imitate their pronunciation and now my pronunciation is excellent, so it won't totally mess you up. However don't only rely on gals. And, make sure you just imitate their pronunciation of texts and scholarly type stuff, done in a straightforward way, NOT their voice patterns of everyday chatting because Chinese and ESPECIALLY Taiwanese women have a very girly way of behaving and if you imitate their everyday chatting patterns, you'll sound like a super duper gay... hahaha....

[@williamjohn6939]

@@TheFiestyhick LMAO! *I truly appreciate the honest and thorough explanation. I will stick to the dudes.

[@TheFiestyhick]

@@williamjohn6939 ok. Good. And, to be more clear, it's perfectly fine to listen to recordings of women that are speaking in a kind of straightforward, clear manner, for the sake of clear pronunciation. That is fine, because like 60% of my recordings are gals and it's helped me a lot. The issue is don't imitate the CHATTING style of gals. Asian Female chatting style is mega girly. If you imitate Chinese or ESPECIALLY Taiwanese woman chatting style... hahahaha you'll appear to be super raging, gay homosexual foreigner hahaha😂😂

[@xuexizhongwen]

@@TheFiestyhick Actually, even Taiwanese men often sound a but too feminine. My wife is Taiwanese, and as a beginner, my accent was naturally affected by that. After coming back from a couple months in Taiwan, someone told me I sound too feminine, and so I made an effort to change that, so it's better now. Haha.

[@jordandavis6709]

The reason students make those mistakes though in my opinion is because of those teachers. Lack of tones pronunciation everything is because those teachers didn’t provide a solid base for those students

[@andriyansah495]

Ni hao Mrs Rita, i'm from jakarta👋, wo xiang xue zhong wen, xie xie

[@ganpeace]

Pinyin mixes with American phonics plus without environment to speak with native speakers results in the failure to pick up the language. As long as the language uses English alphabets, it is difficult to pronounce correctly unless u r in Asia or Chinese speaking environment. It is a common problem across all non-native speakers.

[@xuexizhongwen]

Not all. I never had that problem. It helps if you already have experience with language learning. Actually, it's the same if you learn any language. Even if you learn a European language that also uses the Roman alphabet, the same letter doesn't have the same pronunciation as in English. For example, if you're learning Spanish, you need to learn what the letter B sounds like in Spanish, as it's not the same as in English. Or D, J, R, etc. Pinyin is the same. Beginners just need to realize that they are learning a foreign language that has sounds that are different from the sounds of English. I think as long as people can keep that in mind, there shouldn't be an issue. Of course, there is also the option to learn Zhuyin first instead of Pinyin, as it doesn't use Roman letters. But I have yet to hear of a foreigner doing this, so I'm not sure if the results would necessarily be better. Perhaps they would, as it would eliminate the problem of associating the symbols with one's own native language. Of course, if you want to have good pronunciation, you need two things: a lot of listening to native speakers with good pronunciation (plenty of that here on YT), and good input from a native speaker (or possibly an advanced level student). You don't need a Chinese-speaking environment. You really only need one person that you can have conversations with, and who will correct you when you say things incorrectly.

[@ganpeace]

@@xuexizhongwen Thanks for sharing your opinion. I agree to disagree. It really depends where u teach the language in native land or in foreign land. If you don't experience this problem, chances are you have not taught Chinese in foreign lands but in native lands where native speakers are not commonly available.

[@err5221]

Facing Chinese language problem in china

[@semonsimon9456]

wonder if there is an objectively easy language to learn, being a chinese that is bilingual I feel english is much easier. Natural selection should happen in languages as well.

[@user-gimmechickenwingz]

I told you Cantonese is Chinese too, stop breaking National Security Law

[@user-gimmechickenwingz]

反對 港區國安法生效之後，泛民主派嘅評論普遍認爲「一國兩制」正式玩完。經常評論香港憲制議題嘅法律學者張達明話，國安法條文重差過佢想像中最差嘅可能，因為呢條法例有全世界治外法權，所有罪名嘅最高刑罰都可以係終身監禁，解釋權又喺人大常委而唔喺香港嘅法庭，佢諷刺噉警惕「全世界80億人都要熟讀國安法」[12]。 泛民主派會議召集人陳淑莊批評，實施港版國安法等於向一國兩制發出死亡證，香港將變成一國一制。佢又話，港版國安法只用大約40天時間，無經任何諮詢立法，無邏輯可言，做法無稽，唔能夠接受[13]。 民主黨涂謹申批評，今次立法反映中央政府無誠意遵守自身法律同埋國際條約[13]。 民主黨主席胡志偉批評，北京強推法案令香港法律體系「中門大開」，破壞普通法嘅司法獨立，令國際對港失去信心，直指「國安立法，兩制玩完」[13]。

[@TheFiestyhick]

Not too impressed wth this video. Yeah, like 50% is really good and helpful but the other half is tips that go all over the place. As someone that is into the best self study methods, much of this is just watered down. It's based on students being stuck in classrooms forced to do tons of unnatural stuff to learn Chinese. University language learning is pretty much trash, yeah, even Ivy league. It's based on outdated methods of boring textbooks and grammer and boring homework that almost everyone hates. Much of the tips here were just silly and many will walk away very confused after all these scattered opinions. These days people are reaching high levels of Chinese in 4 years, mostly doing fun stuff, reading and listening to interesting stuff and then eventually chatting more and more. A good tutor to support you is 1000 times more effective than a University teacher. Just once a week is good enough for the first 2 years. I know Rita knows this is true. If she is honest she'll admit this video will overwhelm people with too many opinions. They are better off following successful self learners, not University teachers because it's basically a business model to keep you stuck for 4 years, so teachers keep their jobs

[@youn00ber]

It seems nutty to me to push pronunciation perfection from the absolute start (and for the love of God stop with the insane focus on error correction; there is little literature suggest this is of any benefit!!) In fact there's reasonable scientific indication students (which is another thing, the whole teacher-student dichotomy, but I won't get into that) may want to focus on listening from the beginning. Expecting someone to distinguish sounds in a language they haven't been exposed to is a huge ask. It's something to develop largely through listening. Not (merely) tongue practice like you're developing a muscle. If only it were that simple. I don't think consciously focusing so much on pronunciation helps anyone. If you want someone to speak naturally and freely you want them to speak implicitly instead of consciously/explicitly. So again, lots of focus on listening at first -- and later on speaking.

[@RitaChinese]

I think there’s a huge misunderstanding of pronunciation training here, too, from what you stated above. It definitely needs sound input first before any starts making sounds and working on the output process. But for most adult learners, it cannot be more ineffective than waiting for 1 year or even a couple of months to start speaking until they get “enough” input. Let alone Mandarin Chinese, being a tonal and distant language for most learners, might need you to try a different approach for getting the hang of it as effectively as possible. I’ll release more feedback and progress of my students in the 3-month boot camp when it’s over next month. And you’ll see what adults can improve within 12 weeks with good instructions and solid drills.

[@youn00ber]

@@RitaChinese ​ If you want this to produce something of scientific value you'd need to control for certain variables. If this bootcamp is what I think it is, near constant Chinese for days -- you're dealing with a huge amount of input. If you want to convince people drilling works really well, you'd have to split groups, one with more repetition of exercises (output), and one with more instruction (input). Both would have input and output, but each group would put the focus more on one of them. Even better would be to have a control group of only input. For better suggestions, ask someone more qualified, like a language pedagogy researcher. I'd love to see language programs attempt to incorporate experiments and research. If you believe your study plan works, the results would speak for themselves, and would make for good marketing.

[@RitaChinese]

@@youn00ber great (and constructive) advice👍👍 I’d love to do an experiment/research on it, if I can find enough volunteers /samples. Language learning experiments is super time-consuming, especially for distant language learning process, and I guess this is why there’re not so many scientific/convincing quantitative research on non-native speakers’ Mandarin learning process, let alone pronunciation being an aspect that has long been ignored everywhere (although everyone is saying it’s important and it stops learners from keeping improving in the long run). Human’s ears and mouth/vocal cords both can be trained and tuned in a more systematic approach. I’ll try to show you all more proofs.

[@magdolnavida2717]

@@RitaChinese I would be your volunteer for anything anytime 😊just let me know if you are in need 😉

[@amunra5330]

I disagree with pretty much what you said. Distinguishing the tones in a TONAL language should be stressed, practiced and drilled at the very beginning. Because the tones are a part of the pronunciation. Trust me I paid a price for not focusing on the tones in the first year of learning practice. Now because of this bad habit, my tones are completely off when speaking to chinese speakers. Now I have to review ALL the characters I have learned and literally practice getting the pitch of the tones correct and its a pain in the butt. Do not pamper yourself and pretend that tones are not important they are! Dont let ego get in the way of learning Mandarin properly .

[@derekeano]

Aren't you still dating Chris? He should help you sound like an American

[@RitaChinese]

We’re married haha. I’ve actually been thinking about improving my English accent, maybe this summer is the time. Thank you for your suggestion!

[@_loaf0]

@@RitaChinesei think it would be an awesome series on youtube of you improving your english! And you could compare it with how u teach mandarin

[@michael511128]

Mandarin Chinese? What is that? A complete joke?

[@rothschildianum]

Only the first one is useful...the rest...just gargabe...