How I Mastered the Basics of Mandarin (Chinese) in 3 months

I left for Beijing in 2007 with the intention of learning Mandarin and doing some research on the antiques market in China. I had enrolled for a 20hour/week course which lasted for 3 whole months. I honestly thought that as long as I spent at least an hour a day studying after class every day, I’d do fairly well in my final exams.

        I couldn’t be more wrong. We were introduced to at least 60 new words by our tutors every day. I ended up spending 3 hours a day just learning how to write these characters! Aside from that, I also had to learn how to construct sentences with these new words. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed. So, what did I do? I found myself a language partner....

        Having a helpful, dependable language partner really helped. We worked specifically on a few things:

1.    Conjunctions

Ø      Conjunctions are used to combine sentences. As such, they are widely used in both written and spoken Mandarin. By mastering conjunctions, I was able to construct longer, more interesting sentences for my essays.

2.    Grammar (Sentence Structure)

Ø      If Mandarin or Japanese were your first language, you’d know that sentences are structured differently in English. I must admit that learning to construct simple, proper sentences in Mandarin was one of the most challenging things I had to learn as far as language was concerned.

3.    Most Common Words Seen on Menus

Ø     I found this by far the easiest of the three to learn. All I had to do was associate these Chinese characters with English words. Of course, it was no surprise I started by learning all the words of my favourite food! Needless to say, my experience at restaurants gradually improved.



    Learning another language requires discipline and consistency. In order to master any language, one must be prepared devote a certain amount of time every day or every week to learn something new.