By Alan Park Last updated: June 21, 2023

5 reasons to learn Chinese through authentic video content

I have a secret to share with you.

It’s embarrassing, but I want the best for our readers.

It’s how I broke through Chinese learning plateaus.

What’s my secret? Hours upon hours of Chinese dating shows and the Chinese version of “Sex and the City.”

My point? Not that you should watch those shows, but that you should consider learning Chinese with authentic video content. Here are 5 reasons why.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

5 reasons to learn Chinese through authentic video content

1) Videos are fun

The biggest challenge while learning Chinese is motivating yourself to continue – through tones, Chinese characters, and countless embarrassing moments.

Do yourself a favor and make it fun. Videos are natural for this. The beauty of learning Chinese is that what was once just a guilty pleasure can be highly productive as well. Let yourself get addicted to TV shows, movies, and music videos and your Chinese will improve as a convenient by-product.

2) Videos engage your senses and make words memorable

The old saying goes that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

And we all know that as much as 93% of communication is non-verbal.

And did you know memory champions can memorize entire phone books?

What’s their secret?

They convert non-visual information into images. 

The moral of the story: don’t limit yourself – video is a higher bandwidth medium that can brand words in your memory.

3) Videos show you Chinese culture

There was a point in my Chinese learning where I realized that I was fluent but still unable to communicate.

I would join in conversations with Chinese friends and understand every word they were saying.

But I still didn’t know what they were talking about and couldn’t contribute anything.

In other words, I knew  Chinese language but not Chinese culture, and you need to know both in order to really communicate.

So much of culture is captured in video – don’t let yourself be culturally illiterate!

4) Videos are cheap

Learning Chinese is a lifelong endeavor (学无止境 – “studying never ends” – xué wú zhǐ jìng).

So if you’re always paying for a tutor, that can end up being pricey.

Nowadays, Chinese videos are basically free (eg. Youku, Tudou, and Youtube).

5) Videos are convenient

You can watch videos basically anywhere and anytime.

If you want to review a line, or skip forward, you click your mouse.

Classroom settings have many advantages, but this isn’t one of them.

You may be thinking that this is a one-sided discussion of the benefits of video.

I agree – learning Chinese through videos has many advantages, but it’s still an imperfect experience. Some of the frustrations:

• Where do you start? How do you know what to watch amidst an ocean of content?
• Looking things up in a dictionary is surprisingly difficult and time consuming, especially for a beginner.
• Rewinding, repeating, and fast forwarding can be a pain.
• Writing stuff down in your notebook is labor intensive and a poor way to learn vocabulary.

This is where FluentU comes in.

FluentU will take the advantages of video, and smooth out the rough edges. The result will be a new fun way to learn Chinese through TV, movie clips, and other videos.

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, here are some shows that we recommend:

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)