Author Archive | Alan

Learning Chinese is tough for a lot of reasons.

Pinyin doesn’t sound the way you expect it to.

Failure to use accurate tones can …

Learning Mandarin Chinese comes with tons of perks.

The best of these may just be your newly found ability to access Chinese cinema.…

So you want to learn Chinese.

You’re probably using most of the tools that people use to improve their listening. and you might …

Chinese fluency is about more than just chengyu, grammar, or even pinyin and tones.

It’s also about learning Chinese culture.

After …

Learning Chinese can feel like climbing up a cliff.

You’ve got to learn pinyin and Chinese tones, not to mention Chinese characters.

But …

The conventional wisdom is that Mandarin Chinese grammar is easy.

After all, the hard parts are Chinese tones, characters, and chengyu, right?

If …

They’re the most notoriously difficult part of learning to speak Chinese.

They stop many would-be Chinese learners dead in their tracks.

They’re the bane …