Yesterday I put the word out on ChinesePod and Twitter that I was looking for anyone who was studying Chinese, but also blogging about the experience. There don’t appear to be any blogs dedicated to sharing the experience of learning Mandarin, but many people seem to be posting little snippets on their personal blogs.
So, if you thought you were studying alone, here is a selection of posts that might help, or cheer you up. By sharing our experiences, we can all make the journey to Mandarin fluency that little bit more exciting.
- Simpson’s Paradox – Meg Stivison (Subscribe)
- Never Stop Moving – John Biesnecker (Subscribe)
- City-State Life, Taylor: (Subscribe)
- Learning Chinese… One Day at a Time, Mike Redus (Subscribe)
- Will Buckingham
[Update:] Updated links to Simpson’s Paradox following comment from Meg below.
For all those of you familiar with RSS, you can subscribe to all the blogs mentioned here by importing this OPML file: Learn Chinese
Are you learning Chinese and blogging about the experience? Or, have you come across any posts you found particularly helpful or inspiring? Leave a link in the comments and I’ll try and maintain a list of great blogs to subscribe to.
Not sure I qualify as a great blog but I’ve just started learning Mandarin and intend to blog on my progress inbetween my normal random musings….. very happy to have found your blog!
MM.
Thanks for including me! It’s great to read other posts about learning Chinese, definitely improves my motivation.
Here are the new links to the first posts on VE, I’m trying to move everything away from blogspot.com and onto simpsonsparadox.com
http://simpsonsparadox.com/2006/11/chinese-language-exercises.html
http://simpsonsparadox.com/2006/07/remember-that-time.html
I thought about writing a dedicated blog like that, but I think after a few months it would turn into “did some flashcards, talked to some guy, learned a word or two, that’s all” for every single post
Thanks for the link!
The German Chinesepod Blog is a dedicated blog for learning Chinese (with Chinesepod) and some other interesting stuff on China and learning Chinese.
As of now it’s not too much on the learning experience as such.
I just came across LaowaiChinese.net. You might find it useful.
@chris_mandarin is blogging about learning Chinese over on his blog: Mandarin Student (普通话学生). He tried to leave a comment a while back but for some reason it appears to have got lost amongst the spam. So, head on over to his blog and take a look.
Chris, please accept my apologies.
OHH Great post!! I just add this to my bookmarks. Thank You ^_^
I’m always thinking about a dedicated blog. But you are right, it would become rather repetitive, if there were only one author. I’m toying with the idea of a blog with multiple authors to keep up the variety and interest.
Meg, thanks for the links. I’ve updated the post. My wife and I had a great time going through some of the posts on your blog. The post on Battery Shopping had us in stitches.
MadMedia, welcome aboard. Great decision to start learning Chinese. From my experience (I say experience and not progress) it isn’t easy, but it is certainly fun. As soon as I work out the best way to maintain a list of blogs, I’ll add your blog to the list.
I’d never even considered that people might be using ChinesePod to learn Chinese from any language other than English. Thanks for sharing. I’ll be up front and say that I don’t speak a word of German so can’t comment on the blog’s content.
Looks like a great find. I’ve started bookmarking all of these sites using del.icio.us. If you are interested, you can view the list here:
http://del.icio.us/billglover
No problems, cheers for the mention.
Works now, probably me being a twit.
Far more likely that my flakey old server was playing up. Glad to see it works now though.