How This Guy Learned Fluent Chinese by Age 21 | Method Breakdown @xiaomanyc

in brief:
1. **Introduction**: Olly Richards introduces Ari, a guy from New York City who learned to speak fluent Chinese within a few years of graduating high school. Ari started learning Chinese in 2008 during his first year at university and later went to China for immersion.

2. **Mindset**: Ari emphasizes the importance of having the right mindset. He believes that with a year of focused conversation and vocabulary learning, one can achieve a solid level of conversation in Chinese. He stresses the importance of speaking and immersing oneself in conversations.

3. **Learning Vocabulary**: Ari shares that he spent a lot of time memorizing vocabulary using Anki. However, he later realized that he could have benefited more from speaking with people and immersing himself in the language. He believes that natural conversation and reading are more effective than rote memorization.

4. **Deliberate Learning**: Ari was very deliberate in his learning approach. He would think about the situations he would be in, the conversations he might have, and then learn the necessary vocabulary and phrases. He would get translations from native speakers, record them for better retention, and then practice them in real-life situations.

5. **Prioritizing Learning**: Ari made conscious decisions about what to learn and what to skip. For instance, he decided not to focus on learning Chinese characters initially so he could concentrate on speaking. He later learned characters but knew when to stop and be content with his level.

6. **Reason for Learning**: Ari emphasizes the importance of having a strong reason for learning a language. He believes that an irrational passion for a language or culture is what sustains learners in the long run.

7. **Conclusion**: Olly concludes by pointing viewers to another video where he discusses the eight things that polyglots do to learn new languages quickly.

Overall, the video highlights Ari's journey of learning Chinese and the methods and mindset he adopted to achieve fluency in a short span of time.

I recommend learning some vocab before immersion. Kids can play together despite not knowing each other's languages. Try that with an adult and see how fast they ignore you.

I've thought about the topic of early speaking a lot and did a lot of research on the topic. From hearing about how others learned to speak at a high level, and from my own experience, speaking early is just not crucial in acquisition.

In my experience learning Japanese, I didn't really find trying to speak early helped me understand Japanese any faster. It was just more stressful because I didn't know enough words of grammar to be easily understood. I just didn't really speak Japanese to other people for about 3 years of learning except to some Japanese exchange students a few times at my university. I just focused on immersion and writing for my output practice for 3 years.

My speaking ability had to be practiced separately from my ability to understand the language as the listening and pronunciation are separate from the ability to comprehend meaning. Speaking is the hardest skill and forcing beginners to do the hard stuff first is just frustrating and causes people to quit learning.

I would say that unless someone is already living in the country where the target language is spoken, focusing on reading, writing, and listening will make speaking much easier later as they'll already have a foundation of vocabulary and grammar to build spoken sentences with. From there, the learner can focus most of their attention to accent and cadence instead of trying to remember words or grammar.

Ari really likes speaking because it's active recall, but I'd argue that writing (or typing these days) is just as active and is much less stressful for learners as they have longer to think about what they want to say without awkward pauses. Plus they can look things up if they are completely stuck. It's a good training for learning to speak as the learner learns to write more quickly. They will naturally increase the words per minute they can think in, which is very useful for being able to speak at a natural rhythm.

Once I started speaking regularly, I had to fix some problems, but it didn't take long to to fix them as I could isolate the problems in my mind and focus on fixing them. I definitely think speaking is an important skill to do well eventually, but like any skill that's built on the foundation of other skills, jumping in too early will just be overwhelming and confusing. It's like saying you have to play basketball in the NBA from the beginning to learn basketball. In physical tasks we wouldn't expect beginners to do the hardest stuff first, and it's no different for language learners. Take the time to learn the basics and work up from there to be able to do the hard stuff well.

You gotta do one of Matthew Youlden, he speaks almost all of his languages accent free. Especially his german is very good

OK, I partially agree, but I remember having vocabulary tests every year in grade school

Personally, from my experience, immersion is the fastest way to learn a language. I was 7 and came from the Philippines to New Zealand basically not knowing any English apart from yes, no or thank you. I had so much opportunity to take in so much input in school, that it took like under a year to become conversationally fluent.

Are there any Egyptian Arabic learners?

The mindset is spot-on. Even as a native Chinese myself, anecdotally I would say that learning writing Chinese has a very steep diminish of return; The strokes are hard to memorize, practices took years even for us since age 7 all the way up to age 18, and the worst aspect would be that you tended to forget how to write them in your later life even if you were Chinese, 30% the characters I learned now I couldn't write them down at all. By the advancement of modern Pinyin system, there's probably little point for a mastery of writing Chinese .... unless lest you were into calligraphy or something....

SPEAK SPEAK SPEAK !!!!! VERY important.

Why don't learn English.
There is not such thing as fluent Chinese.
He learned to speak Chinese fluently, you mor0n.

just the sound quality every time jumping on and off is irritating. :/

Mandarin, not "Chinese". Americans, please LEARN the difference.

Excellent.

I love that you pointed out that you can live in a country and not learn the language (especially if you’re a native English speaker since so much of the world is catered to that, imo). I’ve seen a couple of language learners talk about “wasted time” in Korea cause they thought “oh, I’ll just go there for a year or two and be good at it”😂 They said you STILL have to make the effort and put yourself out there to try and get better, since there’s so much English there (especially if you’re at an international school or a company that doesn’t make you have to learn the language).

I vaguely remember coming across this video where the person in the video was talking about how she managed to keep Korean vocabulary in her head and practice her speaking. She tried to think out loud as much as she could. She lived in South Korea and sometimes when she was at a cafe or in a shop or whatever, occasionally she would have someone come over to her to help find the right word for something or help with her pronunciation

I think is a complete wast of time not studying chinese characters, the thing that I more enjoy of learning chinese are the chinese characters. Hanzi (chinese characters) are a way of art, it feels pretty chinese, pretty eastern, chinese with no characters is like eating tasteless food.

Maybe you can act out these situations with a Chinese Teacher, i thought id get a teacher and go to the Market or the Restaurant and practice typical phrases.

I lived in England but l never learned English.

Memorization sets the sail and immersion is the wind to take you fluidity.

这不是小马在纽约么，新疆人
Ha, when I went to Japan, I couldn't even memorize hiragana and katakana
now...

This method is only suitable for Chinese ，if he want to learn other language like German or Japanese. It would be a sad story.

The majority of people who go to live in a foreign country actually do learn the language. Some better than others.

when you hear the word learning you are in the wrong place. we dont learn a language. We dont even remember how we were able to speak. It happens naturally.

try to read about Stephen Krashen. everyone has a device for language adquisition. The device does not work with anki. you need comprenhensive input from your parents or a tutor or a video adapted to your level. You need a story behind the scenes to forget about the language. The language is a tool.

too many people talking about how to aquire a new language. It is very easy but it takes time. You have to play with the language like babies do. Dont do anything a baby does not do. Don´t do grammar, not srs, dont try to memorize. Frequent words you need will appear, try not to use dictionary. Tons of listening hours at an apropiate level. Dont try movies or news at the begining. Learning basic things like colors is boring but you need it so be ready for a boring begginer phase. Modulate your input level. Do not try to speak. It will become natural with in a 8-12 months. Be patient.

So proud of AbroadInChina

Hi. I want to try reading stories to learn French because it helped a lot when I learned English. But how would I go about reading a completely new language? I wouldn't be able to understand the story!

Should I just dive in without knowing a lick of French? Or should I memorise a few words first?

Love your videos!! I'm moving to Canada so its finally given me the motivation to start.

So he is the opposite of MattVsJapan? Neat! So that means everyone has to find their own way that works for them.

I love Ari’s Mandarin videos. His clickbait videos I refuse to watch. It does damage to language learners in my opinion. And his level after learning for 24 hours or a week or 20 days is actually minimal vs what his videos portray. But his Mandarin videos really motivate me.

I think the top tip is to actually have a goal or enjoy it . I’m British and before studying Chinese , i tried Spanish which should’ve been extremely easy as grandmother moved to the uk and only spoke Spanish and is also regarded as one of the easiest languages to learn as a native English speaker but it was the most hardest, most boring thing ever .

Kinda funny how children are usually considered inferior to adults in almost every field of education yet when it comes to learning, they seem to be on a level that even adults would struggle to achieve after years of practice..

How do you speak a language without knowing any vocabulary? Isn't vocabulary memorization required to start speaking?

I worked with someone who took French in school and they went to France; she said what she learnt in school was completely useless. That's the problem here in the UK when it comes to teaching languages in schools, they teach just textbook French/Spanish instead of making it more immersive, natural and fun.

His not fluent. You and I can watch the nightly news in English and be tested and get a score of 95% + reflecting our native fluency. That's being fluent. I am sure if he was tested the same way in Chinese he would score 60% at best. I would agreel in daily colloquial speech he might be high intermediate to lower advanced but his not a Chinese speaker that could be classed as truly fluent. He would be highly functional at a high level in most casual language interactions and contexts but not fluent like a native speaker. His tones are shocking for the amount of time his studied however I respect his capability overall in the language. II have a grudging respect for his ability as someone who has also lived in China and studied mandarin

in my opinion, Chinese is the easies in terms of grammar, no particles or conjugation or any of these grammar stuff. however, in my opinion, Chinese is the hardies in terms of pronunciation. you have this one word that pronouns almost the same as some other 10 words. however, we human understand language not through each word, but through context.

I saw a film on this guy where it was said that some chinese people were laughing at his american accent, but who cares. He still speaks it.

I like the moment in Ari’s videos when the other person realizes he is speaking Chinese. They are usually sweetly surprised.

I thought this guy really supported the use of Anki? I saw in previous videos of his he attributed flashcards as one of the key components of his success. Does he suggest speaking and learning naturally as most important but using Anki to support?

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let me say something that year of learning people are talking about is just different,people on the outside dnt know what it is. if you study in English in china it’s a little harder to learn chinese.that one year of chinese is very intense to the extent that it’s impossible to to finish one year without having to speak conversational chinese even if you dnt want to. Classes are from 8am to 5pm most times and every/most people that do the language in class not online can all speak chinese even the laziest. The point is dnt base your journey based on someone who said they did a year of chinese in china what they do in that one year can take you way longer if you do it on your own. That one year of chinese consists of you being in class and prohibited from using any other language apart from chinese from about the 4th week, many of your classmates come from different countries and some can’t speak English at all so the only way of communication is chinese you cannot compare that to studying a whole day by yourself. Not to mention activities in the school, if you dnt do well you have extra classes .And another thing I would say is passing the HSK exam is not complete an evaluation of how good your chinese is .the exams are way easier than real life apart from HSK 6 maybe 5 at times. Learning chinese online and using HSK is like learning English from a British teacher and then later on you have to speak to an Irish with a deep accent when you can have a fluent conversation with them you know your level is high.

Great video. I've been watching Chinese Dramas for two years. I decided to learn the language this year. I have recruited my children to learn speaking Chinese so it can reinforce my learning too.

good

I'M LEARNING CHINESE & THIS WAS VERY HELPFUL

looking at that thumbnail I though he changed the method from vocabulary flashcards to going out to Chinese restaurants, VERY OFTEN