I’ve made some exciting strides with my Chinese lately and I wanted to share! I’m not trying to brag, so hopefully this comes across as a friendly teatime chat where I geek out about Chinese.

This year I wanted to make some more progress with my Mandarin Chinese learning. I made sure to add in more time here and there. I also tried out the paid version of Drops app for a month, and now I’m currently using the paid version of The Chairman’s Bao site/app. I also bought a graded reader from Mandarin Companion, which has been great to read and practice with. So after all that, I decided to test my Chinese level and start taking the HSK exams. Mainly for myself, and to know what I’m missing from my self-study. I took a few practice HSK1 exams, and then sat down and took an unofficial exam at home. Woohoo I passed! And I think HSK2 might even be attainable for me right now, but I’m going to pace myself and wait a few more months until I take that next exam level.

It just goes to show, if you can put in more time & work and you have the right resources, you’ll see progress! Who would have known 😉

I’m really enjoying learning Chinese, and I’m glad I started it when I was in grad school. I had a Chinese roommate- who I’m still in touch with luckily- and I took a free speaking class that my university offered. So I learned little bits of Chinese and was at least exposed to what the language was like. Fast forward a few years of me learning here and there. Then in 2017, I took it more seriously and bought the New Practical Chinese Reader as a textbook to learn from. The past few years, Chinese has been at a mid-priority level for me. This year I wanted to see some tangible progress, make some strides, take some tests (check!), so I upped my priority level for learning.

I’m still not sure when I’ll travel to China/Taiwan, but I would absolutely love to go use the language in real life and visit my Chinese friend! It’s such a fun language, and seeing how direct yet detailed the language is, it gives me clues about the culture as well. It’s also my first language with a different script, and I really enjoy learning how to write characters and identify new ones.

I might buy myself a t-shirt with Chinese writing on it from etsy to celebrate…加油！xx