Lesson 2 :How To Speak Chinese Fluently
20:07How to Speak Chinese Fluently: 4 Simple (Not Easy) Steps
1) Immerse Yourself – Totally
At Duke and PiB, they make you sign an oath on the first day of class. You swear that you won’t speak any English during the program, which is 2 months long.
Not everyone respects the oath 100%. But I really wanted to make the best use of my time in Beijing. So I went the other way. I never spoke English to anyone in the program. I never spoke English to anyone on the phone (I could catch up with my friends later!). I even stayed away from reading or hearing any English news. I didn’t even give in when our class went to karaoke and everyone started singing Backstreet Boys songs.
So it was basically totally immersion. All input that my brain received was in Chinese.
2) Always Be Speaking Chinese (Making Mistakes)
The second crucial step is to always be speaking Chinese. When you’re in class, or you’re with students, you have to try to talk a lot. But the point is not just to be annoying. It has a two real functions:
- speaking a lot helps you strengthen your grasp of tricky words
- speaking helps you make mistakes that expose your weaknesses
So there is a corollary that arises out of these two points: don’t waste time on vocabulary and phrases that you already know. Go out of your way to talk using Chinese words that you don’t know, which you don’t feel comfortable about. Otherwise, you’ll just end up being that guy at the gym who has amazing biceps.. which look out of place on the rest of his body.
3) Target Your Mistakes
It’s not enough to be making mistakes. You need someone to provide critical (immediate, if possible) feedback about your mistakes. Ideally, that feedback comes through an eager, tireless, supportive Chinese teacher who is at your side every waking moment, and vigilantly points out every mistake you make. If such a teacher is unavailable to you all the time, then you can use aChinese learning site like FluentU to supplement your learning.
4) Change Your Mindset
This last step is the most important one, because it’s the foundation for the first 3 steps.
The 3 steps that I’ve mentioned – total immersion, speaking Chinese constantly, and targeting mistakes – are very simple, but actually incredibly hard to maintain.
It requires a ton of discipline because it’s uncomfortable. It’s not what you’re used to doing. I’m asking you to focus on what you’re not good at and delay gratification.
The best way to address these challenges is to change your mindset.
- First, change the way you measure progress. Instead of seeing perfection as a good thing, flip the equation and see mistakes as progress. If you stop making mistakes, then you’re no longer improving.
- Second, understand the fact that it’s natural for you to be making mistakes while speaking Chinese. At this point, it’s just an arbitrary collection of sounds and images to you. That’s the same way it is for everyone.
- Third, know that becoming fluent at speaking Chinese is just a matter of time. How does a rock become smooth? It’s by friction that rounds out all the rough edges, and in the end it’s smooth. It’s the same way with learning how to speak Chinese fluently. Once you identify all the rough edges and smooth them out, the inevitable result will be fluency in speaking Chinese.
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