How I integrate Chinese learning into my life.
4 years ago when I first started learning Chinese, I traded time to study Chinese. I structured my life around learning the language.
Now, in 2024, learning Chinese integrates into my life with little effort and it saves me time.
How do I do this?
One big change was focusing on passive listening.
Passive listening is when you are listening without putting 100% of your attention towards it. Think of it like sitting beside a chatty conversation at the cafe and eavesdropping as you please.
Why is this more effective?
Don’t get me wrong, active listening is great…when it works. But active listening can be mentally exhausting.
Like any form of active studying, it required my full attention for prolonged periods but inevitably I would get distracted, lose interest, and procrastinate.
I couldn’t stick to it.
The power of passive listening is not that it’s necessarily better than active listening, but because it has so many practical benefits:
I don’t need to sit down and “study” to passively listen
I can immerse in the language environment throughout the day without losing interest
I can get familiar you with the sounds of the language constantly
Low-pressure listening (I don't need to understand everything)
I can benefit without paying full attention
I can “breath”, take a break, tune out, and return refreshed
I can listen during “dead times” while doing other things (saves time)
I can listen anywhere while doing anything (flexible)
I spend more time actually listening (higher volume)
I can stick to it (builds momentum and consistency)
Before I started passively listening to native Chinese podcasts and radio programs, I could barely understand conversations or what was being said to me in daily life.
After incorporating passive listening, I quickly began to understand the nuances of the language, practical vocabulary, sentence structures, and native-like grammar.
I started having more conversations because I felt more confident with my listening which further improved my listening. It was a virtuous cycle.
In theory, pound-per-pound active listening is probably better than passive listening because you focus 100% of the time. But in practice, passive listening is way more effective because I can stick to it.
The best plan is not the perfect one, but the one you can do consistently.
When passive listening, learning conforms to my life instead of conforming my life to studying.
The easier it was for me to integrate learning into my life, the more effortless and frictionless it became, and the more likely I was to be consistent, build momentum, and improve faster.
This is what we help you do in the Chinese Speakers Community: create a learning system that integrates into your life so that learning to speak Chinese becomes effortless and you save time.
Learning to speak Chinese should add to your life, not take away from it.
We start on Monday so if you’d like an invite, reply “passive” and I’ll send it to you.
循序渐进,
Danyo
PS cool vocabulary I learned today:
敷衍了事 (fū yǎn liǎo shì)
敷衍 (fū yǎn): To skimp; to do something carelessly.
了 (liǎo): To finish; to settle.
事 (shì): Matter; affair.
Translation: To do a task in a perfunctory manner; to skimp on work just to get it done.
Example sentence: 他做事总是敷衍了事,从不认真对待。(Tā zuò shì zǒng shì fū yǎn liǎo shì, cóng bù rènzhēn duìdài.) He always does things perfunctorily and never takes them seriously.