How to learn Chinese by just listening (no studying)

A guide to learn a languages subconsciously by listening & language acquisition (without "studying").

Most people learn languages the same way they learn math: by studying rules and memorizing formulas.

But it’s not your fault. This is how we learned in school.

But there’s a better way to learn languages.

Does this sound familiar?

You study a lot, but you still can’t understand native speakers, especially when they talk fast.

You memorize a lot of vocabulary, but you still struggle with understanding colloquial phrases and slang.

The problem is not your effort; it’s how you’re learning — you’re focusing on the wrong things, and it’s draining you. It’s inefficient.

You focus on learning isolated words without focusing on the context.

You focus on learning consciously without leveraging your subconscious brain.

You think you can only learn actively, without utilizing passive learning.

What's a better way to learn languages?

The famous linguist Stephen Krashen has done extensive research in this area. His theory of language acquisition suggests that people learn languages through exposure to comprehensible input rather than through conscious study.

Input refers to listening and reading. Output refers to writing and speaking.

In other words, it’s more effective to acquire languages through immersion, similar to how children learn their first language subconsciously without studying.

Thus, instead of memorizing vocabulary lists and grammar rules, it’s more effective to focus on input and listening if our goal is to understand native speakers and reach fluency.

How well you acquire languages is merely a function of how much time you can expose and immerse yourself in the language.

This means that language learning is less about skill and more about a practical challenge. There is certainly some skill involved, and some learners will naturally be more talented and move faster, while others move slower. However, everyone has the basic requirements to learn a language, provided they expose themselves sufficiently.

The best language learners I’ve met all have one thing in common: they’ve consumed a lot of material in the language. They’re not grinding through material. It feels like play to them.

So ask yourself this: How much time can you spend learning while enjoying the process and not burning yourself out?

Most people give up not because they’re not smart enough but because they lose motivation, get overwhelmed, or are too busy.

Language learning is easy if you understand this and are strategic with your approach.

Language learning is hard when you try to study and memorize vocabulary lists using traditional methods that are boring, slow, and rely too much on conscious learning.

The key to language learning is to make it so fun and easy that you would do it anyway — it’s a no-brainer.

Should I stop learning vocabulary?

No, that’s not what I mean.

Learning vocabulary is, of course, important. But it’s the way that we learn vocabulary that matters.

Many people learn languages in the opposite direction.

You memorize isolated vocabulary from long lists without context, so it’s no wonder why it’s hard to apply it when speaking, where there is a lot of context.

Learning vocabulary out of context is like reading a bullet-point summary of Harry Potter. You’ll know what happens superficially, but you miss all the juicy details and quickly forget.

Bullet points and vocabulary lists without context give you a dopamine rush and make you think you’re learning, but they won’t help you in the long run.

The better way to learn vocabulary is by immersing yourself in native material where there is context.

Context can come from many things: the sentence, the meaning of the conversation, the speaker’s voice, the intonations, and visual cues.

When you learn from context, you start to see how vocabulary is used in different sentences and scenarios. You start to build a framework around individual words that anchors them in your long-term memory.

This, in turn, helps you understand vocabulary in the wild — when native speakers use it in real life, when they’re talking fast, and when they’re not speaking “textbook language.”

How do I acquire languages?

Learning a new language is like being a kid in a candy shop. Everything is attractive, and you want to try everything.

You dabble in reading, writing, listening, and speaking, but there isn’t a central focus.

Dabbling is fine if you just want to have fun, but if your goal is to improve your listening and get fluent fast, then you have to be strategic.

If your learning routine is random, your results will be random.

If your learning routine is focused, your results will be focused.

To acquire languages, we need to focus our learning on input early. Massive, massive input. Especially if you’re a beginner.

Input includes listening and reading, but I recommend focusing on listening first instead of reading for a few reasons.

To acquire languages, we need to focus our learning on input early. Massive, massive input. Especially if you’re a beginner.

Input includes listening and reading, but I recommend focusing on listening first instead of reading for a few reasons:

1. You can listen without understanding and still benefit. When I learned Mandarin Chinese, listening early helped me recognize the sounds and rhythm of the language. It also helped me distinguish different tones, accents, and sentence structures. This motivated me to learn more.

2. Listening is like taking a ride on a train: There is always a consistent pace. The scenery is constantly changing, and you are continuously stimulated, but the train’s movement does not depend on your understanding of the scenery. You can simply sit, observe, and enjoy, soaking up everything. You can decide to do your own work or read a book on the train, but the train keeps going, and you can continue to look out the window if you want. When you’re tired or ready to stop, you can get off the train.
   Reading, on the other hand, is more like walking in mud. It’s slow and energy-taxing because you need to be 100% focused on each step to understand. It’s easy to call it quits after your first few steps because the friction is so high. Thus, it’s easier to immerse yourself in the language with listening.

3. Listening is more practical than reading in daily life. For most people, listening is more useful for conversations, traveling, building relationships, and getting feedback.

But I’m already listening…

Many learners are already listening but still can’t understand their target language.

I call this the Liftoff Speed Problem.

The liftoff speed is the airspeed at which an aircraft becomes airborne. To take off, a plane must increase its speed until the lift created by its wings is greater than its weight.

Similarly, to learn a new language, we need to increase our speed of learning (acquisition) until the lift created is greater than the weight of staying the same (inertia).

Otherwise you’ll be stuck perpetually on the ground.

Many learners are simply not listening enough to generate liftoff speed.

Apps and the gamification of learning have popularized learning for 5, 10, or 30 minutes a day, but that’s simply not enough to generate liftoff speed.

To learn Mandarin Chinese, I was listening for 6–8 hours a day at the start. It was the background of my life.

I was stacking the deck in my favor so my brain had no choice but to acclimatize to the sheer volume of Mandarin Chinese input. Eventually, my brain got used to this new stimulus and started decoding the language unconsciously.

Think about how children learn a language. They are constantly immersed in the language every waking hour of the day. To acquire a language, you need to overwhelm your brain with the language to reach liftoff speed until your subconscious brain starts to decode it.

I don’t have time to listen…

The mistake that many learners make is thinking they can only listen actively. They believe they must be actively engaged 100% of the time.

Active listening is no doubt effective. But the practical challenge is that most of us are busy and don’t have time to be actively engaged in learning for hours every day.

This is why it’s important to separate listening into active and passive listening.

While I would try my best to actively listen when I had time, the majority of my listening throughout the day was passive listening.

I would passively listen during dead times throughout the day. Dead time refers to moments that are otherwise occupied with doing something else but where the activity is not mentally taxing. For example: commuting, exercising, walking, working out, doing chores, waiting in line, or doomscrolling.

Whenever I had dead time, I would start listening to a podcast and switch between passive and active listening. This approach has a few benefits:

1. It increases exposure time.
   It’s hard to realize how much dead time we have during the day. Even busy people surely have hours of dead time throughout the day — mundane moments where we’d rather be doing something else. All of this time adds up to hours per day that can be used to channel toward our learning goals.

2. It increases subconscious learning.
   Although I may remember more when actively engaged, I understand that I learn most effectively when my subconscious mind is engaged. In a sense, I’m not always listening for my conscious mind. I’m listening to immerse my subconscious mind, to bathe my brain in the language so it starts to get used to the sounds of the language.

3. It lowers my expectations to understand everything.
   Because I’m not actively listening, I don’t feel the need to stop if I don’t understand something. If I do pick up something interesting or gain understanding, then it’s a bonus.

What should I listen to?

It’s a shame that many learners burn out because they consume learning material that is too boring or dry, killing their motivation.

To answer the question of what you should listen to, you should start with why: Why do you want to learn your target language? Why do you want to improve your listening?

• Do you want to travel and use the language?

• Do you want to work with the language?

• Do you want to have conversations and make new friends using the language?

Unless you’re training to become a linguist, for most of us, languages are a tool for communication, not the final destination.

To direct what you listen to, you need to clarify why you are listening in the first place. What is your purpose?

In the beginning, it’s important to listen to comprehensible input — listening with guardrails, with training wheels, or swimming with a life jacket.

But the mistake that many learners make is getting too comfortable in this phase. Their learning and progress slow down because they don’t challenge themselves enough.

My recommendation: As quickly as possible, challenge yourself with non-comprehensible input. Take off the life jacket and dive into native content.

Practically speaking, I recommend listening to podcasts for many reasons:

1. Podcasts cover many topics, so pick one that interests you.
   Don’t waste time searching for the perfect podcast — it doesn’t exist. This search is just procrastination. I’ve fallen into this trap myself, wanting everything to be perfect before I start. Instead of spending 30–60 minutes searching, use that time listening. Notice when you’re stalling. Trial and error is key. Get your reps in. Dive in and see what sticks.

2. Podcasts offer realistic dialogue that reflects how people actually talk in real life.

3. Podcasts add tons of context that helps you remember.
   Context comes from sentences, stories, different speakers, different voices and accents, visual cues, and more.

4. Podcasts are easy to listen to.
   They are low-friction to start and can be listened to passively with little effort while doing other things.

5. You can easily look up vocabulary.
   Many podcasts now offer captions or transcripts for free. This lowers friction and adds context to your learning.

6. Podcasts make repetition easy.
   Repetition is key for remembering. When I learned Mandarin, I would repeat listening to the same episode 5–20 times. Each time, I would pick up something new or pay attention to something different. Moreover, between different episodes, the same hosts usually use the same words or phrases, which helps with repetition.

7. Podcasts are motivational.
   Native podcasts are daunting at first when you don’t understand much, but once you reach liftoff speed and your subconscious brain starts to piece things together, it’s addicting. Even understanding one word or one phrase in a real conversation or podcast is extremely motivating because that’s one phrase understood in context and one phrase closer to your final goal of understanding native speakers.

My listening routine (after 5 years of learning)

I keep my listening routine simple after 5 years of trial and error.

1. Listen passively to native podcasts during dead times every day for at least one hour, but often more.
   If I were learning a new language from scratch, I would focus most of my dead time on passive listening for 4–6 hours a day. This sounds like a lot, but remember, this is dead time that would otherwise be wasted scrolling social media or listening to music. You can put that time to use.

2. Shadow while listening.
   I try to repeat what the speaker says while listening. This doesn’t have to be perfect, and I don’t shadow everything — just enough to warm up my mouth. Even singers warm up their mouths. Shadowing also helps consolidate what I hear and adds another layer of context and repetition to my listening.

3. Actively listen when I can throughout the day.
   It’s easy to get comfortable with passive listening and forget that active listening is very important for building comprehension. While actively listening, I pay attention to how the host is speaking. I focus on details like the filler words and conjunctions they use. I imagine myself in a conversation with the speaker in real life and think about how I would respond. This forces me to focus on what the speaker is saying and not just listen idly.

4. Look up words when I’m interested, but don’t look up every new word.
   I want to keep the train going so I can continue enjoying the podcast because I know I’ll listen to it again on repeat.

5. Repeat listening 2–10 times.
   Each time, I try to notice different things. I may speed it up, slow it down or look up new words. Each time, I discover something new about how the speaker speaks or the words they use. Each repetition is an opportunity to hear the words I’ve learned in context again.

In the beginning, you won’t understand much but don’t get demotivated. You are training your subconscious brain to notice the new sounds. Just enjoy the sounds for now.

Each day is an opportunity to get 1% better and understand 1% more.

Even if you understand 1% of a native podcast, that’s 1% of your final goal.

I hope this helps you.

加油，

Danyo

PS Here are some ways I can help you:

1. Speaking Template: The exact template I used to build a speaking habit in Mandarin.

2. Copy Paste Speak Course: A step-by-step system to teach yourself to speak Mandarin like native speakers.

3. Chinese Speakers Community: I’ll help you level up your Mandarin speaking faster so you can talk about what you want in 30 minutes a day. You get all my courses, trainings, exercises and personalized feedback. Apply here.