The reason we call them Chinese Speakers.
We don’t call them Chinese readers, nor Chinese listeners, nor Chinese writers. We call them Chinese speakers.
Because speaking is the primary way most people use the language to communicate. It's the main reason why I wanted to learn Mandarin and I suspect a big reason for you as well.
Of course, reading and listening are important too, but speaking is 不可缺少 (indispensable).
It’s also one of the hardest parts to learn.
We see this with Chinese heritage speakers all the time. They grow up listening to Mandarin spoken by family (lots of passive listening) but they don’t practice speaking much. As you can imagine, they’re listening is decent, but they are not confident speaking.
Listening alone isn't enough to make you a good speaker. Listening helps, sure, but it can't get you all the way there.
Speaking is a separate skill that requires intentional practice. Just like building the muscle memory required to consistently hit the perfect free-throw in basketball, you have to train your mouth muscles to consistently reproduce the right sounds and tones and phrases.
You can watch countless basketball games and understand all the rules, strategies, and techniques (like grammar rules and sentence structure), but unless you practice taking three-point shots, you won’t be good at it.
To improve our speaking, we have to practice speaking.
It might be awkward at first, but just like with any skill, the more you practice, the better you get.
To speak well, we must speak poorly first.
This is how I did it. And it's the same way I’ve seen all successful learners improve their speaking.
I have room for 4 spots for Chinese Speakers in July so I can help you personally speak with confidence.
The goal: Getting you conversational in Mandarin Chinese.
The rules of the game:
Talk about what you like with confidence.
In 6-12 months.
Study less than 1 hour a day.
Convert passive vocabulary into active vocabulary.
No flashcards if you don’t want.
I'll open 4 spots on July 1st.
For an early invite reply "early".
加油,
Danyo
PS cool vocab of the day:
白手起家 (bái shǒu qǐ jiā)
- 白手 (bái shǒu): Empty hands; without resources or help.
- 起家 (qǐ jiā): To start a career; to establish oneself.
Translation: To start from scratch; to build up from nothing; to start from humble beginnings.
Example sentence: 他靠着自己的努力,从白手起家,建立了自己的企业帝国。(Tā kàozhe zìjǐ de nǔlì, cóng bái shǒu qǐ jiā, jiànlì le zìjǐ de qǐyè dìguó.)
Through his own efforts, he started from scratch and built his own business empire.