my name is Brian wilds and in this video I'm going to show you the best way to learn Mandarin on your own together we're going to create a daily learning routine that covers all the major elements of learning Mandarin tones vocabulary grammar listening speaking and reading and writing skills I'll show you the best free resources for building each of these skills based on your current level of Mandarin and then we'll create a daily learning routine that meets your goals and needs as a student let's get started core learning at the outset it's important that you develop a core understanding of how Mandarin works as a language and to do that I recommend that you use this comprehensive video course for Mandarin corner it's free it's high quality and it follows something called the hsk curriculum what's that it's a program based on six standardized tests that help Learners gauge their Proficiency in Mandarin and as you'll see throughout this video it's a very useful ladder for building your comprehension there's also an official set of hsk textbooks that can be very handy for reviewing and studying on your own and most Library systems in the US keep a handful of these books in stock and I'll also mention that for anyone specifically interested in learning traditional Chinese characters I.E the ones that are used in Taiwan Hong Kong and most of the Chinese diaspora there's an excellent curriculum based on the tful tests and I would recommend using this series of textbooks if you plan on taking those exams mastering tones as you're probably aware Mandarin is a tonal language which means that words and syllables are pronounced with a specific pitch ma ma ma ma ma as you can see or hear Mandarin has four standard tones and one neutral tone that's spoken with less emphasis and these marks called pinion are used to notate those tones in Mandarin Learning Materials as a beginner you'll want to start familiarizing yourself with pinion and the tone system from day one and to do that I recommend using these two videos they'll guide you through pronouncing the various p patterns individually and help you start to string words and sentences together as you'll see the tone system isn't complicated you can learn the ropes in about 10 minutes what makes it challenging is all physiological learning to distinguish between the various sounds and reproduce them accurately and that can take months so give yourself time to adapt speaking skills as you develop your ear for tones it's extremely useful to learn with a native Manner and speaker someone who can correct your mistakes and help you start to make real conversation and to do that you can seek out a native speaker in your area or do a language exchange online I.E you teach them and they teach you or learn with a tutor and my favorite language tutoring platform is preply lessons on preply are one to one it's just you and your tutor for 50 minutes which means that you're learning at exactly your pace and your level and if you use one of the hsk courses that I mentioned earlier your tutor will be able to guide you through every question and every moment of wait what the heck is this or you can take the more free form approach and simply start making conversation together learn to introduce yourself or order food at a restaurant or talk about movies food culture whatever each session is about your current needs as a student which means you'll learn much faster and in my experience enjoy the process a heck of a lot more if you want to try prep Ley use the code Brian 50 and get half off your first lesson and then afterwards leave a comment below and let me know how it went vocabulary if you want to speak fluent Mandarin it's essential that you build a wide vocabulary of words and phrases and the simplest way to do that is by using flashcards there are thousands of flashcard tools out there but I recommend that you use a program called Anki it's completely free on a PC or Mac and you can use the browser version for free on your phone like the courses we talked about Mandarin flashcard decks are often aligned with the hsk curriculum and to build your vocabulary you should use this series of flash card decks based on your current level each card includes native audio and pinion so you can practice proper pronunciation as you memorize new words I would also recommend that you use this dictionary pleco to Define any new words that you come across pleco has a very useful feature called live OCR that lets you use your phone's camera to scan Chinese characters and Define them individually trust me this will save you an unbelievable amount of time in both the short run and the long run for reasons that we'll talk about in the reading and writing section of this video mastering Mandarin grammar one of the pleasant surprises of learning Mandarin is that believe it or not the grammar is actually quite straightforward and much simpler than what you find in say English and look studying grammar rules does not need to be a part of your learning routine at all if you consistently use the other resources that I talk about in this video you'll intuitively build an understanding of how Mandarin works as a language that said it can obviously be frustrating when a phrase or a sentence just doesn't make sense and with that in mind I would recommend using one of these free playlists from Chinese Zero to Hero for when you have questions about Mandarin grammar as with the programs I mentioned earlier everything is tied to the hsk curriculum so it's easy to find the exact lesson you're looking for and if you prefer using a book for reference my favorite is modern Mandarin Chinese grammar which is appropriate for both beginner and intermediate level students listening skills in my opinion listening is the key to fluency when it comes to learning Mandarin for two reasons one it's the only way to develop your ear for the tone system which is probably the biggest obstacle for most Learners and two it's the best way to understand how Mandarin is used in the real world now given the challenges of the tone system I wouldn't recommend listening to Mandarin podcasts until you've completed hsk level one which should take somewhere between 2 and 4 months but once you've got the basics under your belt I highly recommend checking out learning Chinese through stories this is a wide ranging podcast with nine different levels of listening content for Mandarin Learners and again it's completely free in theory the lowest level of lcts 1.1 is appropriate for novices but I think that's kind of Bonkers in my opinion 1.1 is at least the high beginner level so don't be discouraged if the material seems challenging at first now lcts is pretty comprehensive but once you reach an intermediate to advanced level of Mandarin say hsk4 you're ready to start listening to Native podcasts and two of my favorites are bu which is hosted by a lighthearted Chinese couple and D the small talk which is basically a Taiwanese self-help podcast the audio quality is excellent in both shows the accents are pretty neutral and the content is interesting I'll leave a few more recommendations in the description box below but if you know of any other great manarin podcasts please leave a comment and let everyone know now no matter what your level you want to make sure that you're using podcasts effectively that means when you hear a word or a phrase you don't recognize you should use the voice to text feature in pleco or Google Translate to get a definition in your native language and then later on you can review any new words by looking through your translation history TV shows and movies can watching TV and movies in Mandarin be part of your learning routine absolutely although I wouldn't recommend relying on TV and movies for learning purposes until you're at a pretty advanced level hsk4 or above at that point you can use this search feature on Netflix or I'll leave a link below to a data base of Mandarin language content for various streaming services the key however is that while you're watching you should only use Chinese subtitles being immersed in Mandarin will force your brain to adapt quickly but having English on screen will totally Short Circuit the process so with that in mind feel free to find shows and movies you like and make watching them a part of your daily routine just remember to look up new words and phrases whenever you hear them reading skills learning to read Chinese characters is in my opinion the toughest aspect of studying Mandarin and that's because you'll need to memorize thousands of them if you want to read native text comfortably and if you're serious about learning the language that should absolutely be one of your goals but don't sweat I've got you covered the anky flash card decks that we mentioned will help you learn to recognize individual characters as you build your vocab and the hsk course books that I mentioned do a good job of introducing those same characters in context so that you learn to read full sentences again everything is tied to hsk and that's very important because what you don't want to do is learn some characters in Anie learn different characters in a textbook and then learn different characters again in a video course as a beginner level that's just too much to take in for most people but once you reach hsk level three you can also start to make use of graded readers these are short books and stories that are designed for students and of course they have various levels I'll put links to my favorite graded readers in the description box below but you should also keep the following in mind if you use a Kindle or tablet to read your stories you can tap on any words you don't know and get a definition instantly if you read the paper version of a book you'll want to use that live OCR feature that I mentioned on the Pleco app this will let you scan the character with your phone and get a definition instantly without that you'll need to look the word up via the radical and the various Strokes which can be an interesting exercise but is extremely timec consuming I don't recommend it and finally if you're looking for an app to build your reading skills my favorites are do Chinese and the Chairman's bow they both have tons of content at various levels they're easy to use and word definitions are clear and informative Du Chinese is focused more on short stories and TCB is based largely on news articles so pick the content that works for you writing skills now let me just start by saying that you absolutely do not need to learn to write Chinese characters by hand you can become a completely fluent speaker and reader of Mandarin without learning to write a single character many people have because what you will learn if you use the resources I've recommended is how to use pinion to type Chinese characters on your phone or computer essentially you type a Word in pinion and then your computer or phone generates the appropriate character in that sense learning to typee Chinese characters is actually pretty straightforward so if you're considering learning to write by hand I would first ask yourself why because it's a daunting task and I don't know about you but I barely write anything by hand even in English anymore okay ran over if you want to practice writing Chinese characters I recommend using one of these two apps daily Mandarin which is 100% free and scit which requires a subscription both apps have character lists tied to the hsk curriculum and they're both excellent scrit however has a better training system and better stroke recognition try them both and see what works for you your daily routine so we've covered all the bases now let's talk about how to build a daily learning routine that focuses on the skills you need to develop first of all set aside a fixed amount of time every day for studying Mandarin ideally it should be at least 1 hour but you can of course adjust the timing to suit your needs if you're a total beginner you should use the hsk level one resources that we talked about and break down your time like this if possible I also highly recommend that you do at least one lesson per week with an online tutor it's very easy to develop bad pronunciation habits early on and a tutor will keep you moving in the right direction once you complete hsk level three you can also start to add the podcasts that we talked about to your learning routine but take it slow because this will definitely be a jump in terms of difficulty after you finish hsk level four you have two real options if you want to focus on speaking Mandarin I would recommend that you stop following hsk and make podcasts the main engine for your ongoing learning if you want to focus on reading Mandarin you can follow hsk all the way through level six and add both graded readers and eventually Chinese literature into the mix and there you have it all the tools you need to learn manderin if you have any questions please let me know and as always thanks for watching