I’ve been learning Mandarin on and off since the fall of 2014.
I have a B1+ or perhaps a low-B2 (upper-intermediate) level and have taken plenty of private lessons as a learning strategy over the years. Last December (specifically on December 19th, 2023) I chose to pause my private lessons.
See below for a video of my last class, if you’re curious to watch it.
Since that class, I’ve read and listened to Mandarin for about 30 min/day.
I haven’t done anything else, except for two occasions when I went for dinner with Mandarin-speaking friends. However, even at those dinners I barely spoke. I just listened instead.
Today (March 4th, 2024) I resumed my private classes. I was curious to see if my speaking would be rusty after 76 days of only listening and reading.
To my surprise, I felt more at ease than usual.
I felt almost as comfortable speaking Mandarin as I do when speaking English. Normally I’m a little tense and self-conscious. Furthermore, I was able to use words that usually fail to come to mind. Yay!
In short, it seems that focusing heavily on reading and listening for the past 2.5 months actually may have helped my speaking to improve.
Moving forward, I plan to take 1 private class a week for conversation practice, but also continue spending 30 minutes a day on reading and listening.
Let’s see how I continue to progress :)
Good for you! We tend to overestimate the effects of conversation classes and underestimate the power of more « passive » learning activities.
Writing thoughts and opinions in a journal is another super effective method that most people overlook thinking it will not help their fluency. Yet it is sometimes more effective than conversation 😇
Plus, you know, it’s good for you.
Thanks for sharing your story!