How I’m learning Mandarin in 2026: My Daily Routine in Taipei
This is what I'm doing this year to make sure my Mandarin is strong, so I'm better prepared to travel deep through Taiwan
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How to think in a foreign language (it does NOT “just happen”)
This is a guest post by the author of Life by Experimentation, Zane, who quantifies the path to self-improvement. He creates real-life experiments to assess everything from sleeping less to traveling cheaply in order to live a more productive and skillful life. He speaks Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French and Arabic with varying degrees of fluency. […]
Steps to take to ensure you speak quickly AND learn grammar well
I’ve written about learning grammar in great detail before, but it’s worth mentioning again. This time I’ll attempt to give a concise summary of the steps I take in learning a language (skipping a lot of details obviously). Grammar: from the start, in the middle or never? The way I learn grammar has been very […]
Girls vs guys and the dancing-monkey reason to learn a language
There are many wholesome reasons to learn and use languages. Mine are cultural to enhance my travel and social experiences. Some people learn to understand their heritage, to be able to better appreciate music and literature, and some are passionate simply about languages in themselves and what makes them up and how they work. Others […]
Why moving to a country may not lead to learning the language & what learners & expats CAN do
A lot of people are a bit fuzzy about this so I want to make it absolutely clear: If you move to a country for a few months (or even years) it’s very possible you will NOT learn the language. Out of all the advice I give on this blog, based on my lifestyle you […]
Language, culture and context are intertwined
A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that I am not really that passionate about languages. It’s unlikely you’ll see me ever studying a language like Latin or ancient Greek, or picking a language based on integrate grammar points or because its phonemes or particular tones could be a “fun challenge”. There […]
Why adults are better learners than kids (So NO, you’re not too old)
Kids are great! I was an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher for several years in several countries, teaching mostly children, and I could see how quick they were at learning a second language. Of course, who of us doesn’t want to go back to our childhood, when things were simpler and the world […]
First week settling into Amsterdam
This detailed post describes how my first week in Amsterdam went. As requested, I’ll be giving regular updates on how I’ve been adjusting to a new culture and learning a new language. In future I’ll send this update (which will likely be much shorter and include occasional videos) to the Language Hacking League, so sign […]
Which language learning materials?
Obviously, writing a language learning blog means that I get asked the question all the time about the best language learning course or materials to invest in. Since I can’t really say that any purchasable material particularly impresses me as a “must” for language learning, I like to try several ones on for size to […]
Fluent in TWO months: The Dutch mission!
It’s time for a new language mission! DUTCH! I’ve just arrived in Amsterdam, and I plan to speak fluent Dutch by May 31st (so technically not even 2 months; actually in 8 weeks). There’s many ways to define fluency and I’m very precise about mine. There are some obvious advantages I’ll have and some big […]
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