"It's a Small World" Advise from Amit Gilboa

After the interview with Xiao An An from "it's a Small World", we have Amit here to give us some in-sight of how he had learned Mandarin. Here is a mail from him.

Hi Cheuk,

Sorry it took me a while to respond.

Here are a couple of tips from my experience:

1) Immersion is truly the best way. If I had a choice between learning 1 hour a week for a year or learning for 50 hours in one week - definitely I would choose the latter. I think that when you focus on the language instead of constantly switching gears from one language to another, that's when you really improve.

2) As much as possible, practice. Don't wait for opportunities to talk with native speakers. Talk to yourself in Chinese. When sitting on the bus, try to translate advertisements from English into Chinese. When counting things to yourself, try in Chinese instead of English. The more you use it, the more fluently it will flow.

3) For more advanced students, try watching Chinese shows. Even if using subtitles, try to catch words in Chinese. Best to use shows where people speak slowly (the news is not a good option as they usually speak very fast) and clearly (generally women speak more clearly) and also avoid historical dramas because they use the equivalent of shakesperean language.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Amit