How I Stretched My Comfort Zone While Learning Mandarin

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One problem with seeing the end-result of any feat, is not understanding the processes that went on to get to that point. As my friend Khatzumoto said to me once;

Olympic coverage really ticks me off… you can't just go up to a person on game day and say how talented they are. So I came up with this rule, that in order to earn the right to watch the Olympics you should have to watch all of their training too!

This issue of ignoring the work that person had to go through to get to the point you see him is a huge problem in language learning. It's easy to see someone speak a foreign language and dismiss that person as a “genius”, or say that it just comes naturally to them. As if it was their destiny, or a universe-conspired explosion of luck. This is discouraging as each of us thinks about how much we have to struggle, and study and fail because we don't have natural talent.

I still try to learn efficiently, but no learner can avoid every moment of frustration. Difficulty can show you what to practise next. It does not mean that suffering is required or that a three-month project guarantees a particular level.

But here's the thing. Three months is a really long time. It's not about counting the months, but counting the hours and the quality of those hours that makes the difference. A lot of my time, especially initially, is spent quite a bit outside of my comfort zone, and actually being tremendously frustrated, and this is something that very few learners do much, even if they spend “lots of time” studying.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

Progress Needs Practice, Not Punishment

And I'll let you in on a little secret that those who think I party my way to fluency don't know: I'm pouring blood, sweat, tears and a crapload of sacrifices into this mission. More than the vast majority of those who have been “learning the language for years” can ever imagine. It's about priorities and insane devotion to the task, not simply “working hard”. This is something that anyone else can do, but sadly most don't.

Staying only with familiar exercises can leave speaking untested. Books, podcasts, software and classes can all help, but I also need chances to retrieve the language in real interaction. The useful stretch is manageable: difficult enough to expose a gap, but not so overwhelming that I cannot learn from it.

In my mind, this isn't good enough and it's too academic. The real world presents you with problems and learning opportunities before you are ready. The more you are exposed to them, the faster you'll be forced to learn.

To illustrate this, let me give you a comparison of what I am doing and what a typical expat learning the language might do:

My own long road through the shortcut: a typical day

Most expats: Get up, work, study some vocab in the break, after work get the weekly one hour private lesson, and speak in English the entire time, go home and study for an hour, then go out with your English speaking mates for the rest of the night, complaining about how hard Chinese is… in English. Satisfied that 2 or 3 entire hours of “hard” work mean he's done his part on the “long road” to speak the language some day.

Me: Wake up to a radio in Mandarin telling me the news and desperately force myself to pick out as many words as I can, and wish I knew what was going on in the world after I understand only fragmented basic words. Start off grumpy.

Go somewhere completely different for breakfast today to force myself to get out of the lazy routine I was getting into, since my favourite place already knows what I want and I just confirm it with 2 or 3 of the same words. It's possible I'll order the wrong thing because of this. Order in broken Mandarin, with no more pointing and just saying “that” and consider it a success if I get what I wanted. Starting the day off with the wrong breakfast is damn annoying, but you can bet I won't make the mistake again next time.

I really could have done with that filling hot egg and spinach muffin they have at the Starbucks across the road… but deal with the fact that a breakfast is a breakfast. At least I ordered it in a way that forced me to practice beyond repeating the same words I already know.

After several hours of study and work, I would leave the house for one small spoken task: explain that my phone needed repair, ask a genuine question in a café or record a short Mandarin video. These exchanges felt awkward, but each one exposed a specific gap and gave me a minor victory to remember.

Then it's time for the gym! But treadmills and dumbbells are boring. Instead I go to dance lessons included in my membership. An entire hour of instructions being shouted at me and others… in Mandarin of course. Trying to divide my attention between mimicking the instructor's body movements precisely (luckily I have some experience dancing, so I keep up fine), and trying to figure out if I can contextually figure out what he's saying and learn some new words. End the hour exhausted physically and mentally.

I sometimes studied in a crowded café to stay near spoken Mandarin. Quiet study was not the enemy; it gave me grammar and vocabulary to use. The problem came when I used preparation to postpone every real interaction.

In the café I sometimes felt lonely and impatient to build a local social circle. I listened to Mandarin radio and kept studying, while reminding myself that avoiding every English speaker was a temporary mission rule I had chosen, not a requirement for language learning.

Come home, and try to communicate with my terribly broken Chinese in an online chatroom. Succeed in convincing someone to meet up with me next week! 🙂 Then realize how incredibly unprepared I am to sit down with someone and talk for more than 5 seconds in Mandarin. Anyway, I'll figure that out when the time comes…

Then finally it's time to “reward” myself with two hours of non-work-related English to end my day, but I keep it entirely online to make sure I actually speak as little as possible or no English at all in that day.

I naively think that they Internet is going to be a warm friendly and encouraging place, and then see forums, blog posts, comments, youtube videos reminding me (as if I haven't heard it enough already) that I'm going to fail miserably and am not “taking this seriously”. After a pretty rough day of taking it seriously I sometimes let negative comments online get to me and waste my wind-down time replying to them. Ironically these comments are helping me because I'm getting great negative reinforcement about exposing myself to English. When I speak in Mandarin everyone is friendly, and smiling and encouraging… and I feel energised after each time I've tried to say something new to someone, despite how awkward it is. But when I discuss speaking Mandarin in English then it's doom and gloom.

The solution to this problem is obvious. More Mandarin, less English. 🙂

I shrug off the discouragement, and filter it out for some useful comments and feedback and take that to heart. As well as this many people are indeed giving me useful encouragement, which is crucial, and something I really need after the day I've had. There is an important process of dealing with the immense amount of negativity I've been getting for this project, and your own doubts that slow you down, and a process that has been the core of helping me to learn faster that I'll discuss in the next post.

Then I remember that there is a big X at the top right of the window and I can turn them off… and I go to bed to start the process all over again the next day.

Are you under pressure to improve all the time?

This stage was not fun. My strict no-English rule also made it harder to share frustration in person. That isolation was a cost of my experiment, not proof that learners need to cut themselves off from support.

Despite the fact that I'm not enjoying myself much in this stage of the language learning process, I am enjoying the language. It's the most logical, consistent and straightforward language I've ever come across!

Studying the grammar, vocab, tones, word order and characters are the easy part. The hard part is to force myself to actually use them instead of just sitting down with a book all day, which is so tempting as that is well within my comfort zone. The hard part is to go up to someone when I speak so desperately slowly still, and doing it anyway.

All of my frustrations are based on the interactions I force myself into, as it's quite lonely to have to go through this rough stage of not being able to express myself at a useful level yet. Many expats don't really have this frustration, because after a few brief attempts at trying, they will go back to their friends and vent in English. I know that if I can stay with this frustration a little longer, then the level of frustration will very quickly start to evaporate.

Since I didn't make it clear before, I'll specify it now: I'm learning Chinese so that I can speak it for the rest of my life. This is not like some other missions I had in the last year or two where I was just checking out a language and learning what I needed for that single experience. So all my work is focused on long term benefits for short term sacrifices. I am not hanging out with the many fun and interesting Taiwanese who speak English because this is only the first time I'll be in the country, and I want to make sure I can see the many sides English speakers are prevented from seeing, in my last month here on this visit, as well as helping me fully appreciate mainland China when I get to visit it after these 3 months are up.

If this means I have to have a rough one or two months of really frustrating entire days and way less socialising than I like (but still plenty of speaking) before I can use the language confidently and start to make deep friendships, then it will have totally been worth it.

Everyone struggles, but some struggle more efficiently

Those of you who will have seen my first video attempt at Mandarin, will see in my face how much I'm trying to think to force basic words out of me (or in this case… ba…sic….syll…a…bles), and may appreciate that maybe there is no quantum leap of merrily skipping through frustration for anyone. This is why I shared that video with you, and will likely make another one again in two weeks – just one video at the end could not possibly tell the whole story.

Most learners meet frustration, but its form and intensity vary. My Mandarin mission created extra difficulty because I deliberately avoided English and pushed for frequent interactions before I could sustain a deep conversation.

There is a huge difference in how I'm approaching this. Instead of skipping frustration, I do what few others will – I charge into it and fill my entire day with it. It's like tearing off a band-aid; most people do the “hard stuff” of feeling like an idiot in early stages of language learning in very small doses. I'm doing lots of study of course, but what really defines my day is what I do away from the books and audio and comfy chairs.

While I got the usual Internet “warmth” of people laughing at me, or reminding me… again… that what I'm aiming for is impossible (seriously people, look impossible up in a dictionary or figure out what it really means will you!) after uploading that video, I also got some useful feedback of what to focus on next, and having produced the video forced me to learn things I hadn't before, that no book could EVER teach me.

The first video was not impressive, and that was the point. It showed the early stage honestly. I was practising more intensely and consistently than I had in some earlier projects, but that did not make my pace a fair benchmark for another learner.

I feel like the myth that you are “smart” if you learn languages, makes too many people unwilling to accept that they will not be able to argue politics and deeply share their feelings if they dared to speak in their first weeks, before they are “ready”. Any idiot can learn a language, and knowing this means that I can accept that perhaps I have to be that idiot.

Using a language beyond rehearsed material can feel exposing. More practice can help, but increase the challenge gradually and choose settings where mistakes are safe.

If you charge into the frustration, embrace it, and fill up all your free time with it, then you WILL get to the other side much quicker. Too many learners only do these annoying practice things, once in a while, and it's what slows them down tremendously. Doing it the hard and intensive way is damn stressful, and I can confirm that. I'm not interested in the easiest way to learn a language, I want the most efficient way.

Easing in gently is sometimes exactly what makes practice sustainable. The important step is to keep expanding what you attempt rather than staying permanently inside the same exercise.

I hoped the next video would show progress because I planned to keep practising. The struggle in this diary was real, but suffering was never the learning objective.

Totally worth it every time.