Rui Ming

Learning Mandarin in China – On The Crest of A Wave

The best thing about China is without a doubt its potential. Don’t get me wrong. There are a great many things that I love about being in China. I love the food. I love the people. I love the fact that I can wake up, walk for 10 minutes and stand on Tiana... Read >

Learning Mandarin – Western Awareness of China

Learning Mandarin is becoming more and more popular with every passing year. It is hard to imagine it today but western interest in China and Mandarin is a very new development. In 2010 the Chinese government estimated that 100 million foreigners were act... Read >

Learning Mandarin – Real Life Learning

Why do some people succeed at learning a language and some people don’t? As a person involved with running a mandarin language school it is my job to spend a lot of time to ponder this question. I have studied 4 foreign languages in my life. English (whic... Read >

Learning Mandarin and Determination

To learn Mandarin takes a fair amount of determination. It is not so much the level of difficulty that makes people falter as the mountain of easy stuff. The thing is that the mountain exists for all languages: a language is basically comprised of 99% wor... Read >

Learning Mandarin Versus Learning French or German

For westerners, learning Mandarin is different from learning other languages in a number of ways. One positive aspect we I will talk about today is the fact that learning Mandarin would make you comparatively unique than learning a different language. Al... Read >

Mandarin Language Students

Learning Mandarin, as I have argued in quite a few articles on this page, is much less about studying the language than it is about actually speaking Chinese. As Mandarin is pretty much confined to China in way that English, for example, is not confined t... Read >

Studying Mandarin Versus Learning Mandarin

How difficult is it to learn Mandarin? That was the question that I asked myself a few years ago. As it turns out, rather difficult. But it was also difficult for me to learn to speak English and I found it difficult to learn Spanish as well. As you ... Read >

Chinese Language Schools – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

What makes a good language school good and what makes a bad language school bad? I work with language courses and I spend most of my working time thinking about that question. One can argue that this is subjective and that which appeals to one person is n... Read >

Studying Mandarin – How to Succeed in The Long Run

Studying Mandarin is an ambitions undertaking in which not everyone that tries succeed. There are definitely some general patterns regarding who actual masters the task and who does not, mostly it depends on the support they get when they study and how th... Read >

Studying Chinese in China – Why Do It?

For people who’s mother tongue is either derived from the Latin or Germanic linguistic branches it is difficult to learn to speak Mandarin. As an economic decision it may seem to many than Mandarin is just not worth the effort it takes to learn. I would ... Read >

Language Schools – What Makes Them Good?

What makes a good language school? The answer will shift from person to person and also vary between different languages, but there is one point that is most likely shared by almost every student of every language. That point is personalization. I will ex... Read >

Studying Mandarin and Class Sizes

To answer the question “What is the best way to learn a language like Mandarin?" we should start by defining what makes Mandarin special and what we mean by learning it. Mandarin is different from Germanic and Latin languages in a few ways; to get to grip... Read >

Why Learn Mandarin – A Reason You Haven’t Yet Heard

There are many reasons to learn a language like Mandarin. Chinas economy is booming for one. China is an incredibly different culture and Mandarin holds the key to exploring China on its own terms (for a second). One reason that is seldom mentioned is the... Read >

Learning Mandarin – 3 Factors Which Will Change The World

Studying Mandarin in China is just beginning to gain the popularity that it will have in the future. China is on the rise: its economy is growing at astounding rates, politically and diplomatically China has been whitewashed by its successful navigation o... Read >

Learning Mandarin In The Coming 20’s

Studying Mandarin in China is becoming ever more popular. The rate of Chinese economic growth is creating more and more jobs where a bilingual person can really capitalize on western education. Proficiency in both English and Mandarin does not only set a ... Read >