We'll alternate between Short Story assignments and Daily Conversational assignments (suitable for beginners). In the last live session, we did a short story, so this time we'll be doing Daily Conversational Chinese. Welcome to speakMandarin 365!!! This Program is for those who want to start improve their Mandarin Chinese listening and speaking skills. EVERYONE—give a 👍 if your joining the LIVE class! And remember to submit your assignment by July 12th! Are you NEW? Go HERE NOW!! 📢 JULY LIVE Call Class 📅 Monday, July 13th 🕙 10:00 PM Beijing Time What to bring: Notebook and a pen. How to Make the Most of the Live Classes? By completing the assignment and sign up for Live FEEDBACK, the sooner you complete the assignment, you sooner you can choose your time slot! If you have plans, feel free to include your preferred time in your comment as well. Good luck and 加油！Once you've submitted your audio recording, comment "Sign me up for LIVE Feedback!" If you haven't completed the assignment, you can also opt to just listen to the others. If you decide you want to participate in the LIVE FEEDBACK on your assignment, be prepared to turn on your mic. Note that you don't have to turn on your camera since this isn't a video class. However, be prepared that your audio assignment will be played on speaker for the rest of the members so we can all learn from each other's mistakes. After your assignment is played, I'll give you feedback, suggestions for improvement, and effective techniques and tips. I'll also take any questions at the end of the session. Each assignment will take around 15–25 minutes. Make the most of the month of July, so take full advantage of it! You never know when an opportunity like this will come around again. 🚀 See you in class! WE LEARN FROM EACH OTHER! Do you have a question? Put it below.

💬 Why Shadowing Works: Shadowing Mandarin Chinese speaking practice helps you train your brain to hear and copy real Mandarin—just like native speakers. It boosts your speaking, listening, and intonation in Mandarin, all at the same time. By doing daily shadowing Mandarin exercises, you develop natural rhythm, better pronunciation, and clear, confident speech.

@Jan G asked about the 8 Steps to Mastering Mandarin Chinese, so I decided to revise and clarify the roadmap. This isn't just for Jan—it's for everyone learning Mandarin Chinese. Remember it's step by step 1. Fix your pronunciation ( Consonants / Vowels - Simple Finals, Compound Finals / Nasal Finals ) 2. Master the 5 Chinese tones ( including Neutral tone ) 3. Master word stress and sentence rhythm 4. FLOW: put step 1-3 together 5. Listening: As we start developing our FLOW, we can add listening to our attack list. This is where tone changes, weak forms, blending, and linking come into play. 6. Daily Chinese: As we work on LISTENING, we can start to grasp what 'Daily Chinese' is. It's also the stage where listening to Chinese news or watching Chinese TV shows starts to become genuinely effective. 7. Vocabulary: Eventually we'll realize that our vocabulary is FINE, we also realize exactly WHAT vocabulary we need to study. 8. Grammar: Finally if you follow all of these steps, join the live class as we prescribe, join the lessons, complete the assignment, our grammar problem disappear without even trying. Don't complicate yourself with grammar in the beginning. For grammar, a lot of the time there aren't any hard-and-fast rules. The more you read and the more you listen to Daily Chinese, the more your grammar will naturally improve. Just focus on getting lots of input instead of trying to force every grammar rule.