your chinese is better than my chinese lol

The issue that I run into, in China, when I want to practice speaking Chinese, the Chinese person wants to practice their English. Little frustrating.

2022. And again, whenever I feel uninspired to practice or learn Mandarin, as always, your videos keep me fresh. It's like looking up at someone and telling yourself, "I want to be like that when I grow up!" So I pray that you'll always be such an inspiration not just to us, but also to yourself po. With lots of love from the Philippines, 太谢谢了！

You speak mandarin like a second nature. I once lived in Taiwan and my biggest regret wasn’t learning the language. My quest to learn 24 years later led me to your channel. I hope I can learn from you.

Hi JJ , As an American, your mandarin speaking ability is very high standard, the way you speak Mandarin is way better than many people in Hong Kong , you are a genius. Just too good . I give more than 6 stars of your presentation .

Your Chinese is pretty good and definitely better than mine! Practice certainly makes perfect when it comes to language learning just like many other skills 🙌💯😎👍

I am Chinese and I just watched with fascination your video about how to learn Chinese, LOL. You are doing a phemonemal job. I am from Sichuan, so "ch", "sh", "zh" are fiendishly hard for me to pronounce, but you pronounce them wih such ease. 厉害！

我是个正在学习英文的中文母语者。学习语言是个漫长而艰辛的过程，但是通过雪莲的视频我感觉到，文化的交流真的充满了魅力，不同文化背景的人去了解对方的思维和习惯、喜欢，这实在太有意思了，同时也鼓励了我继续学习的信心。特别要说的是雪莲的自信，乐观情绪很能给人能量，如果她在我的面前出现我也许会疯狂地爱上她😊

this might be creepy but is true. stare at their mouth to see in part how they are pronouncing words, and then do the same. JJ for example has a HUGE mouth speaks VERY clearly AND uses very obvious movements. You can actually See HOW she pronounces THIS which is e.g. a very hard word (thing is even tougher). Iceland English and Greek have th as in that but only English and Icelandic have this as in thing, at least so far as I have learned which is about 20 languages. Of course I am not C2 in all of them!! I only list me as speaking a half dozen because in most I am only A1 or A2. I figure if you're not even B2 you have no business claiming to know that language. Anyway STARE AT THEIR MOUTHS but don't be too creepy JJ btw would be an EXCELLENT ESL model speaker.

I started doing the repetition like you said with sentences and it’s a game changer. Thanks for that hint it’s working wonders

非常喜欢你的视频，你科普的太好了!这些方法也帮助我学习英语。😊

Hey folks, this is actually part of my previous comment. Like that one, this is pretty long. (I'm an "old guy," aged 75, so bear with me. I'm also going into my 7th year of learning Mandarin -- my spoken Mandarin still sucks! My previous education is in law, engineering and education psychology, so I'm no stranger to learning. But Mandarin has presented me with an "ultimate challenge," as it has/had with many of my Ph.D. friends. During and after 2 years of Mandarin with Confucius Institute at U. of Hawaii, online I collected tons of courses, audio and video, so have had opportunity to contrast and compare the lot of them, including Hawaii's multi-technique, high course dropout rate, approach. I take care to keep my more negative assessments to myself.::) That aside..... A bit more of what I've collected follows -- Taking our grammar book's Table of Contents as the Road Map for learning Mandarin, and knowing how much we all hate reading, a native speaker named BaiXue has published more than 200 "grammar bites" videos that we all should have. Her grammar video's texts are in hanzi, pinyin and English, so even though her own English is sometimes a bit hard to understand I'm glad she's turned the grammar stuff into video. We can download (mp4 video) and watch again and again, her pages and explanations, until it creeps past our learning barriers* into our brains. (*Learning barrier: That part of our makeup that causes us to resist learning something or resist following directions, or makes us just want to play, play, play.) kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iLSnetmY0Jy7iYk.html and her personal site is aboutthechineselanguage.blogspot.com/ Sentences? Sure. You can get the Glossika Mandarin course that has around 2500 words used in 3000 sentences (2-voice) presented Spaced Repetition style, and become what one of my friends calls a "serial memorizer." Some people (I'm not one of them.) claim to have good results with this approach. HSK-focussed sentences seem a bit more appropriate. Particularly if one hopes to speak more than what I call "tourist Mandarin." Here I should say that JJ's competency is excellent, better than a few of my teachers at U of Hawaii. Professional list of HSK1 vocab and sentences. Download them to a Word doc makes it easy to use offline. (Set your browser to "Reader View": View_F9 to exclude all the ads) www.pinhok.com/kb/hsk/400/hsk-1-sentences/ HSK2 Download them to a Word doc makes it easy to use offline www.pinhok.com/kb/hsk/401/hsk-2-sentences/ HSK3 Download them to a Word doc makes it easy to use offline www.pinhok.com/kb/hsk/402/hsk-3-sentences/ HSK4 Download them to a Word doc makes it easy to use offline www.pinhok.com/kb/hsk/403/hsk-4-sentences/ Last but not least, be sure to watch Emily Wong (of Shanghai) and listen closely. Why you can’t make a correct Chinese sentence despite knowing 5000 words! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hpifnsl5vLvMj58.html One way to cope with the complexity of application of any character is to plug it into ChinesePod's Chinese dictionary site, chinesepod.com/dictionary/english-chinese/ which will give you a list of sentences using the word/character in increasingly more complicated contexts, i.e., from beginner to advanced, e.g. 会 (huì, meeting) 我们什么时候开会？wǒmen shénme shíhou kāihuì？When is the meeting? to 亲爱的，我开完会了！qīnàide，wǒ kāi wán huì le！ Honey, I finished the meeting!

Yesss!!! I’ve been looking forward to this video! Thanks for the added motivation to keep going on my learning journey! ❤️❤️

Yes, repetition helps! My focus is listening-speaking, not writing-reading yet. I learned a lot in a week from an app! Immersive Chinese (on Android). Each chapter/lesson teaches you 5 words at a time; then sentences or phrases are formed with those words in various ways. Samples: wǒ= I/my péngyou = friend de= possessive nǐ= you wǒ de péngyou (my friend) nǐ de péngyou (your friend) wǒ de péngyou de péngyou (my friend's friend) Soooo helpful! And so much content for free.

you inspire me so much! I’m currently learning chinese at school and I want to become a traductor when I’ll be done with my studies!! thank you so much for being so helpful!

I just want to say you are an amazing inspiration. I am learning mandarin. And every time I want to quit, I see how well you speak and I keep plugging along.

雪莲，您是最棒的！ you are the best, bravo !!! You are popular even in China mainland 🇨🇳 😇

I love NY! I can so relate as I’m really introverted and shy to speak Chinese. Wow didn’t know that. Thanks for the tips again! Very helpful! 😃

I love your channel so much, it has really helped me to persevere at times when I think I’ll never be fluent or get the hang of things! ❤️❤️

you don't have to be on site for immersion but you DO need to be motivated and disciplined switch all user interfaces to target language watch only media and news in target language avoid all your anglo or source language friends which is easy in quarantine.

The day i learn how to speak chinese this good 😭😭😭❤

From Thailand ~~喜欢你所有的视频，继续做！！❤️😊

Thanks for another informative video. I hope one day I can learn Chinese as well as you.

Very informative video JJ 👍👍👍👍👍 Thank you so much 😊

cannot stress it too much! get as much input as possible, especially when you are not living overseas, where your target language is spoken! great tips!

keep it up JJ! I came across your channel by accident and have been pretty addicted to it ever since then. Love your stuff so never stop makin' 'em!! Paul-

Your channel is my new obsession! Your personality and attitude sold me ♥️♥️

I hope this might be helpful to someone who has trouble speaking to native speakers in Chinese! So I was in China last year for two weeks and I really don't have AMAZING skills but it's enough for very basic conversation. In the first week I was in a host family and I was so incredibly nervous to say anything in Chinese to my host mother even though it would have probably made things easier. However, I still had another week left where I was kind of travelling around China with a group of people (only one of them knew Chinese but we did have a Chinese guide sometimes who could translate and stuff). So for the next week I decided to challenge myself and actually speak to native Chinese speakers, and let me tell you it was the best decision ever. I was so incredibly nervous but the Chinese people I talked to were so incredibly nice (and sometimes relieved that they didn't have to speak English). It really helped in many situations and people will rather be thankful for you trying than laugh at you for making a mistake. I made a mistake in an order at 星巴克(Starbucks) once and the barista politely corrected me, also my tones were probably all over the place but it never really seemed to bother anyone, they still kinda got what I said. So yeah in conclusion it's a very rewarding feeling to overcome your fear of speaking to natives in their native language and I definitely recommend it to everyone!

Keep on making these types of video. It helps! Good luck and keep good works!

Your language = #goals!! Just love watching these, and seeing such natural talent!!!! Keep them up!

素晴らしい体験をされましたね。 台湾で過ごされた時期はシャイな性格でネイティブと余り話せて無かった事も反動の内でしたね、間の取り方等も完璧です！我很喜歡看您的視頻。 我很驚訝。 發音和聲音都很完美。 感謝您分享寶貴的經驗。

I love your hand gestures whenever you speak. I will copy you and do the same when I become conversational in Mandarin.

Thanks, your Chinese is pretty good! And the tips you mentioned in the video is helpful in the process of learning other language. Stay safe!

Currently started to learn cantonese so hearing these tips helps out alot as a beginner i need all the help i can get, thank you

This is very helpful thank you!

你好JJ, 我是德国人，我已经学中文学了一年半了。可是因为中文太难了，所以我真的就很慢慢地提高我的中文口语。我希望以后我的中文说话会跟你一样好。 I really appreciate watching your videos. It is helpful for me that you provide content with Chinese subtitle. So I can check my listening and listen again and again until I can understand without the subtitle. 非常感谢！Michael.

Absolutely right. Fully agree with your approach.

You are so sweet!😊 I'm gonna start learning Chinese again and your videos are very helpful. Especially since I'm also an introvert, it makes it difficult to practice with someone (also theres not many chinese speakers where I live).

很好的提示。 Yellow Bridge。 看起来蛮好的。谢谢！

I agree, watching TV really helps, one of my friend is from South Korea and he was learning Chinese and one day he got into Chinese drama, then his Chinese starting to improve.

真的特别特别喜欢雪莲姐姐😭我自己其实是个中文母语者，一开始看姐姐视频就是想看看英文母语者怎么学中文，然后提高自己的英文。真的特别特别有用，提高自己的vocabulary真的很重要🌹

Hi I have just started learning Mandarin and this channel is really helpful - wo de laoshi actually shared one of the videos of you and your mom singing the moon represents my heart in our group! 😃xie xie ni

很喜欢听你讲话，你的观点对别人有帮助，谢谢你！

Definitely, she pointed all our concern correctly. Thank you.

雪蓮, glad I ran into your KZfaq channel yesterday. Got a lot of good learning tips from you. -- From 香港, went to Portland, Oregon for college. By the way, nice to hear you sing in Cantonese also. 加油！

雪莲你的中文说得比我这个马来西亚华裔还要流利，你真的是很用心去学，太棒了！ 我把您的视频跟孩子、朋友们分享，希望他们能够从你学习中文的经验来学习英文，谢谢您！

You’re amazing! Thank you

In Germany, learning German, I spoke a lot to myself in my room as well. It was hard for me to make German friends to speak with and today I am fluent in German and learning Mandarin.

Amazing tips. Thanks.

Than you for a very informative lesson.

Great tips !

You ARE such a great person😍and have a lovely personality❤️

Thank you for the links. I'm in Southern California where there are many Chinese speakers.

Impressed! I see you put so much time and afford in learning Mandarin!👍

Another video from my faaaavv yaaasss 😍😍😍😍

我在KZfaq看了很多 how to improve your English的视频，看到这种教中文的视频感觉很亲切

I love this woman ! She's amazing.

This is very helpful! I'm from the UK and I am learning Taiwanese Mandarin, and like you said in this video I have been doing drills since the very start. And I definitely think it helps so much to know that you are pronouncing it correctly without having anyone else to tell you that you are, because it really does help you to sound so much more fluent when you actually do speak to someone in that language. I also agree with you on your point about Pinyin, and if you're learning Bopomofo like I am, the same thing applies. You really have to have this foundation to language learning, and it's so much better if you use the Pinyin/Bopomofo to memorise vocabulary and phrases BEFORE you fully memorise any characters, or at least have this as the main structure for your pronunciation, otherwise you will have no idea how to pronounce words correctly when you just read the characters. I also think consuming a lot of media in Mandarin helps a lot. If you like Tiktok, install the Chinese Tiktok (Douyin). If you like listening to the radio, listen to Chinese radio stations. If you like watching movies or shows, then watch Chinese movies or shows.

I resonated with this video a great deal. I studied Chinese at university and moved to Taiwan to be emerged in the language for two years. While it certainly was helpful hearing the language each day, I too, spent a lot of time alone and at home. To be honest, I was so nervous to even try and practice my Chinese that most days all I was really saying was, 小冰/无糖, when ordering iced tea. I think your video really is spot on, JJ. To add, on italki you can use the #languagepartner tag with a little information about the language you're learning and find something similar to a pen pal. Thanks for this wonderful video.

You are very interesting. You make Chinese learning more fun by sending us positive vibes :D 谢谢

说得很好，我非常喜欢你的视频

I am really enjoy your videos when you speak English. hope you can do it more. And your Chinese is really really good!

Thank you so much, JJ, Thank you for talking about the mental struggle about learning different languages. : )

Wao, thanks a lot, it will help me.♥️🦋

You speak different languages but same speed!!! Amazing! By the way, every native speakers have a certain level of local accent, it take years to for second language learners to realize that.

Great video JJ. Thanns for the tip about Yello Bridge. Would love to see a video with a historical review of your Chinese journey. How long its been. Bumps along the way. Lightbulb moments.. No shortcuts just your story. 我学习了三年汉语，谢谢你的视频！

Thank you so much, this video means a lot to me. I studied in Shanghai for almost 2yrs but i didn’t get to go outside, speak with chinese ppl and be surrounded by them much. Now im back to my home country and the fact that I regret not take advantage of being in China to improve my Chinese level always discourage me to study Chinese 😢

雪莲您好！your Chinese is absolutely amazing, I am so proud of you. What part of China have you been to so far？

你说的很有道理很棒赞

You are so hardworking 雪莲！

Thank you for some good tips. Over the lockdown period, I have been watching a great deal of Taiwan news by reading the subtitles and over the months, to my surprise,, I can gradually pick up a few more words from the speakers. It depends on the native speakers' degrees of regional accent. I can pick up relatively more from you when you speak 普通話 despite you are a fast speaker. For this, I am truly grateful. I am also encouraged by your achievement in speaking so fluently. I shall follow your methods to begin learning to speak in addition to continue with listening by watching TouTube 台湾 news discussion channels. I have some advantage in learning to speak 普通話, it is because I can write & read Chinese but my "handicap" is that I speak Cantonese dialect as I went to school in Hong Kong and English as my second language since finishing 6th form college then university in England. I have lived oversea for 42 years. I always feel embarrassed that I couldn't communicate with any native speaker from mainland China. I shall try overcoming this hurdle. I have subscribed to your channel.

ooooh this happened to me too when I was in France :( , I could've learnt so much better but my shyness really held me back in practicing french. Now, that I'm learning mandarin, I made a promise to myself to actually speak it and practice :)

太流利了，amazing!

I shared your video to my daughters who are so discouraged to speak Chinese with me . I hope they will find their own motivation to learn Chinese and their ancestor’s home country’s culture.

What a wonderful and special person you're!Without directly conversation directly to chinese speakers,you can have your dialec pronunciation as the chinese born.You must have well and superb memories structures inherited in your brain.

我永远支持雪莲的频道

我在学日语，所以你的经验对我也有帮助👍

说得太好了，声调也很好

yellow bridge is really great!

The Pleco app is also an amazing dictionary. It also gives example sentences.

Ur Chinese is truly inspirational lol I’m studying over here cuz of u lol

I agree. I acquired my English speaking skill ability, complete with a Californian accent without ever going to America. HAHAHAH

我觉得你几乎完美，不管是外貌还是性格，尤其你的中文太棒了。最近我听一个科学家的说，ai到底是取代人还是帮助人，我希望大的科技公司帮助人，让全世界都能无障碍交流。再也没有语言的障碍。

Simply amazing 💯💯💯

Thank you!! This was really useful!

Very good. 👍🏼

哇，姐姐，你太厉害了，中文说的这么好，我鸡皮疙瘩都起来了，great！！！

我真喜欢你们的视频

Is it me or I just want to listen to her talking all day? I wish the caption has pinyin too :(

When I went to China, I had the same problem of barely speaking to anyone. Now I regret it so much.

I agree with you. You can learn another language by studying yourself, using the ways like you said. The most important is keep up your interest of the language. Keep on going never stop. It will take you to a very high level.you are very articulate . It might take a whole life time to be fluent in two or three languages. Bilinguals do have more fun.

哈哈！你的个性和马思瑞Chris完全相反！他最喜欢假装不会说中文然后对话进行到一半的时候无缝切换到北京口音的普通话，然后拍下对方的惊讶表情🤣 对方一般都很惊喜，从来没见过有人会感觉被冒犯的。中国人碰到会讲中文的歪果仁超 nice 的。不用担心。 不过马思瑞的口音真的很 flawless、impeccable。他讲几百个字可能只有几个字会隐隐约约有5%-10%的发音偏差。偏差大于50%可能要他连续讲几千个字才可能会有一两个字有这样的偏差。这还是他人不在中国（目前被困 DC）、并且有一期试图减少北京口音（试图靠近标准普通话发音）的情况下发生的。如果他说北京口(北京口=Beijing accented speech)基本就是99.99% native speaker。 当然这个只能用在确定会讲中文的第一代中国移民身上。It won't work on an ABC. They might not even speak Mandarin themselves. 马思瑞一般都去中餐馆或者奶茶店他知道对方是中国人的地方，但是现在太出名了基本一进门被认出来。上次还有一次被远程中文对话课程的老师给反耍了🤣 对方一开始就看出来是他然后故意憋着装不知道，课程进行到一半突然模仿他视频里常说的话🤣

I have used HelloTalk for 4 years now with Spanish, French and now Chinese (Mandarin). It is a great language exchange app and TONS of native Chinese speakers wanting to learn English. Tandem is also a decent language exchange app.

You can also always use iTalkie! It’s a great app/website for talking to native speakers

It's always happy to see a foreigner who is trying to talk to you in your language.

I'm struggling so much with pinyin! I really need to study it more but sometimes I simply write words how they sound to me so my pronunciation is better. Still, I gotta get on the pinyin. Thanks for the motivation 💕

我懂了！对话一定要甩手势👍👍👍

LOVE your channel! I can speak Chinese too and understand everything you're saying but I really want to improve my pronunciation, any tips?? I guess just repepating the words? You sound SO native!!! I want that too!

Hi JJ, thanks for the video! I've been learning Chinese on and off for three years now, having gone on exchange to Hong Kong and travelled to Mainland before too. I'm also supershy and am afraid to talk to people so seeing this video gave me some confidence I can still learn despite this! I'm hoping to go to China on a language year once this pandemic blows over and boost my speaking there :) 加油 薇薇

Wow! You speak so fluent and fast !!!! Lots of love from india🇮🇳