4 Years of Chinese Later on Lingq (Update) (Final Review)

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Hello fellow Lingqers!

For those who know me and have been with me since the beginning of 08/01/2021, this is one of the final updates on my progress after studying Mandarin Chinese on here for 4 years with an intense routine of listening 8 hours daily to the point that my ears get numb sometimes.

For those who don’t know me, I’m an active member that pursued chinese in 08/01/2021 and decided to go all out up until now.

For reference of my progress from the past:

Current Stats after 4 years as of (08/01/2025):
Reading: 5.81 Million Words
Listening Hours: 9,366.61 Hours
Lingqs: 144,059 Lingqs
Known Words: 77,765 Known words
Speaking Hours: 494.93 Hours

My final thoughts as a very active member. I believe that Lingq has helped me reached a point that I can confidently talk to native speakers with very rare occasions that I don’t understand and understand most of modern dramas with the exceptions of few words due to knowing that there are words I have not heard yet. Lingq is the foundation of my language ability and motivator to persist on one of the hardest languages personally, Mandarin Chinese. Had a lot of support from the fellow members for wisdom, guides, and resources to reach this point. I would love to thank the staff of Lingq for creating a revolutionary app which in doubt can not be rivaled by other apps personally if one knows the max potential and functionality of this app. Without this app, I would of not dared to pursue this language(Mandarin Chinese) to the max. This app is perfection for attaining words and practice listening in sentence mode.

As promised for some of the few members that are aware of this post and my journey, I’ll post a full video about every single methodology, mindset, strategies, wisdom and a demonstration video seperately on my ability to communicate once I reach 10,000 hours of listening, which will be around the end of the year.

I only want to post this to thank the members of lingq and staff personally who helped made this possible.

Thank you for your time and happy learning!

Specific shoutouts that gave me motivation and wisdom:
@bamboozled - A great rival/friend to improve with
@TofuMeow - Pushed me to the current known word count
@PeterBormann - Theories
@Imani - “Every 100 hours of listening is an improvement”

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Which resources (texts, audio, video) from outside of LingQ did you use and/or import? What about wrong word splitting and wrong Pinyin which I find very annoying in LingQ? Did you simply ignore it? Thanks for an answer.

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  • Outside of lingq, only youtube. It has unlimited videos in chinese with subtitles to import. Dramas, podcast, world events. That sort.

  • If you definitely think it’s off, using google translate was enough to confirm but usually assume it’s right for most part and can check later. To your answer, I ignored mostly simply because I believed every tone was displayed correctly on Lingq and usually would get corrected later by an online tutor. There are few variations of words when the tone changes based on context. Very few though. It could of been considering those cases which would cause this confusion between users.

Thank you for your question

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Well, congrats chytran. It’s always been very interesting to read, and sometimes interact with you in your fantastic journey. It will be also very interesting to read your improved methodology, mindset, and everything else, with all the experience you’ve gathered until now.
Very well done! :+1:

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Thanks for being there from the beginning. Looking forward to giving everyone possibly useful information!

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Couldn’t agree more with Davide: well done - congrats!

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Thank you Peter as usual!

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You’re welcome!

Maybe in one of your upcoming videos you can also address the issue of acquiring “tones”:
I’m still not sure whether it’s necessary to learn them explicitly or whether it’s enough to acquire them “naturally” by simply listening a lot.

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Sure!

-To give you the answer personally:
Listening: I believe tones are not needed for listening because the ears will catch the pattern and then the brain will categorize them subconsciously I believe and convert to meaning. This could only be done through lots of active listening. Passive listening will solidify it. I personally only try to hear tones only if a learner of chinese is attempting to say words and the subconscious mind can not match the sound to what you know and have to rely on a dictational format. (Theoretically)

-Speaking: Needed definitely. The question is when do you want to speak. If now, definitely. If later, I would focus on it later.

It’s difficult to hear them in the beginning consciously. The best strategy is to rely on the subconscious mind through Stephen Krashen’s idea of understanding the message, which converts it to subconscious. Later on through experience, it will be easier to hear them, then you can do whatever you want from there.

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Hey, congrats and great to hear you’ve been sticking to your regimen for such a long time. The numbers are definitely pretty insane :slight_smile: I can only imagine that Mandarin has become a second native language to you at this point.
Not sure I’ll be able to reach 10k hours in Mandarin in this lifetime, but I guess 水滴石穿.
And indeed, LingQ is a great tool. Despite some frustrations with technical issues over the years, I’m still using it, currently working on French and Italian.

Thanks for keeping us updated, looking forward to your video or any other wisdom you have to share.

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Thanks bamboozled. Glad you’re still here :slight_smile:

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很厉害，请问你听力是用lingQ来播放吗？其他地方播放的时间怎么整理统计？

另外学习主要策略就是听和阅读吗？还有其他额外附加的方法吗？

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Congrats on the 9k hours. In your upcoming video, will you demonstrate a conversation between a native speaker and yourself?

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Congrats!
Inspiring for my own Korean Learning Journey!

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兄弟好，

我在Lingq的时候， 我专注于我的听力能力。Lingq之外，我在youtube上听很多不同的视频。我在youtube的时候，我开始用秒表记录时间。 当我达到八个小时的时候， 我停止了。然后在lingq记录我的结果。

我一般就听很多不同的内容。我再开始阶段的时候， 我只阅读。我达到足够词汇量的时候， 我专注于提高我的听力能力。我还有跟自己聊天。我跟自己聊一聊的时候，我肯定会遇到一个障碍。如果我不知道一个词，我总是会用谷歌翻译。如果你有一个概念，你必须满足你的好奇心。所以说，我建议带着你的手机。这让你访问谷歌翻译。还有模仿一个理想的人会帮助你说好像一个母语者。 这个战略叫shadowing。我以前不一般联系这个技巧。如果你想让人们认真对待你, 我建议shadowing。

谢了你的提问

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That is the goal. Will need to ask for consent but will try to get one when the time comes.

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Mad numbers. Congrats!

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Thanks nfera as usual!

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不客气，我是中文母语者，正在自学英文，你这段中文回复实在太地道了，很行！我感觉你分享的心得完全可以套用任何语言。你的心得很有意义，毕竟你是经过这么多年努力总结出来的，可以让很多自学的初学者少走很多弯路，太感谢你的分享了！

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Come again, have you been listening to Chinese for 8 hours a day, for 4 years?!

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