Struggling with Mandarin on LingQ. Does it Really Work for Beginners?

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I’ve had success with Spanish using Duolingo and recently moved to LingQ a month or two ago, which has been great so far. Feeling confident, I decided to plunge into Mandarin Chinese on LingQ, but after a few weeks, it’s been a struggle.

I’ve got about 300 LingQs in my word bank already (I think it’s been a couple weeks or so since I started), yet I can barely recall 10 of them reliably. I’m ok with tones and pinyin based on playing with Duolingo and other resources, but words just aren’t sticking.

Has anyone successfully started Mandarin from scratch with LingQ? What’s your advice stick with LingQ and pray for the best, or use something like HelloChinese for now? I’d appreciate your insights!

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It’s quite the usual process. One can think nothing they learned but as time is spent they can understand more difficult content. You don’t need to rote each word just take a glimps whenever you encounter in a content.

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I don’t have any experience with learning Chinese. However, I can tell from my experience that the required comprehension level for the MiniStories varies a lot depending on the distance of your target language from your native language or any other language you speak.
Apart from continuing with your routine that includes a lot of reading and listening of beginner-friendly content, I’d recommend three action points:

  1. Look for even easier content or create such with the help of AI.
  2. Boost your initial vocab acquisition through flashcards.
  3. Gaining more confidence through comprehensible input material like Dreaming Spanish.
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First of all, let me start by saying I am not learning Chinese. I am learning Korean. However, from my personal experience learning an Asian language and what i know in general, I am not sure using Lingq as a complete beginner is a great idea. Especially if your native language is completely different from Chinese.

You’d be better starting with a general course to give you a solid base in the language, then work your way up. That said, I know a lot of people who are learning Chinese or Japanese on Lingq are complaining about the software and questioning its suitability for learning these languages. You might want to check out duchinese.net and thechairmansbao.com. They are reading platforms dedicated solely to Chinese, like Satori Reader for Japanese. I am pretty sure the experience will be smoother than on Lingq which is more suited to Western languages in my opinion.

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Speaking from personal experience as someone who started Mandarin from scratch on LingQ…

It really works.

My advice is to start with the Who Is She? series and don’t rush through it. Spend a lot of time with each lesson. Read and listen (separately, and together) throughout the day, not just once, and do the SRS for at least the first few weeks.

After that, you’ll know a large portion of the very common “connector” words and a few others.

Then, start doing the ministories and approach them the same way. Mix in some graded readers like Mandarin Companion for some variety.

Somewhere in here, it will “click” and your brain will start learning new characters much, much more quickly.

Once you’re sick of the ministories or just run out of them, start looking for basic YouTube content with native speakers who speak slowly and clearly, narrating their day or doing basic travel/restaurant/daily activities. My personal favorite is Story Learning Chinese with Annie. I’ve imported and studied dozens of her videos.

Content made for children is also useful at this stage. Peppa Pig, for example.

This is where I’m at after 7-8 months of spending maybe 30-60 mins/day on average, which excludes a 4 month break after the first 3 months.

I’ve been to China a couple times and, while I’m a very dull conversationalist, I can successfully navigate the airport, taxis, subways, hotels, restaurants, etc. using only Chinese. To me, this is a big victory and means the method “works”. Others may say it’s inefficient or that I couldn’t pass an exam, but I don’t care. It’s enjoyable and doesn’t feel like torture the way Anki does.

My current focus is simply expanding vocabulary because I simply do not know enough words to be an interesting person in Chinese. To do this, in addition to continuing with the videos, I will start each week by writing a short story about myself, my hobbies, my interests, etc. and ask a native speaker to translate it for me into the most natural Chinese they can. I’ll then study that story and learn the vocabulary. Over time, I expect to be able to have more and more in depth conversations about normal things that are relevant to me.

I think that’s about all I have to offer you, so I hope that helps!

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Thanks @BassmasterJJ for sharing your experiences. That’s actually really cool. Are you using any tools to help you learn to write the characters?

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I used Skritter briefly and learned to write maybe 40-50 characters. It’s a very good tool for that, but I think for me the time is better spent doing more listening and reading. I’ll get back to it at some point.

I would, though, encourage everyone to at least do a minimal amount of writing early in the process. Even that little bit I did taught me to look at the characters differently and made it easier to see the differences between similar characters.

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I would check the site list here:

The Lazy Chinese/Comprehensible Chinese lady seems to do nice ones.

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Also, I was impressed by how Duolingo character practice works–as long as you have a touchscreen or a mobile device, it is an experience of drawing the character with your finger over and over, which seems likely to be an appropriate simulation of the traditional method of writing characters repeatedly.

One thing I do with Duolingo character practice, is for the “write the missing stroke(s)” exercises, I always draw every stroke in the normal order with my finger–I just only touch the screen for the needed missing ones. (My thinking is why not always draw all the strokes in the regular order, like with writing.)

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Yes, that is exactly what you’re looking for! Interesting and everyday topics using clear, standard speech that’s just a beat slower than native speed. I’m going to start importing these, too. Excellent suggestion!

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If you are serious and have a bigger budget I highly recommend this: Chinese Character Masterclass Chinese Character Masterclass - Learn Chinese Characters - Outlier Linguistics also their dictionary is a must have. You will be able to learn characters more easily if you understand them.

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If you are a beginner in Chinese LingQ is not the way to go. Other languages are perfect doable to start out on LingQ right away. but the thing with Chinese is you can’t even begin to read, unless you know the characters.
My recommendation is to use MandarinBlueprint mainly and use LingQ on the side.

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You know what George you are right it’s very pricey, but man you will learn characters so fast it feels like you’re cheating and their method makes it so easy to remember the tones. They give you the first 20 levels for free with there Mandarin Blueprint lite. Which is around 120 characters or so.

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Done Mandarin from lingq to a pretty good level. It’s all mindset, strategy, and patience with patience being the biggest factor.

The challenging part is how to approach a language with barely any reference to your own native language. The best way is to hunt for lingqs than known words in the beginning and the known words will follow. The ratio for lingqs/known words will be drastically high in the beginning but the best part about mandarin is that it’s a late game language in which once you reach a certain amount of words, the snowball only gets bigger and progress will be much more rapid. The hardest part is only the beginning part.

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That’s awesome! How did you pull it off? Did you use any extra resources or already have some background knowledge?

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Only had about 100 words of reference from an old friend that taught me, but they don’t do much really. In reality, you just have to translate a lot between each word and your native language. Each translation will create a neuro link and it takes about 9-35 times for each word to have a chance to acquire the word. You just have to keep translating in a sentence setting and not individualized like a word list.

Tip for actual results. Shoot for 10,000 lingqs at first. Don’t focus on known words, but they will go up with your lingqs. Your ratio in the beginning could be 5-100 : 1 (lingqs : known word )but as the more words you know, the ratio will flip to 1 : 5 (lingq : known words) due to mandarin being a long game language.

Once you get 10,000 lingqs, you will see a bit of improvement as long as you’re also going through your old lingqs (yellow) as you read.

In general, focus on making as many lingqs as possible.

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I’m learning German and French, not Chinese. However, for German I found LingQ lacking for a long while. LingQ is just an assisted reader, and I was consuming input somewhat randomly which just wasn’t working. I didn’t like the mini stories. Eventually I found a good German course on YouTube, and I now import those videos. A course has the advantage that it starts at a specific level, such as beginner, and gradually introduces more new words and concepts, and shows you how to use them. In my case I need to study words and grammar, and the LingQ method does not work. The course guides you in such a way that you feel comfortable. So my suggestion would be to import a good series of videos. Of course it all depends on how you prefer to learn, there is no one size fits all method.

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I’m not learning Chinese.
But as far as other languages are concerned: yes, it works, provided you have a lot of time to waste. If you don’t have that time, then learn the basics in other more “conventional ways”. This works much, much faster. Once you have the basic knowledge, you can add LingQ. LingQ is not really a language learning program, but a great tool for expanding your language skills, especially when it comes to vocabulary expansion and listening comprehension.
This will probably also apply to Chinese.

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