Medical is amazing. Way beyond me ahaha.
I bet it’s around 20,000 hours to virtually learn and recognize everything without any assistance in the case the learner is constantly pushing themselves in new content that they have not heard, learned, or adapted before
Thank you. You’re also welcome to come on my podcast. We can do it either in English or Chinese.
Sounds like “All Chinese all the time” - maybe inspired by Khatz (AJATT) 
Great idea! Could be a really interesting conversation!
That would be an honor ahaha
i believe your pronunciation should have come along naturally and very understandable. It would be awesome if you could speak with Michilini in Chinese. Just want to compare how nice it is. Michillini did a lot of concentrated work and deliberately worked with a tutor to fix his tones.
It’s so refreshing to hear people with actual experience talk about how long it really takes. I’m tired of either inexperienced learners, or learners who massively overexaggerate their abiity, talk about 2-3k hours for a language like Mandarin.
A 7 year-old native has probably had over 30k hours of exposure, in a perfect environment, with a survival-like thirst to learn, no interferring language, and a child’s curiosity and capacity to watch their favourite shows/movies over and over again.
Why adult learners think they can reach anywhere close to that level, with non of those advantages, in less than 1/10th of that time, is truly baffling to me.
Sounds about right ahaha. The amount of hours to comprehend such a language requires a lot more than we thought
Awesome, well done you have spent a lot of time on it. I started learning Mandarin about 10 years ago, but I decided to concentrate on my Spanish and haven’t got back to Mandarin yet. I plan on learning it at some point, but romance languages seem so much easier lol.
I will say the biggest challenge for me as well is comprehending out of context questions. I almost wonder if that is something that would be worth dedicated practice. Not weird conversation starter style questions like a lot of italki teachers use, but just rapid fire out of context questions for 30 minutes to an hour.
I completely notice this about the out of context portion too. I think it’s beneficial to get asked multiple questions everytime since we would often listen to content that barely have any questions unless it’s an interview setting ahaha.
Thank you Bowson. Good luck on your journey!
@chytran I have another question if you don’t mind answering. How many consecutive days you go with this 7/8+ exposure listening technique? Do you have any weekly break for example? How do you manage this?
Even more, how do you somehow “programmed” yourself to have this intense listening schedule?
I’m also interested in this because I have a thread on improving my listening skills for the next year, and you have definitely done a good job on this regard.
Thanks.
I mean I work from home and when I am not in meetings I just put on a podcast or an audiobook. I almost find it is easier on work days to get exposure because my family cannot as easily interrupt .
I also now have a son that I am raising multilingually and this means he needs to get adequate exposure and in sufficient contexts.
For me it comes down to removing addictive barriers coming mostly from my phone or the internet, not self-control per se. I logged out of my “normal” YouTube account. I have playlists I have made that only have music I like in the TL. Podcasts always at the ready. Audiobooks I can listen to for the 5th time. It really comes not down to willpower, but just removing other choices leaving only the slightly uncomfortable one, or silence I guess.
Monday-Thursday: 8 hours
Friday-Sunday 6 hours
50 hours a week.
Haven’t broken it since. Maybe once or twice due to life situation. It’s all habit at this point. The longer you keep the habit, the harder it is to break out of it. Especially if you notice that you’re gaining progress, it gets more addicting everytime. Reached a point that I don’t have a specific goal anymore, and I do it because it would be feel off if I suddenly stopped. Pretty much as important as eating/sleeping now ahaha