I spoke with a British guy this morning who wanted to speak Chinese fluently.

Cool goal, but...

There was 1 massive problem.

(He wasn't aware of it himself)

He thought he could reach fluency just by talking with ChatGPT and watching YouTube vids.

(It wasn't even his strategy that was wrong though)

YouTube and ChatGPT are ok tools for language learning.

The biggest issue was that his expectations were completely messed up.

I meet soooo many people who think they can become fluent in Chinese easily,

And yet they've been only learning for a few months or a couple of years...

"But Zhifei, don't you guide people to reach fluency in 6-12 months???"

Yes, I do that...

But you know how focused my most successful students are?

They treat their Chinese learning with the same seriousness as a pro athlete.

See, most people think they can reach fluency by learning the same way they did as a beginner to get to intermediate or advanced.

This is totally, utterly, absolutely, incorrect...

Why?

Because the words you acquire at the beginning are less frequently used,

And as you progress through a language,

The words you need to learn become less and less frequently used (thus appearing less frequently as a natural byproduct in the language).

Which means that to retain the less frequently used words at intermediate and higher levels,

You NEED to make sure your strategy for retaining, being able to understand, and feel comfortable speaking those words is super solid.

And NOT randomly f**king around with ChatGPT and YouTube.

Because by the time you've heard an infrequent word for the 3rd time, it's already been 2 weeks, and you forgot what it means.

Don't waste your time learning inefficiently and forgetting the words you learn.

Focus on retention through an immersive strategy that gets you to learn the language as if you were a baby in China.

When I learned 5000 Spanish words in 2 months it wasn't something I did by watching random YouTube videos while I was on the toilet in the morning.

I was learning for about 8h/day.

(Of course you don't need to learn that intensely, but you do need to take it seriously to battle the forgetting curve).

If you want fluency, it's very doable.

20-40 minutes/day is all you need.

But, it needs to be structured and optimized for retention not randomness.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Don't tell me you want to speak fluently but then only learn "when it's convenient".

Show me how you're retaining 50-200 new words every week and can use them in real conversations.

Anything less than this and you're getting stuck at intermediate level because your retention rate will equal your forgetting rate.

With tough love,

Zhifei - Xiaogua Chinese

PS: this is written with love in the end as I don't want you to embark on a journey with wrong expectations.

I really want you to succeed and not give up when it gets hard.

It's simple, not easy.

But if you want it, you can do it, like over 250+ students who learn with Xiaogua Chinese every day.

If you want to see how we can help, book a call here: https://www.fluentinchinese.com/calendar​

"If you want abnormal results in life, then you need to do abnormal things."