In this episode of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Alex, also known as “The Phenom”, about how language learning fits into a life already full of learning, from rowing and coding to French and Mandarin.

Alex’s Mandarin journey began through work. After being sent to factories in China with very little Mandarin, he quickly saw how powerful even a basic introduction could be. A few simple sentences helped people open up, ask him questions, and treat him differently. Later, seeing how machine-translated emails stripped away the politeness and nuance from Chinese made him realise how much gets lost when you cannot understand a language directly.

Alex talks about learning French first, partly out of spite, which is probably one of the more honest motivations ever admitted on a language podcast. But through French, he discovered how speaking someone’s native language lets you meet a more genuine version of them.

His Mandarin routine is built around reading, character recognition, one-to-one lessons, and finding input that is actually interesting. He uses graded readers like Mandarin Companion, studies characters through Mandarin Blueprint and Anki, and prefers content that feels like part of life rather than homework. His current focus is improving listening, which he admits is his weakest area.

The conversation covers why characters are less scary once you break them down, why reading helps grammar stick, why embarrassment is unavoidable, why boring sentence drills are basically linguistic punishment, and why the best learning method is usually the one you can keep doing without wanting to throw yourself into the sea.

Alex’s biggest advice is simple: don’t avoid characters, don’t force yourself through boring material forever, and find things you genuinely care about. Attack the language from as many angles as possible until something sticks.

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In this episode of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Dan, a long-time Mandarin Monkey supporter, about one of the strangest and most committed Mandarin learning journeys so far.

Dan’s Mandarin story starts with a dream about riding a unicycle. After buying one and learning to ride it, he realised there were other things he had avoided simply because they seemed too difficult. One of those things was learning another language. Mandarin felt alien, fascinating, and completely different from anything he had tried before, so he jumped in.

Dan now studies Mandarin for around 20 hours a week. His routine includes active listening during commutes, daily handwritten Chinese journal entries, reading graded readers, reviewing lesson recordings, using tools like Pleco, Purple Culture, YellowBridge, a translation pen, and taking multiple lessons and hangouts every week.

The conversation covers motivation, repetition, retention, handwriting, listening struggles, learning how you learn, why finding the right teacher matters, and why Mandarin is less like memorising a textbook and more like learning to ride a unicycle on concrete. You fall off, work out why, and get back on.

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In this episode of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Stephen about how Mandarin became far more than a language hobby.

Stephen started learning Mandarin around 11 years ago after going through a divorce. A friend suggested he needed a distraction, then casually threw “Chinese” into the room like a normal person suggests jogging. Somehow, it stuck.

What began with Chinese characters, ChinesePod, Pleco, and a trip to Beijing eventually led Stephen to Taiwan, where he studied Mandarin for two years. He compares learning in group classes versus one-on-one lessons, explains why individual teaching worked better for him, and talks about the difference between studying from a textbook and using Mandarin in real life.

The conversation covers language confidence, making mistakes, ordering orange juice badly, getting trapped by follow-up questions, learning through Taiwan’s everyday culture, and why Mandarin is absolutely not something you “master in three months”.

A great episode for anyone who feels like they started late, learns slowly, hates grammar, or needs reminding that Mandarin is a long game. A brilliant, frustrating, ridiculous long game.

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