The Learner Journals: Real Language Learning Stories, Tips and Strategies

In this episode of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Ragnar, an Icelandic programmer and entrepreneur learning Mandarin as a long-term personal challenge.Ragnar’s first language is Icelandic, but his English is so natural that Tom immediately derails into asking how people from Iceland and Scandinavia get so good at it. Ragnar explains that English is everywhere: TV, subtitles, computers, phones, YouTube, school, and daily life. Less “sit down and memorise this grammar table,” more “English has entered the house and is now raising your children.”His Mandarin story began in 2017 almost as a joke. In Icelandic, people compare difficult things to Chinese, so Ragnar thought he might as well try learning the thing everyone used as shorthand for impossible. What started as curiosity turned into a hobby, then a regular part of his life.Ragnar spends around seven hours a week on Mandarin, including private lessons, Mandarin Monkey Hangouts, passive listening, YouTube videos, podcasts, music, and general exposure. He sees Hangouts less as “study” and more as practice. A place to use the language without it feeling like homework wearing a fake moustache.His favourite method is passive input. Podcasts, videos, music, anything that trains his ear to hear Mandarin as separate words rather than one long mysterious noodle of sound. He does not stop every sentence to look things up because that ruins the fun and makes watching TV feel like filling in tax forms. Instead, he lets context do a lot of the work.A strong theme in this conversation is learning through association. Ragnar talks about avoiding one-to-one translation and instead connecting Mandarin directly to meaning. Not “Chinese word equals English word,” but “Chinese word equals object, action, memory, or feeling.” He references the Fluent Forever idea of using personal images, like using a photo of your own dog to learn “dog,” rather than some dead-eyed stock photo Labrador from the cursed internet.He also talks about using Mandarin to think around missing words. Instead of asking “How do I say this in English first?” he tries to stay inside Mandarin and find another route. Describe it. Rebuild it. Walk around the missing word like a linguistic traffic cone.His short-term goal is not necessarily to cram new vocabulary, but to better use what he already knows. He understands more than he can produce, so the focus now is fluency, sentence structure, and getting existing knowledge out of the dusty cupboard in his head and into actual speech.Overall, Ragnar’s approach is calm, consistent, and very practical: input to learn, output to practise, personal associations to remember, and enough community to keep going when work and life try to quietly murder the routine.

In this episode of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Jane, live in the Mandarin Monkey studio, about how she learns Mandarin and why she keeps going.Jane has always liked languages, which immediately makes her suspicious because apparently some people enjoyed French at school. She studied French and Spanish, had passionate teachers, and later became fascinated by people who could move between languages with ease. After a busy legal career and a period of burnout, she came back to languages because she wanted something that was just for fun.Her Mandarin journey began through a friend who had lived in Beijing and offered casual Chinese lessons. From there, Jane discovered Mandarin podcasts, Pop Up Chinese, Mandarin Monkey, Chinglish conversations, graded readers, flashcards, Duolingo, Chinese Skill, lessons with Cynthia, and group Hangouts.Jane’s method is a messy but effective mix: regular listening, grammar-focused lessons, vocabulary through flashcards, reading graded versions of Journey to the West, and using Mandarin in small real-life moments whenever she can. She likes grammar, likes flashcards, and liked languages at school, so she is basically the rare shiny Pokémon of language learners.A big theme in this conversation is learning Mandarin without a fixed external goal. Jane is not studying for a job, a test, or a move abroad. She is learning because she enjoys it. Her dream is to one day chat naturally with Mandarin speakers, read more Chinese literature, and maybe be brave enough to use Mandarin in Chinatown without immediately pointing at the menu like a frightened tourist.Her final advice is wonderfully simple: use Chinglish. It works. It gives learners enough English to stay inside the conversation, while feeding them Mandarin in a way that does not feel like being attacked by a grammar textbook in a dark alley.

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.

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.

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.

In this episode of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Fiona from Ireland about learning Mandarin through real-world necessity rather than textbooks alone.Fiona first started learning Mandarin while working as a mechanical engineer, travelling alone to factories in China and quickly realising that not speaking the language made everyday life harder, scarier, and occasionally led to ordering an enormous bowl of intestines by accident.She talks about building confidence through tiny survival phrases, using Chinglish in factory meetings, learning from mistakes, finding local classes in Belfast, passing HSK 3, and later using language exchange, private lessons, passive listening, YouTube, podcasts, and Chinese media to keep her Mandarin alive.The conversation also covers grammar frustration, plateaus, the value of real human conversation, finding a good language partner, and why Mandarin can be a marathon rather than a sprint.A brilliant episode for anyone who feels like they are learning slowly, inconsistently, or messily. Which is to say, everyone.

In episode three of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Jemima, a British Mandarin learner, historian, PhD researcher and future Dr. History, about how a Taiwanese Netflix drama unexpectedly started her Mandarin journey.Jemima began learning Mandarin during lockdown after watching the Taiwanese drama Bromance and falling in love with the sound of the language. Since then, Mandarin has become part of her daily life through classes, graded readers, Taiwanese music, language exchange apps, Mandarin dramas, self-study, and the Mandarin Monkey community.This episode covers reading as a learning method, why graded readers can be so useful, how routines help language learning stick, the value of Chinesey for characters, why beginners should not skip pinyin and tones, and how using Chinglish can remove the fear of speaking.A useful listen for Mandarin learners, Taiwanese Mandarin fans, self-study learners, introverted language learners, and anyone who has ever watched one drama on Netflix and accidentally changed the entire direction of their life. As one does.

In episode two of The Learner Journals, Tom speaks with Darian, a Mandarin learner from Texas, about why Mandarin felt more interesting than Spanish, how apps became a major part of her learning routine, and what happens when learners hit the dreaded plateau.