Being able to communicate in another language is a great addition to a resume, and with China becoming more and more influential in the world, many employers can use people who know Mandarin. Unfortunately, not all of us live near a university, and college courses are always very expensive. Fortunately, there are some inexpensive ways to get a very strong grounding in Mandarin no matter where you live.
The first is a podcast called Popup Chinese. Based out of Beijing, they offers hundreds of free podcasts with native Mandarin speakers. They start at the absolute beginner level, with very basic and easy to understand explanations, and gradually go up to an advanced level. I began listening about six months ago without having any background and can now understand a great deal. Their membership levels vary (starting at about $50 per year) and offer lots of other services like transcripts of the podcasts (in English, Chinese, and pinyin), online flash cards, and even one-on-one online tutors. The tutors are out of my price range, but I’ve improved tremendously with the vocab and grammar in the podcasts and transcripts. Popup Chinese is focused on, and best for, learning to speak Mandarin, as opposed to learning how to read and write Chinese.
The second item is a book called Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters: HSK Level A by Alison and Laurence Matthews (the HSK is the Chinese proficiency test required for entrance into Chinese universities, etc.). It’s about $20 and starts with the most fundamental building blocks of written Chinese such as numbers, and simple nouns. It’s an amazingly effective tool I’ve used to learn Chinese and also teaches you how to write characters with the proper stroke order. The downside of this is that it is purely vocab, without any grammar or even parts of speech.
Fortunately, the vocab book it is complemented nicely by another book: Schaum’s Outlines of Chinese Grammar ($10-$15, depending on where you buy it). This has lots of practice exercises and grammar rules that I found tremendously useful in my studies. And while it’s true that Chinese doesn’t use conjugated verbs, there’s a lot to learn in terms of word placement and grammar-specific particles that transform a sentence from the present tense to past tense. The drawback of the books, of course, is that there is no help with pronunciation or other aspects of the spoken language. That brings us back to Popup Chinese and its native speakers.
By using all three of these resources I’m doing something I never thought I’d be able to do: speak and write Chinese.