Learning Chinese is not an ‘easy’ task, it takes time and effort, but it can be fairly straight forward if you have a good method and specific goals you are working towards.
The thing is though, so many people burn out after only learning the language for a short time, or get frustrated and give up.
And I wouldn’t want this to happen to you.
That’s why I think it’s important to know why you are learning the language in the first place, because that reason will give you the motivation and justification to keep it up.
It could be that you just came back from a trip to China or Taiwan, and you want to get more into the language and the culture. You might have seen a Chinese film that you really liked, or you’re into martial arts, so you thought you might try to learn some of the language too.
But are these reasons going to be strong enough to keep you going after a couple of weeks, say, when the excitement of learning something new wears off and you find that it’s actually going to take some perseverance to get to where you want to get to?
I think this is why so many beginner learners give up: because they never really had a strong enough reason for starting the language in the first place.
So what could a strong reason be?
It could be that you think Chinese would be useful to you in your work – which is an excellent practical reason for wanting to explore the language.
Even if you were not able to do everything in the language yourself during business trips, just being able to say some polite things to your colleagues or host could go a long way, and the other person would definitely appreciate it!
Just one word of warning though, while in some cases you might get a extra pay or opportunities from being able to speak Chinese, most of the time it’s by no means guaranteed. Language skills are best combined with cultural/market knowledge and additional business experience.
If you try to do some kind of ‘cost-benefit analysis’ of learning Chinese, most of the time the numbers don’t really add up.
But in a way, that’s not really the point. The personal connections that you might be able to build, or the improved communication that you might be able to have could be very satisfying for you or worthwhile for the business, even though it might not be very easy to put into financial terms.
It could be that you have a partner who is a Chinese speaker. You might be doing everything in English right now, but feel that you want to explore your partner’s language and culture, and be able to speak to his/her family (like in the case of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg).
Or, it could be that there’s a language barrier between you and your partner right now, and you really need to get over it, which is a strong motivation if there ever was one.
From time to time I get emails from people who tell me that they just need help in speaking the language to their partner, and it’s amazing to be able to help people with something as worthwhile as that. I’ve even had people tell me that they communicate by text message and Google Translate right now, so anything they can learn will make a huge difference!
It could be that you want to travel to mainland China or Taiwan or another Chinese speaking area, and you want to get more out of your trip, in which case just learning some of the basics would help you out, and you can reach your goal in less time.
Or it may just be that you are fascinated by Chinese culture. That can be a strong enough reason in itself.
When I first started learning Chinese, I wasn’t motivated by financial reward or particular job opportunities: I just knew that I wanted to learn as much about the language and the culture as I could – it was a form of exploration, rather than anything else, and it was that curiosity that drove me on.
Whatever your reason for learning Chinese is, you need to make sure that it’s strong enough, because you might need to come back to it later on, because as one of my teachers once said: “when everything just seems like hard work, think back to why you started in the first place. That will give you the motivation to carry on.”
So why are YOU learning Chinese? Have you really thought about it before?
And let me know in the comments 