Hacking Chinese

A better way of learning Mandarin

Intermediate

How-to advice for intermediate Chinese learnersSituation: You can understand and produce language about personal or familiar topics and communicate with natives about most topics on a basic level, albeit haltingly. You can handle language directed at you when adjusted to your level. This corresponds to CEFR B1.

On this page, the focus is on intermediate Chinese and how to best continue learning in an efficient way.

Goal: Be able to understand general, non-specialist content produced by native speakers for native speakers. Be able to communicate with native speakers about similar topics, albeit not necessarily completely correctly.

Here are some typical questions belonging to the intermediate level:

  • I feel that I can communicate in Chinese, how do I keep improving?
  • How do I deepen my knowledge and broaden my vocabulary?
  • How do I take the step from intermediate to advanced?

Chinese intermediate: The most popular articles and podcast episodes

Here are five articles and podcast episodes that are particularly useful for intermediate students. You can of course check a list of all articles here, but these are great starting points:

Three things I wish I had known as an intermediate student of Chinese: The time machine, part 2

You can also browse articles relevant to intermediate learners: