Attitude and mentality

I believe that attitude and mentality is the single most important thing in life. This isn’t limited to language learning, but since learning Chinese is what this website is about, the articles here are mostly about language learning. Attitude is something that can be changed over time and if we want to master Chinese, we need to have a healthy attitude both towards the language itself and towards learning it.

When I say attitude, I mean attitude towards everything related to learning Chinese, the general mentality we adopt when learning. This includes attitude towards others, how we approach native speakers, teachers and fellow students, how we ask questions, how we receive feedback and much more. It also includes our attitude towards ourselves. Accepting and embracing failure and mistakes as a way of learning is perhaps the most important lesson, but there are of course many others. We need to believe that Chinese can be learnt, but we also need to understand that it won’t happen overnight and that we need to invest long-term in order to reach our goals.

Here are all articles on Hacking Chinese related to attitude and mentality (scroll down to see all of them in a text-only list):