A practical guide to your ideal Mandarin self: Build motivation that lasts

Motivation is not a personality trait that you either have or lack. It is a system you can design.

Picture your future Mandarin self, make studying sustainable, and let steady action close the gap.

Why are you learning Chinese?

When you start learning Chinese, you do so for a reason. Unless your reason was very weak, it can drive your learning in the initial stages.

For example, if you started learning Chinese because you think the language seems cool (who doesn’t think characters are cool) or because you want to be able to speak with a billion people, this motivation will probably last up to the intermediate stage.

The motivation that made you start learning Mandarin is unlikely to last forever, though. Maybe it will fade after a few months, maybe a few years, but it will fade

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#292).
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

Long-term motivation to learn Mandarin: Different perspectives

In an earlier article, I’ve discussed long-term motivation from the perspective of Self-Determination Theory, one of the most dominant psychological theories of human motivation.

How to learn Chinese in the long term with intrinsic motivation

In this article, we’ll pursue a similar goal through a different path, namely Zoltán Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS).

This is a theory that relies on identity and visions of future selves to make second language learning (L2) meaningful and motivating.

Here’s what we will cover:

Three aspects of your motivation to learn Chinese

The L2 Motivational Self System, henceforth L2MSS, has three parts. Let’s look at them briefly before we go into more detail:

Ideal L2 Self: A future you who uses Mandarin with confidence in real situations that matter to you.
Ought-to L2 Self: The requirements and expectations you feel from others, such as a course, employer, family or friends.
Learning Experience: Your learning situation, including things like teachers, classmates, friendly native speakers and learning resources.

The core idea here comes from theories about different possible selves and how they differ from each other (see Higgins, 1987 and Markus & Nurius, 1986).

This discrepancy is what drives behaviour. By creating a vision of your ideal L2 self, calibrating your ought-to self and optimising your learning experience, you can achieve anything.

Let’s have a look at how!

Create a vision of your ideal Mandarin self

The ideal L2 self is at the core of Dörnyei’s model. The Ideal L2 Self is not a catchy phrase like “be fluent”. It’s not a concrete goal like “pass HSK 9” either.

Instead, it’s a vivid vision that carries emotional weight, a mental movie where you use Mandarin successfully in a situation that matters to you. Here are some examples, which might not suit you personally, but are meant to illustrate what a vision is.

I travel around Taiwan and handle buying tickets, finding a place to stay and asking for directions without switching to English.
I connect with a Mandarin-speaking relative by chatting in Mandarin with them about what I’ve done today.
I hold a short presentation in Mandarin on my research topic, then answer two follow-up questions from the audience.
I negotiate delivery dates with a supplier on a video call in Mandarin and confirm the outcome in a short WeChat message.
I watch a Chinese drama or movie without subtitles and still understand enough to enjoy the show.

As mentioned, these should also have emotional weight, which I didn’t try to include above. What does the vision mean for you? How does it make you feel? How does it connect to what you value in life?

Stepping stones to your ideal Mandarin self

As with any long-term plan, goal or vision, it needs to be anchored in the present to have any effect. If your ideal Mandarin self feels unreachable and unattainable, this won’t work.

To avoid that, analyse your vision to see what you need to make it come true, then plot a path with milestones that will allow you to reach your vision.

Look to others who have done what you want to do

One of the best ways to motivate yourself is to find people who have done what you want to do. They don’t need to be exactly like you, and they don’t need to have the same vision. Close enough will do.

What did they do? How did they do it? What’s their story like?

More than half of the positive feedback I receive from students is not actually about information on how to learn Mandarin, but about inspiration. If you find Hacking Chinese inspirational, that might be even more important!

If you want to hear my story, I have told it in a series of articles starting here: How I learnt Chinese, part 1: Where it all started.

How I learnt Chinese, part 1: Where it all started

Keep your vision alive

Even the most vivid vision fades over time if you don’t revisit it. There are many ways of solidifying your vision, such as making a visual representation (a collage of relevant pictures, for example, or a phrase that encapsulates the vision).

Whatever you use, put it somewhere visible where you will encounter it often. Naturally, it will take a long time to achieve, and it might be too distant to work towards directly in your daily routine, but that’s why you also have milestones.

Calibrate the ought-to Mandarin self

Something L2MSS has in common with Self-Determination Theory is the stress on intrinsic motivation. Generally speaking, motivation that comes from within yourself is more powerful and longer-lasting than motivation that comes from outside pressure.

Outside pressure, such as laws, rules and expectations, can often get you started with something, but also bring a range of issues, such as stress and anxiety.

For example, in a meta-analysis (Alamer et al., 2025), external motivation (called controlled motivation in the study) was not correlated with language proficiency, but was correlated with language anxiety.

External motivation sometimes works, but it also tends to result in a minimum-effort approach that is just enough to satisfy the requirements, but nothing more.

The relationship between external and internal motivation is very complex and a major point in Self-Determination Theory, but it’s a bit out of scope for this article. For more about this for language learning specifically, see McEown and Oga-Baldwin (2019).

What’s important to note here, though, is that you can have several types of motivation at the same time, but that more is not always better. Outside rewards and punishments can, for example, decrease your internal motivation.

Switch from avoidance to approach

Another thing you can do is to try to reframe external motivation as something positive. I don’t mean positive in the “good” sense, but instead that you reframe avoidance goals to approach goals.

Avoidance goals: I want to avoid a bad grade, disappointing my family or letting my boss down.
Approach goals: I want to get a good grade, make my family proud or make my boss think highly of me.

These, in practical terms, mean the same thing, but framing really does matter. By internalising requirements and expectations, you stay motivated longer and reduce stress and anxiety.

Tweak a better learning experience: a better way of learning Mandarin

Research clearly shows that learning experience matters. In fact, it matters almost as much as the Ideal L2 Self (Al-Hoorie, 2018; more about this later).

This should come as no surprise, since it includes everything from classroom climate and teacher support to the usefulness of learning materials, peer interactions, and even your own emotions and attitudes during lessons.

This makes the L2 Learning Experience something of a miscellaneous category, which is why I won’t go into more detail about it in this article. The unique contribution of L2MSS does not reside in this component. It could also be argued that almost all other articles I’ve written on Hacking Chinese are about the L2 Learning Experience, so feel free to browse the archives if you want to tweak it!

What the research says about L2MSS

A large meta-analysis (Al-Hoorie, 2018) found that the Ideal L2 Self correlates strongly with intended effort (students’ self-reported willingness to invest time and energy). The links to the Ought-to L2 Self and the L2 Learning Experience were moderate.

However, there is reason to believe that studies focusing on intended effort don’t show the full picture. Students don’t always act on their intentions, and to actually learn a language, more than motivation is needed.

The same study also examined the link between the three components and gains in language proficiency (which is very slippery to measure) and found much weaker correlations overall, and a slightly negative correlation between the Ought-to L2 Self and proficiency.

The takeaway here is that a strong Ideal L2 Self tends to go together with higher achievements, but that the Ought-to L2 Self doesn’t.

Your ideal Mandarin self: From vision to action

Motivation that lasts grows from a vivid Ideal L2 Self, with milestones and clear links to the actions you take and the choices you make every day.

Clarify your ideal Mandarin self, make it vivid, keep it visible. Picture your scene now, then choose one doable action and do it now!

References and further reading

Al-Hoorie, A. H. (2018). The L2 motivational self system: A meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 8(4), 721-754.

Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (Eds.). (2009). Motivation, language identity and the L2 self. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Higgins, E. T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: a theory relating self and affect. Psychological Review, 94(3), 319.

Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954.

McEown, M. S., & Oga-Baldwin, W. Q. (2019). Self-determination for all language learners: New applications for formal language education. System, 86, 102124.

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