Situation: You can understand and produce language about personal or familiar topics and you can communicate with natives about most topics on a basic level, albeit haltingly. You can handle language which is directed to you and adjusted to your level. This is roughly equal 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?
If you’re new to Hacking Chinese, I’d like to recommend my free crash course in how to learn Mandarin. It will give you a summary and introduction of the most important things to keep in mind. You can sign up here:
Now, let’s move on to intermediate Chinese. It’s relatively easy to write suggestions for beginners, simply because their situations tend to be similar. Reaching the intermediates level, however, students have already trod wildly different paths and general recommendations become very hard to produce. Thus, if you feel that you’re having problems with a specific area, I suggest checking the pages about listening, speaking, reading and writing.
You can also browse articles relevant for intermediate learners:
- Why flashcards are great for learning Chinese
- Hacking Chinese Pronunciation: Speaking with Confidence is now open!
- Black Friday discounts for Hacking Chinese courses
- Is learning things by heart good for improving your Chinese?
- The 10 best free Chinese reading resources for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners
- Chinese reading challenge, November 2023
- Student Q&A, November 2023: Reading Pinyin or characters, comprehensible vs. compelling content and reading tools
- Shapeshifting Chinese characters
- You won’t learn Chinese simply by living abroad
- 100 hours of Chinese listening in 3 weeks: What I learnt and how to apply it
- Chinese pronunciation challenge, October 2023
- Listen more than once: How the replay button can help you learn more Chinese
- The cheapest and most convenient way to improve your spoken Chinese
- Improving your Chinese pronunciation by mimicking native speakers
- Chinese listening challenge, September 2023
- Student Q&A, September 2023: Listening more than once, assessing pronunciation and the merits of flashcards
- How long do you have to study Chinese to make it useful?
- Should you throw away your Chinese textbook?
- Chinese translation challenge, August 2023
- Hacking Chinese Podcast three-year anniversary Q&A
- Is Chinese difficult to learn?
- Timeboxing Chinese: Get more done in less time
- Insights from the new HSK 7-9: Interview with Sara Jaaksola
- How narrow reading and listening can help you bridge the gap to real Chinese
- Seeing through the illusion of advanced Chinese learning
- Why travelling isn’t the best method to learn Chinese
- Chinese vocabulary challenge, June 2023
- Skritter review: Boosting your Chinese character learning (2023 edition)
- Get to know your Chinese voice to level up your speaking ability
- How learning some basic theory can improve your Mandarin pronunciation
- Learning Chinese is more like walking a thousand miles than running 100-metre dash
- Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 5: Becoming a better listener as a student of Chinese
- Vocabulary lists that help you learn Chinese and how to use them
- Should you learn Chinese vocabulary from lists?
- Chinese speaking challenge, April 2023
- 6 benefits of learning Chinese through sports
- Should you use an efficient method for learning Chinese even if you hate it?
- Don’t try to improve everything at once when learning Chinese
- Learn Chinese by playing Mahjong (麻将, májiàng)
- Can ChatGPT pass the HSK?
- Chinese writing challenge, February 2023
- Beginner Chinese listening practice: What to listen to and how
- Using the HSK as a roadmap to learning Chinese
- Learn Chinese efficiently, not quickly
- Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 4: Learning to process spoken Mandarin quickly and effortlessly
- Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 3: Using what you already know to aid listening comprehension in Chinese
- Standard pronunciation in Chinese and why you want it
- How to study Chinese when you don’t feel like it
- Are there any shortcuts for learning Chinese?
- The 10 best free Chinese listening resources for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners
- Learning the neutral tone in Mandarin
- Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 2: From sound to meaning in Mandarin
- Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 1: A guide to Chinese listening comprehension
- Take responsibility for your Chinese learning now
- Hacking Chinese Podcast two-year anniversary Q&A
- 7 ways to write Mandarin tones
- Chinese language question triage: When to ask whom about what
- How to become fluent in Chinese
- How to learn from your mistakes and errors when learning Chinese
- Do you have to learn to write Chinese characters by hand?
- Why you should use more than one Chinese textbook
- Analyse and balance your Chinese learning with Paul Nation’s four strands
- On accuracy, communication and comprehensibility when learning Chinese
- Are authentic texts good for learning Chinese or is graded content better?
- What to read to improve your Chinese and why
- Time quality: Studying the right thing at the right time
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- How to start learning Chinese again after a break
- How to survive and thrive in a difficult Chinese course
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- Is taking a Chinese course that’s too hard good for your learning?
- Best of Hacking Chinese 2021
- A guide to Pinyin traps and pitfalls: Learning Mandarin pronunciation
- How to improve fluency in Chinese by playing word games
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 6: Learning and remembering compound words
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 5: Making sense of Chinese words
- Why spaced repetition software is uniquely well suited to learning Chinese characters
- The best Chinese reading practice for beginners
- 6 challenges students face when learning to read Chinese and how to overcome them
- Should you enrol in a Chinese course or are you better off learning on your own?
- Why your Chinese isn’t as good as you think it ought to be
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 4: Learning and remembering compound characters
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 3: Compound characters
- Using voice messaging as a stepping stone to Chinese conversations
- A smart method to discover problems with Mandarin sounds and tones
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 2: Basic characters, components and radicals
- The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell
- Hacking Chinese Podcast one-year anniversary Q&A
- Chinese language logging, part 3: Tools and resources for keeping track of your learning
- Chinese language learning in the twenty-first century: Towards a digital ecosystem? Interview with Julien Leyre
- The benefits of using Wikipedia to look up words when learning Chinese
- The new HSK 3.0: What you need to know
- Learning to understand regionally accented Mandarin
- The importance of tones is inversely proportional to the predictability of what you say
- Lost in transcription: Saylaw, Ice Island and Aristotle
- Chinese language logging, part 2: A healthy, balanced diet of Mandarin
- Chinese language logging, part 1: Why and how to track your progress
- What’s the difference between Chinese pronunciation and Pinyin? Does it matter?
- Learning the second tone in Mandarin Chinese
- Chinese input methods: A guide for second language learners
- 6 things in Chinese that are harder to learn than they seem
- Learning science in Chinese with 李永乐老师
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- Learning the third tone in Mandarin Chinese
- The most serious mistake students make when learning Mandarin pronunciation
- Best of Hacking Chinese 2020
- How to not fail with your New Year resolution to learn Chinese
- 7 things Chinese students should do during the winter vacation
- 9 answers to questions about Pinyin and pronunciation
- Are simplified characters really simpler to learn?
- An introduction to extensive reading for Chinese learners
- Review: Learning Chinese by video immersion with FluentU
- Why learning Chinese pronunciation by using English words is a really bad idea
- 7 mistakes I made when writing Chinese characters and what I learnt from them
- 7 ideas for smooth and effortless Chinese listening practice
- Should you learn the names of the strokes in Chinese characters?
- How to not teach Chinese characters to beginners: A 12-step approach
- Why not going to China now could actually be good for your Chinese
- Review: The Outlier Linguistics Dictionary of Chinese Characters
- All the resources you need to learn and teach Chinese stroke order
- Diversify how you study Chinese to learn more
- What important words are missing from TOCFL?
- What important words are missing from HSK?
- Improving your Chinese while watching TV shows
- Training your Chinese teacher, part 4: Writing ability
- Should you learn to speak Chinese before you learn Chinese characters?
- How to get honest feedback to boost your Chinese speaking and writing
- Are mnemonics too slow for Chinese learners?
- Learning Chinese words: When quantity beats quality
- When spaced repetition fails, and what to do about it
- Chinese is fascinating and exciting, not weird and stupid
- Dealing with Chinese characters you keep mixing up
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- How to figure out how good your Chinese is
- The simple trick I used to double the amount of Chinese I listen to
- 5 levels of understanding Chinese characters: Superficial forms to deep structure
- The forking path: A human approach to learning Chinese
- Does using colour to represent Mandarin tones make them easier to learn?
- How to get past the intermediate Chinese learning plateau
- How important is reading speed on tests like HSK and TOCFL?
- Can too much guidance make you learn less Chinese?
- Why is listening in Chinese so hard?
- Training your Chinese teacher, part 3: Listening ability
- Two types of pronunciation problems and what to do about them
- The nine principles of learning (and the mistakes from failing to follow them)
- Review: Mandarin Companion: Easy to read novels in Chinese
- 101 questions and answers about how to learn Chinese
- The most common Chinese words, characters and components for language learners and teachers
- 7 things you were taught in Chinese class that are actually wrong
- How good is voice recognition for learning Chinese pronunciation?
- Using speech recognition to improve Chinese pronunciation, part 1
- Training your Chinese teacher, part 2: Speaking ability
- The beginner’s guide to Chinese translation
- Tone errors in Mandarin that actually can cause misunderstandings
- Why using a good dictionary can be bad for your Chinese reading ability
- Free and easy audio flashcards for Chinese dictation practice with Anki
- Reading is a lot like spaced repetition, only better
- Training your Chinese teacher, part 1: Introduction
- Review: Language Empowerment: Demystify Chinese culture and fire up your Mandarin + interview with the author
- 36 samples of Chinese handwriting from students and native speakers
- How to improve your Chinese handwriting
- The Hacking Chinese guide to Mandarin tones
- Focusing on Chinese tones without being distracted by Pinyin
- Cramming vs. spaced repetition: When to use which method to learn Chinese
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- Five text games for Chinese learners
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- Chinese reading speed revisited
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- Task based Chinese learning and teaching
- Let’s play 迷霧中 (Into the Haze)
- Learning (or not learning) Chinese slang
- Playing Codenames to learn Chinese and other languages
- Into the Haze: A new text adventure game for Chinese learners
- Comprehension-based listening vs deep end immersion
- 8 great ways to scaffold your Chinese learning
- How to become a Chinese-English translator and what it’s like to be one
- 10 ways of using games to learn and teach Chinese
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- The benefits of a comprehension-based approach for teaching and learning Chinese
- An introduction to comprehension-based Chinese teaching and learning
- How to fake sounding like a native Chinese speaker
- Spaced repetition is not limited to flashcards
- Looking up how to use words in Chinese the right way
- Why you should preview before every Chinese lesson
- Three factors that decide how much Chinese you learn
- Obligatory and optional tone change rules in Mandarin
- Learn Chinese implicitly through exposure with a seasoning of explicit instruction
- 7 kinds of tone problems and what to do about them
- Learning Chinese by playing board games
- Expanding your Chinese with 一步一个脚印
- Overcoming the problem of having too many Chinese words to learn
- Learning to read handwritten Chinese
- Transcribing Chinese audio as an active form of listening practice
- Escape: A text adventure game for Chinese learners
- Are you practising Chinese the right way? Is your method valid?
- The benefits of using 语文/國文 textbooks to learn Chinese
- Accessing Chinese culture through cartoons
- How to talk about Chinese characters in Chinese
- Don’t forget to consolidate the Chinese you have already studied
- The best Twitter feeds for learning Chinese in 2016
- How going shopping can help you learn Chinese
- Why you should start blogging in Chinese today
- How technology can stop you from learning Chinese
- How technology can help you learn Chinese
- Which Chinese language course should you take?
- I have published a book!
- Should you learn the pronunciation of radicals?
- Learning Chinese through comprehensible input
- ChinesePod review: Your companion to Mandarin fluency
- What your Chinese course will not teach you
- Learn Chinese character meaning and pronunciation together
- Listen before you read: Improve your listening ability
- Learn Chinese faster by leaving your comfort zone
- Can you use English learning materials to study Chinese?
- Learning tones in Mandarin is not optional
- The Hacking Chinese free tone training course
- Learning to hear the sounds and tones in Mandarin
- How to verify that you use the right Chinese font
- Chinese character variants and fonts for language learners
- Learning to pronounce Mandarin with Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA: Part 3
- The real challenge with learning Chinese characters
- Improving pronunciation beyond the basics
- Which words you should learn and where to find them
- Can native speakers be wrong about Chinese grammar and pronunciation?
- Learning Chinese characters through pictures
- Panning: How to keep similar Chinese characters and words separate
- Zooming out: The resources you need to put Chinese in context
- Zooming in: The tools you need to break down and understand Chinese
- Chinese learning tools and resources worth paying for
- Why you should read Chinese on your phone
- Learning to pronounce Mandarin with Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA: Part 2
- Chinese listening practice with 锵锵三人行
- Learning to pronounce Mandarin with Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA: Part 1
- Learning Chinese through audiobooks
- Bite-sized learning isn’t enough to learn Chinese
- Review: Mandarin Companion graded readers (Level 1)
- The best Twitter feeds for learning Chinese in 2015
- Hone your Chinese writing ability by writing summaries
- Will a Chinese-only rule improve your learning?
- Using Chinese textbooks to improve reading ability
- The new paperless revolution in Chinese reading
- A minimum-effort approach to writing Chinese characters by hand
- How to adjust your Chinese listening to the right level
- Three steps to more and better Chinese listening practice
- What you intend to write is more important than the character you actually write
- 24 great resources for improving your Mandarin pronunciation
- How to find a suitable Chinese name
- Focus on initials and finals, not Pinyin spelling
- How knowing your best performance in Chinese can help you improve
- How translation to another language can help you learn Chinese
- How to find the time and motivation to read more Chinese
- Learning how to ask for and receive directions in Chinese
- Why you should think of characters in terms of functional components
- Launching Hacking Chinese Challenges
- Learning to write Chinese characters through communication
- Focusing on communication to learn Chinese
- Change your attitude to enjoy life and learn more Chinese
- How long have you studied Chinese? 290 years or 58 992 hours!
- About cheating, spaced repetition and learning Chinese
- Study more Chinese: Time boxing vs. micro goals
- 7 ways of learning to write Chinese characters
- How long have you studied Chinese?
- Is speaking more important than listening when learning Chinese?
- Focusing on radicals, character components and building blocks
- Improve your pronunciation with the Hacking Chinese pronunciation check
- Language learning with a Chinese girlfriend or boyfriend
- A learner’s guide to TV shows in Chinese, part 2
- Sensible character learning challenge 2014: The Big Finish
- How to reach a decent level of Chinese in 100 days
- Launching Hacking Chinese Resources
- A learner’s guide to TV shows in Chinese, part 1
- Sensible character learning challenge 2014: Milestone #3
- How and why to use television to learn Chinese
- How to find out how good your Chinese pronunciation really is
- The three roads to mastering Chinese
- How to Approach Chinese Grammar
- Sensible character learning challenge 2014: Milestone #2
- Handwriting Chinese characters: The minimum requirements
- Learn to read Chinese… with ease?
- The grand listening cycle: Improve your Chinese listening ability
- Three ways to improve the way you review Chinese characters
- Sensible character learning challenge 2014: Milestone #1
- Why good feedback matters and how to get it
- Sensible Chinese character learning challenge 2014
- Sensible Chinese character learning revisited
- Asking the experts: How to learn Chinese grammar
- Flashcard overflow: About card models and review directions
- Learning how to fish: Or, why it’s essential to know how to learn
- Two reasons why pronunciation matters more than you think
- Habit hacking for language learners
- Focusing on tone pairs to improve your Mandarin pronunciation
- Easing yourself into reading novels in Chinese
- A language learner’s guide to wuxia novels
- Wuxia, a key to Chinese language and culture
- 25 books I’ve read in Chinese, with reviews and difficulty ratings
- Chinese reading challenge: Read more or die
- Chinese immersion with Carl Gene Fordham
- Role-playing to learn more Chinese and avoid frustration
- Review: The Geography of Thought: How East Asians and Westerners Think Differently… And Why
- Learning to read aloud in Chinese
- Improving your spoken and written Chinese by focusing on the process
- Asking the experts: How to bridge the gap to real Chinese
- How to improve your Chinese writing ability through focused reading
- Drills and exercises aren’t only for beginners
- Preparing for rainy days and dealing with slumps
- Your slumps affect your language learning more than your flows
- About fossilisation and improving your Chinese pronunciation
- What’s your next step to master Chinese?
- 5 websites to help answer your questions about Chinese
- Reading aloud in Chinese is really hard
- Phonetic components, part 2: Hacking Chinese characters
- Phonetic components, part 1: The key to 80% of all Chinese characters
- Why manually adding and editing flashcards is good for you
- Why you need goals to learn Chinese efficiently
- Do you really know how to count in Chinese?
- 5 insights from the first year of a master’s program in Taiwan
- How to get good grades when studying Chinese
- The get-back-up-to-speed summer challenge
- Role-playing as a way to expand your Chinese
- Dealing with near-synonyms in Chinese as an independent learner
- What research can and cannot tell us about learning Chinese
- If you think spaced repetition software is a panacea you are wrong
- Learning how to learn Chinese through self-experimentation
- Using Audacity to learn Chinese (speaking and listening)
- You might be too lazy to learn Chinese, but you’re not too old
- Immersion at home or: Why you don’t have to go abroad to learn Chinese
- Learning the right chengyu the right way
- The question you have to ask about your Chinese teacher or course
- Is your flashcard deck too big for your own good?
- You shouldn’t walk the road to Chinese fluency alone
- 14 extra songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons
- 21 essential dictionaries and corpora for learning Chinese
- Horizontal vocabulary learning in Chinese
- The Cthulhu bubble and studying Chinese
- Improving your Chinese by translating from another language
- Don’t use mnemonics for everything
- How to create mnemonics for general or abstract character components
- Sensible character learning: Progress, reminders and reflections
- Remembering is a skill you can learn
- Towards a more sensible way of learning to write Chinese
- You can’t learn Chinese characters by rote
- Why you really should use a Chinese notebook
- Measuring your language learning is a double-edged sword
- Have fun learning Chinese or else…
- RTI, my favourite radio station
- 13 more songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons
- Learning Chinese in the shower with me
- Chat your way to better Chinese
- Learning styles: Use with caution!
- Vocalise more to learn more Chinese
- Don’t just read about language learning methods, try them!
- 12 songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons
- Learning Chinese with StarCraft 2
- Extending mnemonics: Tones and pronunciation
- The time barrel: How to find more time to study Chinese
- Why learning Chinese through music is underrated
- Chinese listening strategies: Diversify your listening practice
- 31 Twitter feeds to help you learn Chinese
- A language learner’s guide to reading comics in Chinese
- Approaches to reading in Chinese
- Chinese Language Learner Interview Series – Olle Linge
- Chinese listening strategies: Deliberate practice and i+2
- Chinese listening strategies: Improving listening speed
- Language is communication, not only an abstract subject to study
- Chinese listening strategies: Active listening
- Using Lang-8 to improve your Chinese
- Playing computer games in Chinese: Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2
- Chinese listening strategies: Passive listening
- Chinese listening strategies: Background listening
- Chinese listening strategies: Problem analysis
- Chinese listening strategies: An introduction
- Answer buttons and how to use SRS to study Chinese
- Defining Language Hacking: Lessons Learned From Hacking Chinese
- The importance of counting what counts when learning Chinese
- The 10,000 hour rule – Blood, sweat and tears
- Use the benefits of teaching to boost your own Chinese learning
- When perfectionism becomes an obstacle to progress
- Making progress in Chinese in spite of praise
- Learning simplified and traditional Chinese
- Learn by exaggerating: Slow, then fast; big, then small
- Can you become fluent in Chinese in three months?
- If you want to master Chinese, make long-term investments
- Chinese reading speed: Learning how to read ten lines at a glance
- Mapping the terra incognita of Chinese vocabulary
- The tones in Mandarin are more important than you think
- Reading manga in Chinese for more than just pleasure
- Triggering quantum leaps in Chinese listening ability
- About opening doors and the paths beyond
- The Chinese-Chinese dictionary survival guide
- Enjoying the journey while focusing on the destination
- Benchmarking progress in Chinese to stay motivated
- Learning Chinese the holistic way: Integrating knowledge
- Achieving the impossible by being inspired
- Don’t be a tourist if you want to learn Chinese language and culture
- How to find more time to practise Chinese listening
- Growing up in Chinese as a foreign adult
- Using memory aids and mnemonics to make Chinese easier
- Chinese vocabulary in your pocket
- Improve your conversations by listening to the listener
- Dealing with tricky vocabulary: Killing leeches
- Memorising dictionaries to boost Chinese reading ability
- Escaping the convenience trap to learn more Chinese
- Review: Chinese Synonyms Usage Dictionary
- Spaced repetition isn’t rote learning
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 4 – Micro goals
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 3 – Short-term goals
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 2 – Long-term goals
- Goals and motivation for learning Chinese, part 1 – Introduction
- Using search engines to study Chinese
- Anki, the best of spaced repetition software
- Chinese listening ability, a matter of practice?
- Spaced repetition software and why you should use it
- The virtues of learning Chinese through language exchange
- Learning Chinese through social media
- Making mistakes in Chinese is necessary to adjust your mental models
- Learning Chinese is easier than you think