Chinese mimicking challenge, September 2026

Mimicking native speakers is the single most powerful way of improving your pronunciation in Mandarin and other languages.

By listening attentively and trying to reproduce what you hear, you can work on basic sounds, tones, prosody and other aspects of pronunciation.

This month, instead of having a general speaking challenge, we’re going to focus entirely on mimicking. The idea is simple: choose short recordings of native speakers and try to produce your own versions that are as close to the original as possible, including everything.

The challenge starts on September 10th and lasts until the end of the month. Enrol in the challenge, set a reasonable time goal and start practising!

Improve your pronunciation with my pronunciation course (with a back-to-school discount)

This challenge is also a good opportunity to put some extra time and energy into your pronunciation. Hacking Chinese Pronunciation: Speaking with Confidence covers the sounds and tones of Mandarin, prosody and how to practise effectively, including a full lesson about mimicking native speakers.

As part of my current back-to-school course discount, you can save $31 on any course with the code kaixue, or save $128 when buying any three courses with the code buy3. Both discounts last through September 9 and can’t be combined.

I have published the mimicking lesson from the pronunciation course on YouTube, so you can watch it for free below. It explains how to approach mimicking and also includes an example of what it actually looks like in practice:

Hacking Chinese mimicking challenge, September 10-30

Hacking Chinese Challenges is about building language skills through daily practice and friendly competition.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to learn more about Hacking Chinese Challenges:

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

This is how you sign up and join the challenge:

1. Sign up (using your e-mail, Facebook or Twitter)
2. View current and upcoming challenges on the front page
3. Join the mimicking challenge
4. Set a reasonable goal for how much time you want to spend
5. Choose what you want to mimic and prepare your target audio
6. Report your progress on your computer or mobile device
7. Check the graph to see if you’re on track to reach your goal
8. Check the leaderboard to see how you compare to others
9. Share progress, tips and resources with fellow students

Please note: The challenge starts on the 10th, so even if you can join now, you won’t be able to report progress until then.

Setting a reasonable goal for the mimicking challenge

Mimicking is intensive practice, so don’t choose a goal based on how much ordinary speaking you could fit into three weeks. If you don’t study full-time, spending 20-40 minutes on this a few times per week is reasonable.

You can work with one recording for the entire challenge or use several. Spending a lot of time on a few short clips is perfectly fine and often better than rushing through large amounts of audio.

How to improve your Chinese by mimicking native speakers

I have written a detailed article about how to improve your Chinese pronunciation by mimicking native speakers, and the video above covers mostly the same method. If you just want to get started, though, the short version is:

1. Find suitable target audio. Choose your audio based on both your current level and what you want to learn. Keep it short or split longer clips into smaller parts. I suggest you choose something you have already listened to. Beginners can choose learner-oriented podcasts, but more advanced students should choose naturally produced language.
2. Make sure you understand it. Practising something you don’t understand makes little sense. Ideally, use audio with an accurate transcript so you don’t have to waste time producing one yourself.
3. Listen carefully and mimic aloud. Repeat the same snippet until you can follow the speaker closely. Pay attention to individual sounds and tones, as well as pacing, stress and intonation.
4. Record yourself and compare. Listen to your recording and the original both separately and at the same time (overlapping). Identify any differences and work on reducing those.
5. Get feedback when possible. A teacher, tutor or helpful native speaker can point out differences you don’t hear yourself. Then work on those and record another version.

You don’t need any special software to do this, although audio editing tools such as Audacity are both free and useful (that’s what I use in the video above).

A student in my pronunciation course also built the free Warble specifically for mimicking, which you can try if you want. If you’re enrolled in the pronunciation course and want to use the course audio in Warble, join the Hacking Chinese Discord server for instructions on how to access it.

Further reading about mimicking and pronunciation

If you want to explore related topics during the challenge, these newer Hacking Chinese articles are particularly relevant:

• How to learn Chinese pronunciation as a beginner
• The Hacking Chinese guide to Mandarin tones
• Learning to hear the sounds and tones in Mandarin
• 7 kinds of tone problems in Mandarin and what to do about them
• Don’t learn Mandarin pronunciation by reading; listen and mimic instead
• Get to know your Chinese voice to level up your speaking ability
• 24 great resources for improving your Mandarin pronunciation

Chinese tones explained: The four Mandarin tones

Preliminary challenge schedule for 2026

Here is a preliminary list of challenges for 2026, but I’m always open to ideas. Based on user participation, surveys, as well as my own opinion, reading and listening challenges are particularly helpful for a large number of people, followed by those focusing on vocabulary. These will recur more often throughout the year, with other, more specific challenges in between.

Challenges last for roughly three weeks. They always start on the 10th of each month and last until the end of that month. Three weeks is enough to get a significant amount of studying, but not so long that people lose focus. This also leaves ten days of breathing space between challenges.

1. January: Writing
2. February: Listening
3. March: Speaking
4. April: Reading
5. May: Vocabulary
6. June: Listening
7. July: Writing
8. August: Reading
9. September: Mimicking
10. October: Listening
11. November: Vocabulary
12. December: Reading