Great Language-Learning Tips by Will Hart

When I woke up this morning, I watched a video by the British YouTuber Will Hart summarizing his Mandarin Chinese learning journey from zero to fluency. It was full of useful tips for achieving fluency regardless of which language you study, so I’ve favorited the video and also shared it on social media to be able to refer back to it whenever I need direction in my own studies of foreign languages.

If you’ve never heard of him, Will Hart (known as 何威 in Chinese) is a famous YouTuber in the language-learning community. What’s remarkable about him is that he’s learned to speak Mandarin from complete beginner level to native-like fluency within two years. As a fluent speaker of Chinese, I can vouch for his mastery of correct grammar, extensive vocabulary, and flawless Beijing-accented pronunciation.

For my own future reference, I summarize as follows the major takeaways from this video:

First, the importance of finding a conversation partner of your target language from a very early stage, and clocking up hundreds—if not thousands—of hours of conversation with them. In Will’s case, he made friends with Ryan, a young Chinese man attending the same school as him, merely two weeks into his study of Mandarin.

Ryan talked to him in Chinese for one hour every day for four months; in exchange, he taught Ryan’s sister math. In the beginning, Ryan’s Chinese hardly made any sense to him, but as he toughed it out in these conversation sessions, his level of Mandarin comprehension improved by leaps and bounds.

Come to think of it, I’m also practicing this method—albeit far less intensely—with my English and French teachers on the online language-learning platform italki. Given my busy schedule as a working professional, I can only manage a one-hour session per week for each language. Accordingly, my progress has been very gradual. However, I believe that persistence is key in achieving fluency over the long term, so I’m determined to keep up my weekly lessons for many years.

In the case of my English, more than five years have passed since I started taking lessons with my Canadian teacher. For the first two years, we’ve experimented with various methods, such as practicing accent reduction and having discussions based on magazine articles. In 2023, we settled into the routine of critiquing my own writing by juxtaposing it with its ChatGPT revisions. I can feel that my fluency in the language has improved substantially ever since. 

This method has also enabled me to understand the essential differences between American and British English, which I used to be quite confused about at best. Nowadays, I can tell whether a particular piece of writing sounds more American or British just by looking at a few paragraphs—a testament to my improved ability to perceive written content with native-like sensitivity.

Second, the effectiveness of using a spaced repetition system, as well as practicing active recall. With the latest flashcard apps like Anki, we can now easily structure a vocabulary-building plan in which a word can be reviewed multiple times at increasing intervals. This technology greatly facilitates long-term memorization of words. Even if you create only 10 to 20 flashcards a day, they can add up to thousands after a year.

Also, the active recall method, in which the meaning of the headword appears on the front side of the flashcard with the headword appearing on the reverse side, fortifies your ability to use the word actively, rather than merely knowing its meaning passively.

Lastly, the importance of creating a passive immersive environment in which you can consume native content in your idle time, such as listening to podcasts in your target language while commuting or doing housework, or watching television shows or movies for entertainment—even if you don’t live in a country where your target language is spoken, you can still obtain sufficient exposure if you’re determined.

Will Hart is one of the very few YouTubers focused on language-learning that I truly admire, and I’m really glad that I found his channel. While I might never be able to study languages as intensely as he does, I can certainly take a page or two out of his playbook to enhance my efficiency. I look forward to witnessing my future improvements after implementing a few of his recommended methods.