No More Charades

I can't tell you how many mornings I dreaded rolling out of bed in Beijing because I knew I would have to talk.

My host mom loved to start the day with breakfast and a conversation. She would give me a terrifyingly quick mouthful of Mandarin, watch me struggle, slow down her speech and then patiently listen. Her efforts were in good faith, but they overstressed my groggy brain.

Words would catch in my throat as I would frantically try to muster verbs, subjects, nouns, exclamations—anything I could use to string together a sentence, half a sentence, or a meaningful cluster of phrases. I even searched the nearly bare dining room for objects that matched what I wanted to say.

And when nothing worked, we would play charades.

Photo from: http://chinesepod.com/

I was willing to try anything that would aid in making my mornings less painful, so I hired a private tutor, borrowed stacks of Chinese language guide books from a university library, and spent countless hours perusing nciku.com, an online Chinese-English dictionary.

All of these resources helped, but I later found a simpler solution that I suspect expats of all ages will appreciate: ChinesePod. ChinesePod offers more than 1,300 free podcasts, divided into levels from “newbie” to “advanced,” that give approximately 10 minute Mandarin lessons.

Whether you're walking your dog in the park, driving to work or living out your busy schedule, ChinesePod's themed lessons and witty hosts make learning Chinese as easy as learning the lyrics to your new favorite song. Topics cover a large range of daily activities, including playing sports, taking a train and dining with friends.

ChinesePod began in Shanghai in 2005 to make learning a language more accessible. Anyone with a computer and mp3 player can brush up on their skills or access vocabulary games and other exercises that are fun for the family, available on ChinesePod's Web site.

After a summer full of mostly futile foreign language communication, my host mom assured me that my Chinese improved by a large percent. I'm sure she'd like to think that these modest improvements are largely because of her, so I won't tell her that my ChinesePod is only earbuds away.