I first came to Taiwan in 1999 and quickly discovered how little Mandarin I knew. I could barely understand anything that most people said and could say very little myself. However, the university course had given me a good grounding in the basics of the language. I had a basic vocabulary, reasonable pronunciation and an understanding of the grammar. This was a good foundation to build on and my abilities improved rapidly.

Soon after I arrived in Taiwan I attended a special class organised by the school where I was teaching English. The class was attended by a group of English teachers. Our teacher, Hsiao-yi (小意), was also an English teacher. She used communicative ESL teaching methods to teach Mandarin. We were only allowed to speak Mandarin in class and through the games and activities we both had a lot of fun and learned a lot of Mandarin! I will be forever grateful to my teacher. She took a lot of time to encourage me and gave me the confidence to speak Mandarin.

Subsequently, various periods of time spent living in Taiwan and China has been invaluable for learning Mandarin. A lot of the language skills I acquired simply came through talking with friends and other people I met rather than formal study.

Since returning to Taiwan in 2006 I have been focusing on learning to read Chinese. This is not easy, but I feel I have made good progress and reached a level where I can read newspaper articles.