How knowing a little Mandarin can take you a long, long way

Before I arrived in China last fall, I had already spent six years learning Mandarin. One would think my Chinese was good, but I was only really able to memorize vocabulary and study for tests. When it came to speaking, I'd stutter, forget words, and use the wrong grammar or tone - everything I'd learned would suddenly escape me. It was only when I started the Chinese class for my freshman year at Duke Kunshan University in Jiangsu province that I realized why I struggled so much, and how to improve my Chinese.

First, I had to put in the work outside of the classroom. When you have Chinese class every day, it's easy to think "I don't have time to study". But this will only hurt you in the long run. There is only so much you can learn from a textbook. You won't learn web slang or colloquial terms - you need to go out and find them yourself.

Second, the grade you get in class doesn't matter in the real world. The real test is when you go out and talk with people. So what if you have bad tones and incorrect grammar? We're all going to make mistakes, so you might as well have fun doing it.