My Duolingo is HarleyLecter if anyone would like to add me! That’s actually my name pretty much everywhere, so if you come across it, it’s me haha
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I speak Mandarin too! I started classes in 7th grade and have been learning for 5 years now. I just passed the AP Chinese exam 
I’m not quite fluent yet, so I have to keep practicing! I hope to study a semester in China during college so that I can really improve. My best strength is reading comprehension, my weakest is probably listening (because I don’t have Mandarin spoken at home…or anywhere). What helped me with listening the most was using CDs from AP prep books. I would listen to a section in Chinese, then summarize or translate what I think was said to a native speaker. If I was right, I would move on. If I was really wrong, I would listen again, taking notes on words that I recognize or are important. I want to get into more Chinese shows and movies but…I haven’t found any good ones (I’m sorry!). If you guys have recommendations for amazing Chinese movies, I would love to check them out.
I’ve learned that the most important thing for language learning is vocab. Learn as many words as you can, and store them in a quizlet so you can study them again and retain the info. I know so many people who learn vocab, pass the test, but forget the words a week later because they never studied them again. Quizlet also has fun games like matching and gravity that make vocab much less boring. I’ve always accumulated new vocab from textbooks, but I recently downloaded Drops. It’s an app that is just purely new words with visuals, and it comes in a variety of languages. It’s technically free to download but you can only study for 5 minutes unless you buy a subscription (which isnt too expensive).
For fellow mandarin learners, Pleco is a life saver. It’s a chinese/English dictionary with a lot of great features.
As for general language learning apps go, I personally don’t use duolingo. I felt like a lot of the vocab and sentences were random and not very useful. A better app (in my opinion!) is Memrise, which offers a bit more freedom in what you choose to learn and is more efficient.
The app HelloTalk will SAVE YOUR GRADES AND YOUR GRAMMAR. It’s a language exchange app where you can post updates and questions and homework to native speakers trying to learn English. I’ve met many pen pals on there. Currently I have 941 unread messages (and I delete often). There is no limit to the opportunities to connect to native speakers and improve your speaking and writing ability.
Ok I’ll stop ranting for now. Let me know if you guys have had similar experiences with any of these apps or if you have chinese movie recommendations 
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I just picked up Duolingo again after forever. My username is Sarahlynch0 if anyone wants to add me.
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I am arguably fluent in American English. I say arguably because having a large vocabulary has, for me, resulted in never being able to actually find the word I’m looking for and ending up sounding like a total airhead.
I know a bit of Spanish, but I’m much better at speaking and reading it because I sometimes have difficulty auditorily processing English at a conversational pace, let alone anything I’m not fluent in.
I’ve picked up an intuitional(?)/etymological understanding of some French, Italian, and Latin from my years of singing and also their similarities with Spanish.
I’d love to learn Gaelic at some point, but haven’t acquired the discipline to self study it yet. I’m picking up a smattering of old Scots-Gaelic reading Outlander, though. 
I also used to have a “fluency” in what vocabulary from the Hawkbrothers’ language we were gifted in the Valdemar series.
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Yeah I totally get what you mean with that first part, having a large vocabulary in a language definitely does not mean fluency. I know at least a thousand words in Polish but still struggle to put together basic sentences, though that is also due in part to the complexity of slavic languages in general.
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The sad part is that English, the one I’m only arguably fluent in, is my native language. So I have no excuses other than that I’m searching through too large of a file system at any given time.
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A good app to learn Chinese is Lingodeer! In fact, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are all amazing languages to learn there. Also, download Pleco as an offline Chinese dictionary. Those are both some really good places to learn from.
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My native language is English.
I’ve taken 4 years of Latin, 2 years of Spanish, and 1 year of French in High School while learning Korean on my own (very slowly), and did 2 summers at a Korean Language Immersion Camp (which I now work at in the summers as a cook since I aged out of the program and my Korean is not good enough to be a counselor). Now in college, I took a year of German for fun, and my major is…Chinese! It’s a lot…but I’m in it to be fluent.
Korean and Chinese are my ultimate goals to be fluent in, and if I were to add on another language right now, I want to start relearning Latin and French, but a new language would be Cree, and Japanese (after I master more Chinese and Korean).
In January of 2020, I will study abroad in southern China. I’m scared because the government is terrifying, but excited to become more fluent and eat delicious food! I also hope that I get into the CLS program for Korean so that I may study abroad next summer in Korea learning Korean.
If anyone would like to practice, hit me up!
Also, some good language apps and tips that I’ve learned over the years:
- Listening practice is more important than you think, and you should try to listen in the language as much as possible! Podcasts, movies, music, etc. Even with subtitles on, it’s still very effective.
- Lingodeer is an amazing language learning app for East Asian languages! It started off as just a Japanese language learning app, and has now expanded since.
- HiNative is a great resource if you don’t like HelloTalk that much (me, because I’ve met some very mean people on there)
- Writing in the language, even if you’re just copying it down from a passage in front of you is a great way to memorize
- YouTubers. I have found that there are some amazing YouTubers who give some great study tips that are interesting and build up your confidence in wanting to learn the language that you’re currently studying. I highly recommend Ikenna and Lindie Botes.
- Reading out loud or just from any book, whether it’s a kids book or a chapter book is a great way to learn grammar and new vocabulary
Dictionary apps:
Chinese: Pleco (is also an offline app)
Korean: Naver Dictionary (needs wifi/data)
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I’ve had unpleasant experiences with HelloTalk as well. Either people being rude or simply exchanging a few quick remarks then never responding again. I’ve always had a little bit of interest in Korean simply because I like the look of the writing system which is incredibly simple to get the hang of for the most part.
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Thank King Sejong for that!!
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I always avoid language exchange apps or sites because of that, I just never really find people that I work well with. I greatly prefer in-person language exchanges or classes.
I tutored English professionally online for a while and I absolutely hated it, every single moment was scripted. At least in my classroom I can plan my own lessons, even if I do have to cover certain parts of the textbook.
It’s a bit surprising how well you can adapt drinking games to language learning.
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The problem I find is that I’m mainly learning Polish which is a very uncommon language to learn, so there aren’t nearly as many resources as there are for other “mainstream” languages.
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You should download FlashAcademy then, it’s like Drops meets Duolingo and I’m sure that it has Polish on it. I remember watching some YouTuber who had it and was learning Polish.
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I’ll definitely take a look at it, thanks for the suggestion!
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I am honestly surprised by the amount of Mandarin learners here. I, too, am somewhat proficient in Mandarin Chinese after taking an 18-month crash course for work where I literally ate, slept, and breathed Chinese. At the end of it, I was considered to have a “working proficiency” in that I could carry on a conversation about global warming with a native speaker (actually part of my final test). That was in 2014, though, and despite it still being part of my job description (I’m a “linguist”), it has faded drastically. I blame that on progressing to the point in my career where I spend more time reading others’ translations for quality control rather than translating anything myself. That, and the fact that I’m preparing dramatically change careers.
While I mostly use work-provided tools to study, I love a good drama or episode of running man to boost my listening. Pleco works fine, as well, especially if you have the active reader tool enabled (I think you need to pay for this), you can also make your own flash card lists in notebook and upload them to study on your own.
In addition to Chinese, I also took four years of Spanish in High School, and 2 years of German in college. Both of which I now only remember very specific songs in… I would like to go back to German some day, though, that was a really fun language. I also did a bit of Latin as part of my biochemistry study, but it was very focused.
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Yesss Running man! I have accidentally learned a lot of Korean from that even though my focus is Japanese I just love the show too much
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I am a native american english speaker, who knows a handful of spanish words (thanks to a failed spanish class for one semester in high school), I know a handful of japanese words (and wanting to learn more) thanks to my love and obsession of japanese anime, I want to learn ancient greek, as well as as many ancient languages as possible, I also want to learn the Scotish Gaelic because of my ancestery. And whatever ancient language that might have come from Wales because of ancestry is what I also want to learn.
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Gaelic and Welsh are definately fun to learn, and not so bad to learn beside eachother as they come for a common language (Brythonic). As someone who speaks a little Welsh, I’ve always wanted to learn Irish Gaelic. Ancient Greek is definately a fun one as I remember sentences being a little weirdly structured from my limited time doing Classics.
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Been learning Esperanto lately to add to my mental library. I don’t know anyone who actually speaks it, but if anyone here does, lemme know!
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I learned some a while back when I first got into language learning, but it’s been a few years. I could work on it again if you want to get some mutual practice.
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