What do you do when you want to pass Mandarin on to your kids, but you never really learned it yourself? Jeanne Chang — creator of the blog Mama & Baby Learn Mandarin and @mamababymandarin on Instagram — grew up Taiwanese-American speaking only Taiwanese at home. When she had her own kids, she decided to learn Mandarin right alongside them.

Jeanne joins Angela and Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression partner teacher Crystal Hsia to talk about what it actually takes to teach a language you're still learning: how she built her own resources when she couldn't teach her kids herself (including creating her own local Mandarin summer camp), and how digging into what existed back in Taiwan to immerse her kids turned into a blog she's now been writing for over 8 years.

Her own Mandarin is the proof — listening to this episode, it's hard to believe she didn't speak any at the start of her parenting journey. So to every bilingual parent and aspiring bilingual parent out there: you can do this too.

This conversation ran long, so we split it into two episodes. Come back for Part 2, where we get into identity.

In this episode you'll learn vocab like:

沉浸式 / 沉浸式 / chén jìn shì — immersion / immersive

過時 / 过时 / guò shí — outdated

學習曲線 / 学习曲线 / xué xí qǔ xiàn — learning curve

…and more.

Learn more about Jeanne and her work at her blog, Mama & Baby Learn Mandarin, and on Instagram at @mamababymandarin.

📝 Want the full transcript in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English with vocab highlighted? Join the Podcast Transcript Membership to unlock all past and future transcripts. Download a free transcript from episode 1 to check out the format before joining.

🎓 Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression — the course built for American-born Chinese (ABCs), American-born Taiwanese (ABTs), and advanced Mandarin learners who want to express their real selves in Mandarin. Try a free lesson today to see if the format is a good fit for you.