FAQs
A language coach is like a personal trainer, but for languages.
When you decide you want to get in shape, you might book a gym membership. But then when you arrive at the gym, you don’t know what all the different machines are, let alone what exercises to do. To solve this problem, you may hire a personal trainer to guide you through the process.
As someone who has decided to learn Chinese, you may find yourself in a similar position. You might not know what resources to use, be confused about what to actually do in order to learn, and overwhelmed by the whole process.
This is where language coaching comes in. As a coach, I will identify the most useful resources and methods to help you achieve your goals, help you to develop an effective learning plan, keep you accountable when you’re unmotivated, and guide you through the whole process.
I will also be able to understand what level you are at and what you’re struggling with, then provide you with the material and guidance that will help you to reach the next level.
By teaming up with a coach who has achieved your dream results, you will remove the guesswork so that you can focus your time and energy on achieving your goals faster.
A language coach will work with you to create effective learning habits, find the most useful resources and methods, keep you accountable, provide encouragement, and guide you to overcome any challenges that arise.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, you’ll be able to draw on the experience of someone who has achieved the results that you’re hoping to achieve yourself. Wouldn’t that be easier and faster?
Going through the traditional route of attending language classes can be productive, but unfortunately the majority of people never make it past very elementary Chinese. In traditional classes you often learn about Mandarin, without ever actually learning to understand and speak Mandarin. You often receive instruction while in class, but the guidance around how to study and improve ends at the classroom door. Such classes require a lot of effort for no guarantee of success.
My goal as a language coach is to equip you with the skills to become a confident and independent language learner for life. This means you’ll be able to direct your own Chinese learning with free resources, study with the confidence that you’ll achieve your goals, and apply this skillset to not only Chinese, but also any language you ever want to learn.
I’m Ace Buck, and in a nutshell, I’m a successful, experienced and passionate language learner who wants to help others learn Chinese in a more enjoyable, meaningful and easy way.
My language learning started in school when I received a near-perfect final French grade of 99/100 after two full years of assessment. This afforded me a fully funded scholarship to Australia’s most prestigious university. During my time at university, I was granted a scholarship from the French government to spend 7 months in France studying sociology (entirely in French). I also started learning Mandarin Chinese and skipped 1.5 years of the university curriculum because of how fast I advanced through self-study. This culminated in placing second in the global finals of the International “Chinese Bridge” Chinese Proficiency Competition in mainland China. I followed up on that experience by immersing myself in Chinese for 3 months when studying at the Mandarin Training Center of the National Taiwan Normal University.
Through these experiences, I have learned first-hand about effective language learning techniques and mastering languages – especially Mandarin Chinese. Most importantly, I’ve experienced the world of exciting new opportunities that open up to you when you learn a new language.
In our first session, in addition to getting to know each other, building rapport and giving you the opportunity to ask any questions you may have, I will introduce you to my coaching program.
Our first goal will be simple: to make sure we’re clear about the effective language learning methods we will use. Then we will focus on choosing the right resources to use for study, fixing a start date in the calendar to begin striving towards your new goals, planning how to make use of “dead time” in your routine to easily and significantly speed up your progress, as well as planning when you will do active study and scheduling it in the calendar.
In ongoing coaching sessions we can discuss in more detail: what learning methods are effective, what resources you should use, how to set and achieve long term goals, how and when you should study, how to stay motivated, how to overcome the fear of looking stupid and making mistakes, how to fit language learning into a busy schedule, how to build effective learning habits, how to leverage your calendar to stay consistent, and we will work together to keep you accountable and make sure that you stay on track.
More concretely, we will discuss the importance of: consistency, consuming large amounts of “comprehensible and compelling input” to help your brain naturally identify the patterns of a language, making use of “dead time” to rapidly progress your language skills (time when your body is occupied but your mind is free), doing “deliberate practice” through activities like intensive reading, intensive listening, language tutoring, language exchanges and structured study, how to make use of language tutors as well as language exchange partners and friends to overcome the fear of speaking and making mistakes, using “choral repetition” to achieve your pronunciation goals, and integrating Chinese into your life over time so that you no longer have to “study” it, but you instead “live” it.