Who am I?

Hi there! My name is Natalia and I am a biomedical engineering PhD student who is passionate about self-learning learning languages. In particular, I am currently studying Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. I can also speak fluently Spanish (my mother tongue), English and French.

The aim of this blog

By making this blog I want to help you achieve your language learning goals. To do so, I will share with you motivation and study tips, detailed textbook reviews, study methods and interesting tools that I rely on daily, reviews on different immersion materials (novels, manga, games…) and anything else that I think you will find useful in your study journey.

If you don’t want to miss any of these, I suggest you subscribe to my newsletter ;)

🇯🇵 Learning journey

I began studying Japanese in September 2013, but due to being busy with my engineering studies and the fact that I kept seeking the “perfect method” to master this language, I did not actually study much but rather spent endless hours on Reddit.

This changed in October 2021, when I decided to open a studygram account and to just begin studying daily, worrying less about using the ideal study tools and just focusing on making progress on the language. This change of mindset helped me pass the JLPT N3 in July 2022 with an score of 180/180, and the JLPT N2 5 months later, with a score of 166/180. Currently, I am working using different approaches to pass the N1 in December of this year.

🇨🇳 Learning journey

After finding out about MDZS by watching the Chinese drama The Untamed, I decided I wanted to invest the time to learn the language to be able to enjoy other dramas. I had previously been interested in Mandarin when I was young, but at the time I lacked the discipline and motivation to actually learn it.

This time, however, confident that my Japanese kanji knowledge would prove useful, I took the leap in July 2022 and began studying it. First, I employed the app HelloChinese, but eventually jumped to Anki a few months later, picked up the textbook A course in Contemporary Chinese and made it a routine to learn a bit everyday after waking up at 6 a.m.

What about you? What are your language learning study goals and motivations? :)