2026-09-20 HSK 3 Start

I particularly love languages (most of the time) I love hearing most other languages and trying to figure out how people are communicating with them. I like spending time learning the grammar and the words and sentence structure. It's a great intellectual challenge for me to learn and understand. Now does this make me a super hyper polyglot, no... I speak my native English, a smattering of French, and I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for around 2.5 years. I am only just now getting onto HSK 3. For may people they will ask, "What is taking you so long?!?" to which I can only answer, I am slower at picking it up than a lot of other learners. And it is not for a lack of trying, twice a week tutoring, using Apps, and doing my best to watch content in Chinese when I can. Still, I am not a fast learner, but because I don't have a deadline with this I will continue and eventually I will be conversant in Mandarin and probably have an obvious foreigner accent. But as long as I can be understood, and I can understand what is being talked about, or can read books and reply to messages sent to me... I think I will be okay.

So yes I am just starting HSK 3 level of material (not everything I study uses the HSK Leveling system) I am currently using the HSK 3 books from 2013 even though I do own the newer HSK 3 books released earlier this year. It's a little too new for my teacher, so we will stick to the older set for now... but as I have the newer set I will incorporate those into my studies as well, but they are not the main focus. When completing HSK3 probably late 2027 or more likely mid 2028, my teacher and I will move to HSK 4 of the 2026 textbooks which were just released (not the workbooks yet just the textbooks). I ordered mine from Purple Culture, and they are still waiting to get on a plane in Shenzhen China.

It's funny because I am flying to Beijing in less than a week and they will not arrive before I leave. That is fine, as I said I won't actually NEED those books until probably 2028, when I will have two two textbooks (HSK 4上，& HSK 4下）and their accompanying textbooks. No rush.

I will try to post my notes here, and any related material which might be of use to me later... maybe others... doubtful though.