Reviewing 2025

This blog has been quiet in 2025. For one thing, blogs already seem to be a relic of the past (did you know that kids in the high school IB program learn “blog” as a text type, and they have no clue what it is at all until they learn about it in high school?). For another, there’s just a lot going on in my life. More to write about, perhaps, but less time to do it.

So today I thought I’d share a bit about what I’ve finished in 2025. I’ve done a lot of “quiet releases,” and in 2026 I’ll need to spend more efforts getting the word out.

2025 Releases

1. Nex Kids Press book 3. I haven’t said much about the English kids’ books I’ve been working on with my friend Kuan since 2023. They don’t fit in with my “Chinese learning” theme because they’re entirely in English. They evolved out of my own needs, raising bilingual children in Shanghai with minimal English in the environment. Now Kuan (the illustrator of the books) is reading them with his own son. The concept is phonics-based beginner readers with a superhero theme. They’re really fun! Anyway, we had planned to release book 3 in 2025, but it looks like we didn’t quite make it. Early 2026 it is!
   
   
2. ARC Plus subscription content. I’ve been doing Advanced Readings in Chinese (ARC) with my friend Pete for years already. It’s a free Substack newsletter. This past summer we released ARC plus, a paid subscriber add-on which includes audio to supplement the readings. It’s been a fun product to create, and we’ve been using AI as a big part of the process. (Free samples of ARC Plus were released in July and are still available online: #207, #208, #209.)
   
   
3. Learn Chinese Characters by Reading (a book). This one evolved out of the idea of stripping down learning to read characters to the very basics: recognizing individual characters as part of simple sentences. It emerged organically out of my decade of work with AllSet Learning clients and also benefited from my work with graded readers at Mandarin Companion. What if you spent only the minimum amount of time learning about character etymologies, semantic components, etc. and focused more on just reading? Well, this book is the result! It can be done. And if you want to see the core 200 characters you learn in the book, you can do so online for free.
   
   
4. AllSet GO: a beginner Chinese course in 10 video lessons. It’s a course designed to prepare beginners to do online lessons in Chinese. As such, the videos mimic video chats, and all of the vocabulary and interaction patterns you learn are focused on communication via online chat. It’s hard to believe that my friend Rob and I originally filmed this way back in 2020. We decided not to release it back then because of covid and a drop in interest in Chinese. Well, we’re done waiting! (Samples also available on Youtube.)
   
   
5. But what about Mandarin Companion Chinese graded readers?? One thing I unfortunately can’t announce for 2025 is the release of our latest Mandarin Companion book, Robin Hood (Level 2). Yes, this one has been a long time in the making, and it’s very nearly done, but technical issues have resulted in more delays than I’d care to write about. However, Jared and I have continued to release You Can Learn Chinese podcasts all year.
   

Back in the Classroom

Why have I been so busy in 2025? Well, I haven’t talked about it on Sinosplice, but in recent years I’ve become an IBDP (International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme) teacher here in Shanghai. AllSet Learning and Mandarin Companion are still going but are not quite as busy as they once were, so I’m finding new ways to keep me exploring the modern education space, especially as AI hogs the EdTech spotlight in recent years.

I’m learning so much from high school kids! I’ve realized that it’s been kind of a blind spot for me, as I continue to learn about my adopted country every day. And now with cell phone culture and AI everywhere, there’s never been a better time to learn more about it. I’ve already got one teenager (she just turned 14 this year) and will have two pretty soon. So it’s good to be more familiar with what they’re facing. They’re also doing IB (the Middle Years Programme) here in Shanghai.

Reflecting on AI

There’s a lot to say about AI, but there’s also a lot of backlash out there. (I’m relatively sheltered from that backlash here in Shanghai, but I read a lot about it.) I’d love to hear what my readers think. (For my thoughts on language learning in the age of AI, see the podcast linked to above.)

Personally, I am interested in AI and invested in it (my current favorites are Google AI Studio and Google Notebook LM), but also sympathetic to the problems it may bring and that it’s already bringing. Yeah, AI slop kinda sucks (especially Sora 2 video slop), but I am quite optimistic that something really good for humanity will emerge from all the slop. Maybe not from OpenAI, but I do think we’ll see a lot more good come out of AI in 2026. I’ve got two new projects I’m working on in 2026, both related to AI and one to Chinese language learning, and I’m really optimistic about the future.

Here’s wishing everyone an excellent 2026!