The lunar new year starts on January 23, 2012.

新年快樂! / 新年快乐! (xīn nián kuài lè! - Happy New Year!)

Learn more Mandarin Chinese phrases related to the Lunar New Year with the Chinese New Year audio lesson.

When you are learning a new language, try to immerse yourself in an environment where you can hear and speak that language on a daily basis. Without this regular practice, language study becomes an academic exercise.

This fact is easily demonstrated in Taiwan, where all high school students study English, but few can speak it.

To overcome this problem, a small town in Taiwan has created an environment where residents can communicate with each other in English.

According to the Focus Taiwan website, the town of Huwei in Taiwan's Yunlin county created the Dongren International English Village to help students improve their English.

The goal is to get the whole community speaking English. Adults can take free lessons so they can help the children.

The project "has become one of the most successful programs of its kind in Taiwan, attracting the attention of local media and other schools around the country that hope to learn from the Dongren experience."

So for all of you learning Mandarin Chinese, try to use your language skills at every opportunity. If you have few opportunities to speak Mandarin, use Taiwan's Dongren as a model and create your own environment where your fellow students can speak to each other on a regular basis.

I always like to hear about Taiwan's annual speech contest for foreign students. Many of the contestants have been studying Mandarin for less than two years, yet in that time have managed to reach a level of fluency that allows them to make a public speech with confidence.

The winner this year was Pare Joagni, a student from Burkino Faso. As reported on the Focus Taiwan website, he said he works hard learning Mandarin so that he can be Taiwan's first black president.

Joagni spoke for 5 minutes, using humor to win over the judges, telling about the language mistakes he made when he first arrived in Taiwan.

The Five Chinese Elements are 金 - jīn (metal), 水 - shuǐ (water), 木 - mù (wood), 火 - huǒ (fire), and 土 - tǔ (earth).

Although they are often translated as "elements", the Mandarin Chinese term 五行 (wǔ xíng) more accurately means "the five phases" or "the five permutations", since each of the elements are dependent on the others.

The five elements are fundamental to Chinese culture and thought, so an understanding of them will help you with your Mandarin Chinese studies.

Read more about the Five Elements...