About Us

Our Story

Learn with Friends was founded by Jeff and Jordan, two friends who discovered the power of learning Chinese together.

In 2015, I (Jeff) made the bold decision to move to China. Eager to fully immerse myself in the culture and connect with the people around me, I knew that learning Mandarin was essential. Shortly after, I (Jordan) followed, drawn by the same sense of adventure and opportunity. We both found ourselves navigating the challenges of daily life in a new country while trying to pick up one of the world's most complex languages.

Like many language learners, we tried various approaches, apps, textbooks, one-on-one tutors, but progress felt slow and often discouraging. It wasn't until we started studying together online that everything changed. Even when living in different cities, we would jump on video calls, attend classes together, quiz each other on vocabulary, and push each other to keep going when motivation was low.

The accountability, the shared vocabulary practice, the friendly competition, and the mutual encouragement transformed our learning experience. We made more progress in months of studying together than we had in years of studying alone.

Now, over a decade into our Chinese journey and well on our way to fluency, we wanted to share what we'd learned. We created learnwithfriends.co.uk, a platform that makes it easy for groups of friends to learn Chinese together with professional native-speaking teachers, at times that suit them, and at an affordable price.

Our Mission

We believe that language learning should be social, affordable, and effective. By combining the motivation of learning with friends, the structure of an HSK-aligned curriculum, and the expertise of native-speaking teachers, we're making fluency achievable for everyone.