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Learning Mandarin? Some tips for you.

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Shanghai Expat Forum Index » City Living Forums » Learning Language

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angelmae701

Squeeker

Joined: Nov 23, 2008
Posts: 15

Status: Offline

Posted: Aug 05, 2009 - 09:59 AM
Post subject: Learning Mandarin? Some tips for you.

I have been teaching Mandarin for several years, had sweat and had fun. Hopefully, the following tips could help you.

1. Group class or 1-1?
First, large group class is no good except for fulltime students. Sit in a big classroom, take notes, read in crowd. It’s cheap, but boring.

If you are in a small group class, that makes you laugh all the time, has plenty of interactive games and activities, then congratulations! That’s a typical good group class.

The best part of 1-1 class, is you get to know anything you want. You know what I am talk about, there are things they never teach in formal class but people use A LOT! That’ a good start, cuz people learn bad things really fast. LoL. Generally, 1-1 is good. But I STRONGLY recommend not sticking on the damn boring textbook. If you spend 1 hour on the book, spend 2 more on chatting! Anything related to what you just learned. Anything you are interested in, curious about; rumors, gossip, just anything. And USE CHINESE to chat! So don’t waste your money, chat chat chat!

2. Price
You get what you pay for! Don’t tell me you believe 50rmb/hour and 500rmb/hour could possibly deliver the same quality. And don’t tell me you think a 30rmb/h teacher is at the same level of a 300rmb/h one.
Try out different price levels, they all have free class.
3. Go out and speak!
Many people learned algebra in high school, OK, can you still do a matrix multiply? At least I can’t. Not because it’s hard or I’m dumb (well, hard to say), I forgot because I never used it!

Dude, you are living in China. Talk with locals whenever you can. You speak English to Chinese, you tolerate their English and they learn from you; you speak Chinese to Chinese, you torture them, learn from them, and for free!

Taxi drivers are the perfect daily victims.

4. Overhearing is a good habit!
I’m not abetting you. But people do use a lot of simple words in daily talk. When you are in an elevator, your office or on the street, cock your ears! However, watch out Shanghai dialect! It doesn’t bite, but kind of annoying.

5. Characters are very important and useful
Pinyin is not Chinese, it helps you to start up, but won’t go far. Learn to read can dramatically improve your learning. You know, illiteracy is bad.

That’s all I can think of for now.
If you don’t agree with me, fresh eggs and tomatoes are welcomed!

Last but not least, Welcome to visit my school at www.gomandarin.net or call 5830-5576.

Good luck!

[img]http://www.shanghaiexpat.com/images/yellowpage/gomandarin.gif[/im g

Last edited by angelmae701 on Dec 01, 2009 - 09:51 AM; edited 1 time in total

lovelystone

Squeeker

Joined: Oct 24, 2008
Posts: 16

Status: Offline

Posted: Aug 11, 2009 - 09:44 AM

yeah，I think it is not bad and useful for us to learn chinese.I will spy on the issue developing![b]

jackie2shao

Newbie

Joined: Sep 29, 2009
Posts: 5

Status: Offline

Posted: Oct 01, 2009 - 12:13 AM

Besides, use the free online materials is what I strongly recommend.
www.clearchinese.com
www.icanreadchinese.com
www.zhongwenred.com
and there's more. Hope someone can collect them and put them here.

frankyx8

Squeeker

Joined: June 26, 2009
Posts: 13
Location: shanghai, Xuhui
Status: Offline

Posted: Oct 06, 2009 - 04:50 PM

i agree most of the parts but one: the price difference does not necessarily mean a lot for teaching quality , actually very small!

Since learning a language should be on the daily basis, i don't think an-hour of teaching makes difference.

I'm Chinease, a former language teacher, willing to organize Mandarin-chat gathering for free.

write to me: frankyx88@yahoo.com.cn

frank

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laracroft

Newbie

Joined: Oct 30, 2009
Posts: 3

Status: Offline

Posted: Oct 31, 2009 - 03:21 PM

Hi,
This is Laracroft,
I am part time lecturer. I found your tip very useful in my career. These tips brings lots of confidence in me. If you have any other tips related to teaching please share it.

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AlJensen

Newbie

Joined: Dec 16, 2008
Posts: 8

Status: Offline

Posted: Mar 06, 2010 - 01:10 PM

I would like to recommend a website we are working on - www.daydayupchinese.com a beginner's Chinese textbook available for free on the web.

bleepingbleeper

Ranter

Joined: June 18, 2009
Posts: 511

Status: Offline

Posted: Mar 06, 2010 - 01:45 PM

jackie2shao wrote:

the 1st and 3rd sites seem to be pretty good.

clearchinese has both simplified and traditional characters side-by-side. and it has lessons on writing, which is great - that actually helps a lot when you're trying to decipher the meaning of a character you don't recognize.

icanreadchinese.com is crap. they don't even have the intonations with the pinyin.

zhongwenred is pretty good in that it has a literal word-by-word translation of the chinese phrase, as well as the translated meaning of the whole phrase - helps clarify sentence structure and helps you recognize which word is what.

i have been trying to learn more characters by using a grade-school chinese workbook i bought in a local bookshop. but it's sometimes hard to find relevant words and phrases since all the passages are about butterflies and leaves and ducks. i think i'll give these sites a try.

chinesevie

Lurker

Joined: Feb 26, 2010
Posts: 27
Location: Changning district, Shanghai
Status: Offline

Posted: Mar 06, 2010 - 02:02 PM

http://www.nciku.com/ is not bad.

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bleepingbleeper

Ranter

Joined: June 18, 2009
Posts: 511

Status: Offline

Posted: Mar 06, 2010 - 02:14 PM

on clearchinese...it says one phonetic translation for the word "grass" is "ts'ao," while the chinese pinyin is "cao." uhhhh....doesn't "cao" mean "f*ck" (i know, different tone - but let's say in the absence of a tone signifier) or at least pronounced with a hard "c" like "kao?"

i think in this case, "tsao" is more accurate... can someone clarify?