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December 23, 2016 By Kwadwo

“My best experience was one of my first conversation teachers: she would take us out to ride in cabs, eat out, buy simple things from the convenience store or drugstore, even going to the bank.”

Plan. Pictures. Say and Record. Get outside. Check my manual.

Tones are hard for all of us to learn. Have your tutor record themselves reading your text, a favorite book or interesting magazine, or practical phrases. You can have them slow down their speed depending on your level of fluency. Your goal is not just to learn the tones of the words, but to get comfortable at pronouncing tones in succession as they are found in sentences and phrases.

Over the years as I have progressed I have even had my tutor slow down sentences from TV shows that I remembered. Or I had my tutor watch a section of a TV show, then record those phrases for me so that I could practice natural speech. Of course your tutor should spend time explaining to you what phrases from a TV show mean. If you choose that route, not only will you learn many new ways to express yourself, but you will also practice speaking tones.

Have your tutor give you multiple ways to express the same meaning. For example: thank you. Think about it-we don’t say the same thing the same way EVERY time.  If you practice multiple ways of saying a phrase then you will be primed to hear the multiple ways it can be said. This will be good since in your daily interactions when people will say the same phrase in many different ways you will be prepared to respond naturally.

Your tutor can also explain to you the difference between words that are similar, telling you the context in which one word is used versus the context or areas that the other word is used. Like 菜 (cài), 食物(shí wù), 食品(shí pǐn) and 饭(fàn), which all mean food.

As I have interviewed colleagues, friends and acquaintances about their best tutoring experiences, many of them recounted when their tutor took them outside the classroom to experience something first hand.

“My best experience was one of my first conversation teachers: she would take us out to ride in cabs, eat out, buy simple things from the convenience store or drugstore, even going to the bank.”

And that’s great because your tutor can be the bridge between your learning and real life interaction.

To help you out, I put together a step-by-step guide IN CHINESE to give to your tutor.  I interviewed real people to find out what the needs are when working with a tutor.  This guide is based on their responses about what WORKS.


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