Mandarin Chinese Support For Non-native Students

My teaching methods vary from using the Yale and/or Oxford oral and written practice textbooks on Mandarin Chinese. I am also well-versed with the Taiwan-produced publications.

However given my years of practical experience living and working and speaking in China, I try to emphasize the conversational and common situational language in the context of conversations. Listening and understanding what you hear helps train the ear, and using your own voice to practice speaking helps your brain train your ear. Generally speaking I do not emphasize the writing aspect of Mandarin immediately as it tends to diminish listening comprehension and speaking ability.

I emphasize the utilization of Pinyin through which a student can quickly make progress and gain confidence.

Background

I am a mother of two teenagers who were born and raised in China where I lived and worked for almost 20 years. As an American woman whose native language is English, I have a unique skill set with regard to teaching Mandarin Chinese. I am unusually well equipped as a native English speaker to explain the complicated aspects of the Chinese language so that the beginner student can overcome the challenging leap from the English alphabet to a non-romanized language.

Native English-speaking students studying Chinese can benefit from the type of bridge tutoring I provide and progress more quickly in learning Chinese.

I love to share the passion for Chinese that has evolved in me over the last several decades. My initial interest was in "cracking the code" that appeared to me as artistic designs communicating a language. I want to encourage other non-Chinese students that they too can achieve a high level of excellence in a very difficult language despite many obstacles.

My 20 years of living in China has given me a very rare perspective as a non-native Chinese teacher. I am very skilled at explaining the grammatical and tonal nuances of the Chinese language in a way that only a native English speaker can.

This helps to speed up the student learning process and cement a type of recall into a student who otherwise is grasping at multiple ineffective ways of trying to remember bits and pieces of this very foreign language.