Any good online tutors?

[fulgentius]

As I think I've managed to complain here several times, my Chinese classes have virtually no speaking/conversation practice. I've seen some people advertise online tutoring services. Anyone ever tried this? Any recommendations?

My speaking ability is very limited, so I doubt anyone would want to talk to me for free.

[Ding Yiyi]

Are there no native Chinese speakers in your area? You say you're from Berkley, even if you aren't attending college, I'm sure if you look you'll find something along the lines of an International Student Group who will probably have a Chinese Student subgroup. Take a look around and you can probably find what you need for free.

[gamerfu]

I understand his frustration. I am Vice President of International Student Government at my college which has 6000 international students. And I have 20 phone numbers for Taiwanese and Hong Kongese on students who said they would help me practice. ***hahaa***

Are there no native Chinese speakers in your area? You say you're from Berkley, even if you aren't attending college, I'm sure if you look you'll find something along the lines of an International Student Group who will probably have a Chinese Student subgroup. Take a look around and you can probably find what you need for free.

International Students are only here for themselves, not to help others. I deal with them every day at school. I assure you that none of them are willing to help as you think. They will tell you they can help, but when it comes just to looking over characters or whatever there not avalible. Unless, they have problems with faculty, students, life, studying, bus schedule, tuition, relationships, etc.

[Ding Yiyi]

Wow, your school must be way different from mine, at Ohio Univ. it seems I'm tripping over international students that are willing to help me with conversation skills,tones, pronunciation etc. While you won't get the quality of education as you will paying for education, and you also might not find someone who will do it for an hour straight, daily or something like that, you can find a few friends who will help you with any questions you have and will talk to you in Chinese. My experience with international Chinese students (especially ones here to learn English) is that they quite enjoy helping people with their Chinese as long as you will answer any questions they have about English.

[yonglin]

I think it is a lot easier talking to people in real life than online (no time lag, no poor sound quality, you can see each other, more body language, etc.). Some universities will sometimes arrange preparatory English classes or foundation courses for aspiring international students. If you could find any students of this kind in your area, I'm sure many Chinese students would be very willing to do a mutual language exchange.

However, we should not underestimate the power of modern technology. Since I changed my language in Skype to "Chinese", a lot of Chinese people from all over have added me because it seems cool to have a friend in another country (who doesn't think that?). 90% believe I'm overseas Chinese, but most people get even more excited when they realise that I'm just a foreigner learning Chinese. I talked to a lot of people who admit that it is the first time in their life talking to a foreigner, so quite logically, they tend to be very curious about a range of things. You can talk about different aspects of life: what it's like studying there or here, explain why Chinese is so fascinating, why you want to learn Chinese, what places you should visit in China, etc. You could ask people if they know anything about your country and describe your daily life. I think it's fascinating to learn about the daily life of random Chinese people from all over, and I've got into the weirdest conversations about what kind of vegetables we eat during winter in my country and so on...

Don't get me wrong here, because my kouyu is really not very good (I have only studied two months in China (20h/week) and a semester here in Canada (3h/week)). Your lifesaver will be a decent computer-based dictionary (e.g., dim sum): whenever you don't understand a word in your written chat-sessions, just copy and paste - or ask your partner to write it for you when you talk. If you still don't understand, just tell the person and I'm sure he or she will explain to you in other words. No one I've talked to have been annoyed by such things: as every learner of Chinese knows, Chinese are not very used to foreigners speaking their language and tend to be impressed even by a standard you would deem inferior.

From experience, people tend to contact you far more often if you're a girl than a guy (my experience vs. that of your boyfriend), but that doesn't stop you from searching for people that have set their language to Chinese and picking someone from an appropriate region (i.e., if you are a beginner and taught standard pronunciation, you should probably talk to people from somewhere where they speak more standard Mandarin, since a southern accent can be a bit tricky to understand unless you are used to it).

Next, download QQ. Once you've got through the obstacles of registering (this requires recognising and entering Chinese characters) and making your OS run programs in Chinese (of course you cannot settle for the more aged English version which apparently exists ), you will have 150 million (according to Wikipedia) Chinese-speaking people at your fingertips: even if only 1% are willing to chat with you, that is some 1.5 million...

If you have tried and still failed to find some conversation partners after trying these things out, you may start to look into tutoring things... personally, I would deem such a thing a rip-off, but I guess we all have different learning styles.

Good Luck!

[imron]

International Students are only here for themselves, not to help others. I deal with them every day at school. I assure you that none of them are willing to help as you think.

Perfectly understandable. When I'm in China, I don't like being a free English teacher to random strangers either.

[Ding Yiyi]

I agree to that, what I was suggesting is a give-and-take kind of relationship that I find many international students (especially if they are here to study English) often are interested in. I have been able to find many students at my school that don't mind helping me with my understanding of Chinese grammar, vocab, etc. as long as I can answer any questions they have about English, or teach them some new phrases or idioms. The idea isn't to use them, its to cultivate friendships, teach each other cultural things, etc. It wasn't my intention to make it sound like they just help with no strings attached, as that is never (and probably should never) be the case. Its just been my experience that someone here to learn English will be more willing to explain Chinese, as long as the relationship is reciprocal.

[gamerfu]

The exchange language theory doesn't work out equal. I don't find them being very helpful. It always ends up in English conversation study partner and I am the free tutor.