Language Partners/Tutors

[Kurtz]

Hello everyone.

I have been reading these forums for the past few years. The forum has been a great help in keeping me motivated and I appreciate all the experience and insight here. I thought it was about time that I stopped reading and started contributing - so here is my first post.

I have had the good fortune of meeting a native Chinese speaker who has agreed to be my language tutor. I expect to speak Chinese with her for a couple of hours a week. As this will be my only opportunity to speak Chinese (there are few Chinese speakers where I live), I want to ensure that I get the most benefit from those few hours. I therefore wondered whether anyone has any good strategies or techniques for approaching one-to-one tuition? In particular, I need to improve my accent and spoken fluency - so I thought a good approach would be to first read a passage from a good textbook and then to discuss it with my tutor. This way, we could work on both my tones and my grammar. However, I would be interested in hearing whether anyone had any approaches that worked for them and/or any hints as to how to use limited time in the best possible way.

[abcdefg]

I need to improve my accent and spoken fluency

If your current level permits, try to have the session with your tutor be all in Chinese.

[jbradfor]

I'm assuming this native Chinese speaker is just being nice and is not trained in teaching Chinese? My first hint is to keep in mind that being a native speaker does not mean that one can explain it well, so keep that in mind in terms of what you expect from her.

It can be quite humbling the first time you try to teach your native language to a non-native speaker....

I thought a good approach would be to first read a passage from a good textbook and then to discuss it with my tutor.

Others may disagree, but I've found limited benefit to reading a passage out loud. Discussing something, to generate a conversation, I find useful.

What do you want to work on? For me personally, I've found two areas that are beneficial: to gain "comfort" and "fluency" speaking, and to improve my grammar and word choice. When I want to work on the former, I've asked my language partner to only correct me when I make major errors, so I can work on just basic conversion skills. For the latter, I asked my language partner to be very 凶 and correct everything I say!

[mfgillia]

If your a real beginner or never had someone really teach you proper tones and pronunciation then you might want to start with a pinyin chart. I skipped that part myself and later had to go back and relearn most words.

On the other hand, if your past that horrible, ego busting stage and have a fair degree of book knowledge on vocabulary and basic grammar patterns but lacking conversational experience than one drill that has really helped me get more functional is to hand them just a list of basic vocabulary and do a circular comprehension drill.

Essentially, ask her to make up a basic sentence using your new vocabulary word, which you have already studied. Then after you communicate to her that you do in fact understand her basic sentence, have her make up 3-4 additional questions adding or swapping out the subjects, time phrases, locations, durations, indirect objects, direct objects, verbs and adjectives ideally using words you already know from your vocabulary list. You are to respond entirely in Chinese unless you get stuck.

For example, if the first word in your list is coffee she might say to you in Chinese...

She: I drank some delicious coffee this morning then listen to music.

You: Yep (you communicate quickly in Chinese you understand the basic sentence)

She: What did I drink this morning?

You: Coffee, you drank coffee this morning before listening to music.

She: When did I drink coffee?

You: This morning.

She: Before I listened to music, did I drink tea?

You: No, thats not right. You drank coffee.

She: What did I do after listening to music?

You: How should I know. You haven't told me yet...

And so on. If you really want to focus on listening comprehension then keep your answers short and have her do most of the talking. If you also want to do a fair degree of speaking practice then you can let things wander around and do more talking. E.g., You could say:

"Speaking of coffee, I really like the coffee I brought last week at the store near my house. You?" Or you could ask "after you listened to music then what did you do?" Once things start wandering too far off the path then ask her in Chinese to make up another simple sentence using new words from your vocabulary list. Alternatively, if she keeps making up sentences that are beyond your level then you make up one yourself and then have her ask you questions based on that sentence.

When you make mistakes then try to get her to correct you in Chinese versus explaining your error in English - unless you really need to hear the English explanation. E.g., she says in Chinese, "Did you mean to say this...." Then you say something like "Yep, sorry I did say that wrong before" in Chinese. Then you repeat it again correctly using her sentence as a model before asking her to continue.

In my situation, my functional listening comprehension is far inferior to my current ability to jabber on endlessly so I try to force myself to answer relatively quickly and have my tutors/friends ask questions as quickly and as randomly as possible so that I can't guess what's coming next. We no longer really bother with the initial sentence and instead go straight to random questions and dialog using my vocabulary list.

Ideally during this drill we are staying inside my sandbox using grammar patterns and vocabulary I already know. Of course, leaving the sandbox is inevitable especially in the beginning. I haven't had too much difficulty teaching this method to friends without any teaching experience. Ironically, I find its the professional teachers that have more trouble initially picking this up as they can't seem to help themselves from speaking English and will routinely stop the drill to either explain some extra grammar point or for corrections. So just keep asking them repeatedly to please explain it in Chinese first.

[Kurtz]

Thanks for the responses, guys - all very helpful. I particularly liked your approach, mfgillia. Sounds quite well suited to my current level. My problem is that most of my knowledge comes from self study, so although my passive reading and listening skills are probably at a high-intermediate level, my spoken Chinese is pretty basic. That conversation drill therefore sounds perfect.

[mfgillia]

Yep, I had a similar issue. In my situation I found listening to countless recorded dialogs, memorizing vocabulary and studying grammar patterns out of a book and with a tutor helping out didn't translate into being able to handle real, spontaneous conversation, which was my primary goal.

A few highly successful, unconventional professors recommend this sort of approach almost entirely right in the beginning versus the traditional reading, writing and grammar methods. I am not sure that would of initially worked for me at least without an exceptionally talented teacher.

Been doing the above approach for a few months now and definitely helped tremendously. Ideally, if you can get 2 or 3 different people to do this with then you'll be better off. Each person will naturally have different variations in their pronunciation to get used to, use different grammar patterns and supporting vocabulary intuitively, as well as give you different feedback on pronunciation and tonal errors.

This approach is also a great deal of fun to start being able to actually use what you worked so hard to obtain. However, I would recommend setting your expectations pretty low in the beginning as you will likely not recognize the most basic of words. Plus, your most often Chinese answer to her questions will probably be variations on - "sorry, I didn't understand that. Could you please repeat it again?"