Hello from Nanjing!

[mazztech]

大家好,

我是马昱！ My english name is Dan. I've been working and living in China for about 4 months and am a mathematics teacher in Nanjing. I've been learning Chinese for a short time now and am looking to practice and learn more chinese. I have a wonderful tutor right now, and hope for my chinese to expand with the support of the community.

I was wondering who else might be living in Nanjing and would be interested in a study partner of some sort. My schedule is kind of crazy as I teach all day and then train Brazilian Jiujitsu at Olympic Stadium after work, but I have times on weekend and sometimes for an hour our two after I get out of school.

Anyone around living in Nanjing?

[icebear]

Considering you are in China, I think your remaining study time is probably better spent in immersive activities - i.e. language exchange, making Chinese-speaking-only friends, consuming local media (with friends, whatever). Considering how little extra time you have I'd say go for a language exchange, or if you are very basic you might be better served drilling the vocab hard for a bit longer until you can recall enough to put sentences together reasonably quickly (so that the partner doesn't get bored, or worse dominate in English).

This forum [and others like it] is a good resource to ask questions that you can't hammer out in Chinese, general information on study experiences and suggestions, etc; and its members are likely good for a beer and a chat, but the idea of meeting other foreigners to speak Chinese together is a bit weird to me.

[mazztech]

Hi Icebear,

Thanks for the reply! I do have some friends who I'm trying to practice Chinese with. I find it difficult to find people who only speak Chinese though. Many people I meet end up speaking a decent amount of English, and sometimes I still fall back to English (bad me@)

Its funny you mention the meeting foreigners and speaking Chinese together. My chinese teacher now is an American, but my wife says that his Mandarin is better then all the Chinese instructors I've had so far. Additionally, he is able to relate information to me in an easy manner (and he does it in Chinese, while my other teachers would switch to English if I didn't understand) So I think it depends on the person too!

[lucy247]

Hi Mazztech,

I'm looking for a Chinese tutor right now in Nanjing. I used to be at Nanjing Normal University but I didn't like the way they taught - the teacher went too fast and there was no variation on the teaching. Therefore towards the end many people in my class dropped out! Do you think you coul send me the details of your tutor and the cost?

Many thanks

Lucy

[rhett]

i included nanjing university of aeronautics and astronautics in my csc application, someone should tell me if i made the right decision cuz i want to study aeronautical engineering.

[jbradfor]

My chinese teacher now is an American, but my wife says that his Mandarin is better then all the Chinese instructors I've had so far.

And we all know how objective Chinese are when it comes to rating the Chinese ability of non-Chinese.....