Recommendations for a Chinese teacher in Shijiazhuang?

[GaryM]

I will be moving to Shijiazhuang early this year to work, and I speak no Chinese! I will be working as a manager in a technology company ( a British owned Foreign Owned Enterprise ).

Can anyone recommend an Chinese teacher in Shijiazhuang? I speak Japanese, so I appreciate how difficult learning Chinese will be, but I am a highly motivated student.

I contacted Konall Culture Exchange about 5 days ago, but I have received no response, so I thought it might be best to start looking at alternatives.

Thank you so much for any help that you can give me!

[xiaoxiaocao]

Hi Gary,

I am the manager of Konall Culture Exchange here in Shijiazhuang. I sent a reply e-mail to you on the 9th January. It may have been intercepted by your spam filter? I'll resend the original e-mail through to you today regardless.

Sam.

[Tianjin42]

Hi Gary,

I tried to personal message you but it says that it is unable to send to you.

Good luck with the language training. Your Japanese will actually put you in a great position – the Japanese students in my class out here are usually streets ahead on reading and writing because of their background. Speaking and listening will take a lot longer (you’ll probably have to lose some of the Japanese pronunciation) but you will get there eventually as long as you have a good foundation.

I saw your post and wanted to send you a quick message. I am interested as to how you found the position in China – e.g. special website/ where the position was advertised. I am currently temping for a friend and looking for something more permanent that isn’t teaching.

Anyway, best of luck,

M

[GaryM]

Hi M!

I have just joined the forum, so I am waiting for 2 more approved posts before I have access to the messaging services.

I will drop you a line as soon as it is working, and give you more details about how I got the job. Maybe not over the

short-term, but certainly the long-term there will be opportunities for (Chinese-speaking) native English speakers, as

well as Chinese staff, as the company is intending growing its business.

I had the mirror of your experience in Japan! Chinese people were very quick to pick up Japanese. The two have

languages have very significant areas of over-lap, as I am increasingly finding out. Bright Chinese students would

typically pass their Level 1 Japanese Proficiency test ( the highest level ) in 1 year. Maybe this is equivalent in time

to an Italian person learning French? They would always tell me... "no, no, no... the languages are completely different".

I am not underestimating the difficulties, I think I will need a private tutor in addition to formal lessons going forward.

[GaryM]

Hi Sam, thanks for your e-mail! I replied to you directly.

[GaryM]

Hi Sam, just a follow-up question regarding Konall Culture Exchange, what text book(s) do you use as standard for beginners? Thanks.