What to look for when hiring a private Chinese tutor?

[Patrick_ChineseForum]

Hi guys,

I've self-studied Chinese for almost a month. Originally my plan was to take a community college class for Spring semester. Yesterday I picked up the book and realized that this class was super basic and decided to skip the class.

Since many people here suggested that mastering pinyin pronunciation should be the top priority for any beginners, I would like to spend the class money (will get a refund soon) on a private tutor. My goal is to have a native speaker validate all my pinyin sounds and some Chinese words. What should I look for when hiring a Chinese tutor in the US (I live in Chicago BTW). Here are a few things that I can think of:

#1 What area of China should the tutor grew up from? Beijing? What area to avoid? I know this is important because my grandparents came from southern China and they admitted that the southerners spoke differently.

#2 What type of person would be best for this task? Chicago has lots of Chinese. Generally I think there are four categories: college students (those that come to US to get a degree), laborers (those who work in Chinatown), professional teachers (those that have Chinese teaching degrees), and retired Chinese (they have plenty of free time but they may not speak much English). This may seem like a naive question. Obviously professional teachers would be the most qualified person. However, I doubt that I would need a professional to validate my pinyin. I think almost any Chinese can do it.

#3 I've heard about online tutoring via Skype. Does it really work? I have a pretty good computer sound system but how do I know whether the other side has good sound system? I'm considering this route because the price might be lower than hiring a Chinese in Chicago.

Anything else should I look for? Please advice.

Thanks,

Patrick

[大肚男]

I would recommend going with a college student getting a master's degree, rather than a PhD, Since they would have more time and less money. you can scour Craigslist or post a "wanted" ad in a Chinese message board.

[rezaf]

I don’t know your level in Chinese but if you are a beginner then I think you should look for a professional tutor or at least a college student who has some experience in teaching Chinese. As a beginner I tried a few Chinese students in my university and it wasn’t very helpful because they didn’t know the needs of a beginner and most of the time would ignore correcting my mistakes. Skype lessons are very good and the good thing about them is that you can have many cheap or free trails with different teachers until you find the right tutor. Also it’s quite easy to find some people who have some experience in teaching Chinese which would be more efficient than hiring a random college student. If the correct pronunciation is important for you then I suggest looking for a tutor from northern China, probably from areas close to Beijing, Hebei, Harbin, ... because I have noticed that most (not all) of the southern tutors that I have talked to on skype had minor problems in pronunciation although they were young and educated.

[Silent]

#2 What type of person would be best for this task?..........................

#3 I've heard about online tutoring via Skype. Does it really work?

My 0.02 on the issue. The type of person strongly depend on you. You need someone that suits you. there has to something of a click to get good results. I however tend to say that a professional teacher is best, a student may work too. I surely disagree that virtually any native can do the job. First of all they need a real willingness to correct you. Then they should be able to give instructions on how to improve your pronunciation. Most people are preciously unaware of how they form certain sounds and consequently are unable to be of much more help then telling that it's incorrect what you do.

I guess online tutoring does work, but it depends on you and the tutor. And of course the connection/hardware used.

Since a few weeks I've a free language-exchange. The agreement is half/half, but reality is we mostly work on my needs. That is we communicate mostly in English and I think that's what she's after but talk about Chinese and do excercises etc. A professional teacher is most likely better as now the sessions lack structure and she's not always able to explain issue's properly. I've also the impression her pronunciation is not really standard. On the other hand problem area's get identified and with her hints and some work of my own I should improve on those problem area's.

[xiaotao]

If you want to learn traditional characters, get someone from Taiwan. If not, then get one from China. I'd stay away from people who speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin. A tutor with good English is important. Not all tutors know what books and resources to recommend to a non native learner. I think you must be able to tell the tutor what you want to learn. I go for the fairest rate.

[abcdefg]

I've self-studied Chinese for almost a month. Originally my plan was to take a community college class for Spring semester. Yesterday I picked up the book and realized that this class was super basic and decided to skip the class.

Sounds like you still need at least some of the "super basic" stuff. Most people do after only one month of self study.

Caution: It's extremely difficult to find a non-professional teacher who will be tough enough to consisntently correct your pronunciation mistakes face to face.

[giraffe]

I really like Skyping with my tutor in Beijing. Sound quality has never been much of a problem but we've had days when the Internet wasn't cooperating very well (dropped calls and noisy lines).

I second the recommendation to look for a professional language teacher. My experience with random Chinese people is that they are either too polite or too impatient to keep drawing your attention again and again to the subtle problems with tones. The vowels and the consonants are pretty simple, and I often found I was focusing on them just because they were easy and glossing over my wobbly tones. A good language teacher is also going to be much better at tailoring the classes to your interests and learning level.

I found my tutor through iTalki where most of the teachers seem to offer free half hour introductory classes. I was very happy with the first one I tried (and actually paid her for the free class since we ran over by about 45 minutes).

The other thing about Skype is that it's so much easier to get to a class if you don't have to go outside.

[Patrick_ChineseForum]

Thank you everyone for sharing your tips. You guys have confirmed one of my suspicions about Chinese people being too polite (it’s Chinese culture to save face of other people). They might not correct me everytime when I make mistakes. Also thanks for warning me about people who speak both Cantonese and Mandarin. I’ll try to avoid them. I think the 30 min free trial from iTalki sounds pretty good. I'll try it.

Sounds like you still need at least some of the "super basic" stuff. Most people do after only one month of self study.

The class that I plan to skip is extremely super basic (I added the "extremely" adj to make the picture more obvious :-) After checking all chapters that would be taught in the class, I realized that I already learned them all from various online learning materials from CCTV. I can picture the class spending the first entire hour trying to pronounce ni3hoa3 correctly and I would be dosing off in the back of the classroom. Anyhow I plan to attend the class after this one. Another thing that I would like to gain from taking a class is classmates who are also interested in learning Chinese. The number of students attending the second class is always lower than the first class. The first class is great for filtering out those who give up easily.