"Copy the dictionary"

[tysond]

90% of the foreigners I meet in Beijing are working or are trailing spouses, and have under 100 words of badly pronounced Chinese.  Plenty of opportunity for practice.  Plus all the tourists, frequent business travelers, etc.

 

Of the 10% with Chinese, frequently the pronunciation is pretty rough - many have a decent vocab and can read a bit, but I have trouble understanding what they are trying to say (which is strange, I used to be really good at understanding foreigner Chinese but it's getting harder!).  I am starting to understand why Chinese people find it better to switch, the mistakes you make with Chinese pronunciation hit their well-trained ears and they can't hear the words (so broken at a lexical level).  Broken English usually comes through the ears OK (I hear all the words), just with wrong word order, tense, gender, etc (broken at a grammatical level).

 

Anyway, regarding dictionaries, agree with Gharial's point --  I like using frequency limited ones for random lookup and exploration, and I really enjoy almost being able to use C-C dictionaries.  Dictionaries with example sentences are of course the best, although I find it challenging that some C-C dictionaries seem to be fond of classic literature rather than modern examples. 

[anonymoose]

his English skills and extensive cultural knowledge base.

 

... and yet ...

 

His name English name is Dickey

[Kelby]

Having had students named Apple, Cherry, and at one time tutoring a little boy named Cars, I think he got away with a pretty decent Chinese teacher-given name. He certainly could have done far worse and if he wanted to change it he could just have everyone start calling him Dick or Richard, since Dickey sounds like a nickname for either. He's not teaching in the west, so I don't really see why it matters.

Doesn't even compare to Swazzy, Swagger, Yoyo, and Kinki, all prior students of mine.

[Demonic_Duck]

Were Swazzy and Swagger twins, by any chance? Please tell me they were twins.

 

You gotta admit "Dickey" is pretty bad. Depends on what his personality's like, though. If he's one of those kinda eccentric, quirky types, I guess it could work.