an effective way to enhance the Chinese ability

[Zxin]

Hi,everyone.I came across this website recently and find it is resourceful and useful to learn Chinese. I am also surprised that there are a a lot of foreign friends who are generous to render their help to others and who want to learn this time-honored language. Actually, I am Chinese living in Shanghai and I think maybe I can help some guys to enhance their spoken Chinese abilities free of charge.

Here is my thought: we can communicate with each other through Skype. You speak Chinese to me and I provide you feedback in English. I can correct your pronunciation, misuse or mistake (I have passed the China National Mandarin Test so I am confident in my pronunciation of notional standard Chinese). The communication will last 1 hour or maybe 40 minutes or depending on you. But I am only available in 10.30pm to 12.00midnight (Beijing time) everyday. You can add my Skype "Zxin" or "sxunicker@gmail.com" to find me. I have a photo attached to the account and if you cannot find me, please leave your message below in this forum.

Freakily speaking, I am an English learner and also want to improve my skills of spoken English to deal with IELT Test. Again, this is not a commercial behavior and I hope to creat a win-win condition to consolidate the language skills for both of us. If you are a native English speaker or proficient in English who want to speak Chinese fluently, please contact me and I can assist you.

[imron]

Hi Zxin, welcome to the forums.

If you want to improve your English, a better way is just to start communicating with people in English (these forums are a good choice). No need to preface every sentence with the fact that you are Chinese, just find posts you think are interesting and make comments where you think appropriate and don't repeat more or less the same answers already given by someone else.

You might find that language exchanges don't really work out as well as you might imagine - see for example this thread.

[hedwards]

I'd recommend people not make excuses or apologize for their posts, it sets the wrong tone. If things are unclear that's when to deal with that, apologizing ahead of time is just a way of planning to fail.

[imron]

If things are unclear that's when to deal with that, apologizing ahead of time is just a way of planning to fail.

What makes you think such things didn't happen, with many posts not making it through the moderation queue?

 

What you didn't see this morning along with this post was dozens of low quality posts by native speakers exhibiting the problems I mentioned above (typically this happens when we get linked to by a Chinese site somewhere and a whole bunch of Chinese people come over for a look).

 

With ~10 years experience moderating the forums, I've probably seen thousands of this kind of post - most are not nearly as well written as this and don't make it through the moderation queue.  Many other posts made by native speakers go along the lines of repeating an answer already given and adding nothing besides "I am a native speaker the answer is".  These posts also typically fail to get through the moderation queue.

 

By choosing one of the better posts and replying with some ground rules, perhaps some of these native speakers might stick around and contribute in a more meaningful way.

[hedwards]

@imron, I suspect that you're referring to something completely different from what I was referring.

 

I have no idea about any other posts by the OP in the moderation queue or anywhere else, I was referring to the fact that it's generally counterproductive practice to make apologies for ones level and warn people in the post that you're not a native speaker. In my experience doing so doesn't typically lead to improved skill for most people. I think the exceptions tend to be the folks that are willing to toss caution to the wind a bit and try anyways.

[imron]

@imron, I suspect that you're referring to something completely different from what I was referring.

It would seem so.  As the OP didn't make any apologies for his English (something that is also quite common for native Chinese speakers to do in their first few posts), I thought your point stating "if things are unclear that's when to deal with that" was referring to my suggestions to Zxin on how to make better posts.  For context, I had also just come off the back of sorting out 40+ messages in the mod queue.

[Zxin]

Firstly, thank @imron to tell me that a native English speaker thinks about language exchange which I didn’t realize before. Actually, my intention to create this post is simple: just to enhance spoken language abilities. I assume that a lot of people disagree with this approach because they think they are duped and act as a language tool. I’m definitely opposed to the selfish behavior that a native Chinese speaker always talks in English or a native English speaker always talks in Chinese. I mean, there can be no inequality in language exchange. Give and take must balance. If you think you want me to speak Chinese, just put it directly “I really need to practice my Chinese, can we speak Chinese?" that’s ok to me. But I need you to leave some time to talk with you in English. If you feel you are cheated or uncomfortable, you can express your thought to me and I won’t ignore it.

[imron]

I think languages exchanges are too much of a mixed bag, and can easily leave both sides feeling unhappy even if there is no intent to deceive.

You're much better off just finding native speakers with a common interest and then interacting with them normally and genuinely enjoying that common interest together.

[Demonic_Duck]

For what it's worth, I don't think imron's opinion is necessarily representative of what "a native English speaker thinks about language exchange"*. Many people on the forums here will be happy to sing their praises. I personally haven't done any language exchanges in a good while, but I still think they can be valuable experiences for both parties involved. Ideally they should be well-structured, in order to get the most out of them (specific allotted time for each language, and both parties put some time in to thinking about what you'd like to concentrate on each time).

 

*This is also a good illustration of the dangers of overgeneralisation. An overgeneralisation that I've found to be true of Chinese people is, they're prone to making overgeneralisations .

[Zxin]

i don't think the asterisked sentence is the overgeneralisation you mentioned. Maybe it relates to the interpretation on language. if someone says a Chinese sentencce "一个英语为母语的人关于语言交流的看法", the sentence can be translated into "a native English speaker thoughts about language exchange" in English. in this case, the thoughts belongs to the individual rather than the group. maybe you misunderstand what i mean and maybe i need to imporve my english to convey my thought more clear and acceptablely. i use a lot of "maybe" to prove i am not an arbitary person as well as other Chinese people and it is just the different interpretation of the distinct languages.

i hope my sentences above are correct : )

[Demonic_Duck]

Fair enough, it seems I misunderstood. Normally when people say something like "so that's what a [French person/Justin Bieber fan/bionic superman etc.] thinks about [the price of milk/the nuclear apocalypse/Confucian ethics etc.]", they mean that they take this person to be representative of the group as a whole. Perhaps this is just an idiosyncrasy of English.

 

I think if you hadn't included the phrase "which I didn't realise before", the sentence wouldn't read that way.

[imron]

Many people on the forums here will be happy to sing their praises

I'm sure they can work out under the correct conditions and if both sides are putting in the effort, but my experience has been that using a common interest to interact with native speakers who have no interest in your language is far more useful and productive.  I am lazy though and don't like putting in effort