Most Affordable Resources to Improve Spoken Proficency.

[AlexanderLivius]

At my college, the Chinese program places very little emphasis on spoken proficiency.  Instruction is only provided for first year students. For second year students like me, work is done solely out of a textbook, and we meet with faculty only to assess essay and exam performance.

 

I am doing well in this class, but I know my spoken Chinese is hardly improving.

My peers and I are provided with a Chinese-speaking student during our class sessions, but we are unsure how to best work with him. His English is intermediate at best, and he speaks with the thick accent he brought from Wuyishan.

 

Whenever we read passages aloud to him, he says we have no problems when it comes to pronouncing the tones in isolation,  but have difficulty when it comes to reading tones in sequence.

 

He says that we need supplementary practice in order to improve. Me especially, I tested into the 2nd year class in the Fall after a Summer corresponce course, and thus I have never had instruction in Spoken Chinese, aside from Youtube and textbook tutorials.

 

 I shadow dialogue from Chinese TV shows and do tone drill in my spare time, but these practices are also insufficient.

 

I feel that I need practice with and or receive guidance from a native speaker, and I am able to pay about 20 dollars a month for such services.

 

What resources have you found helpful?

 

[Angelina]

What kind of Chinese program are you attending?

Can you talk to anyone who is in charge of your program and demand changes? You won't need much supplementary practice if your program was done the right way.

[eion_padraig]

@AlexanderLivius,

 

I gather from your other posts that your college doesn't really offer Chinese other than through a correspondence course.

 

The issue is that a qualified Chinese teacher is better than a native speaker, but certainly access to native speakers who can offer feedback is better than what you're having to work with. A few ideas that might be worth looking into.

 

- Does your college offer cross-enrollment at any nearby colleges that have a better developed Chinese language program? If so is it feasible to take a class at another school without paying extra?

 

- You might find that there is a weekend Chinese language class nearby you for immigrants from China/Taiwan. I took a class like this for US$120 for the whole year (September - May) that was offered by a Chinese language association. It was 2 hours a week. Just about everyone in the class spoke Chinese at home, so there was a lot of good modeling I received from other students. Now, I was only one of two adults in the class and the other students were middle and high school students, but I didn't let that dissuade me. It happened that my teacher also worked in a private high school as a Chinese teacher though she wasn't formally trained in linguistics or teaching. She was still pretty darn good, but that may have been luck too.
 

- Does your college or a nearby college have a lot of Chinese students who are attending school? Might you make an arrangement to do a language exchange or you helping them with proofreading their essays/assignments? I know a lot of Chinese students end up at universities with insufficient language skills to excel. 

 

- You might be able to arrange a Skype language exchange with someone in China/Taiwan.

 

I think the problem is that $20 a month won't go very far, but hopefully one or more of these ideas would work for you. Good luck.

 

Eion

[onebir]

Free:

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/chinese.html

 

(Haven't used FSI for Chinese, but FSI courses for some other languages got me speaking quite quickly.)

[wushucrab20]

If you have a phone or tablet I recommend downloading hello talk, and using it everyday to talk to different people using voice messages or even calling them. There are many willing to speak Chinese, especially users whose English level is not very high. You can see everyones language level when searching for people to message. 

[Naphta]

I've been using Glossika for a while and I'm very satisfied with my progress in spoken Chinese. It's actually a method focused on fluency. For 75 dollars you'll have a lots of material, enough for one year if you practice the minimum, between 20 and 30 minutes a day.

 

You'll find very cheap informal conversation lessons in italki (if you use this link you may get some reduction), there are people there willing to help you with your spoken skills for three or four dollars an hour, if you don't expect them to prepare a lesson for you. There are also very cheap qualified teachers based on China, if you want some more formal lessons, starting from seven or eight dollars.

[Naphta]

A good alternative to Hellotalk is Speaky. It used to have an android app but now it's only web based. However, there are lots of Chinese speaking people (mainly Taiwanese) and I find their videochat to be very useful, because it comes with a timer. You can do very quick conversations focused on what you want, for instance 10 minutes in Chinese and another 10 minutes in your native tongue.

[Cid]

The ones Naphta mentioned seem a bit interesting, i'll have to look into those. Though for your particular situation, i would recommend ChinesePod, since your Chinese program places very little focus on spoken proficiency which is something that ChinesePod is pretty much known for. It's not a free service but they actually have a bunch of free lessons you can check out before you decide whether or not to commit to the service. It's good for me personally because i actually don't have the time to sit down and study, so i use their mobile app and just listen to podcasts on the go. Works out pretty well for me if i do say so myself. Here's the link! https://chinesepod.com/library/courses/free-chinesepod-playlist/6

[Reno]

I have been using and would recommend http://workaudiobook.com . The Windows app is free and they also have an android app. You can load any audio and text file that you have and the app will automatically splice it into segments so you can play them back (and repeat if you wish) then record and play your own voice to compare to the native speaker audio. You can repeat as much as you like. Great way to fine tune your pronunciation. The app has a lot of features like allowing you to create text subtitles that are displayed for the corresponding audio segments that you are listening to. There are lots of free native audio and text that you can find for all levels of study.

[AlexanderLivius]

Hey Y'all,

 

HelloTalk has already proven to be a great tool, struggling together with someone is pretty great.

As for workaudiobook, this is an amazing tool. I feel that shadowing will be much more effective now.

 

I am still debating which paid service to invest in, but atleast I picked up a few more tools to add to my routine.

Thank you so much~