Looking for a Mandarin learning partner

[Shroom Cat]

I speak/write a bit of Mandarin and been in China for a whole month working for pandas in Bifengxia, so I've had immersion experience of the language (and a bit of culture). I was wondering if anyone else would be willing to learn Mandarin with me, and we can sort of "immerse" each other as much as we can in Mandarin conversations

 

My goal is to learn Mandarin to better understand cultural contexts, mingle with people of China, Taiwan, and parts of Singapore, and finally--to enjoy the Tao Te Ching in it's original language (sans Classical Chinese). Your goals may be similiar or completely different, I'm just looking for someone to grow our language skills with

 

(我说点点普通话，我要一人话普通话也谁)

[tyuo40]

Hello. I am a college student also trying to learn the language in hopes of reading the daoist texts in their original form some day. I would enjoy practicing chinese with you whenever. My skype is jparsons97.

[Mig]

I speak/write a bit of Mandarin and been in China for a whole month working for pandas in Bifengxia, so I've had immersion experience of the language (and a bit of culture). I was wondering if anyone else would be willing to learn Mandarin with me, and we can sort of "immerse" each other as much as we can in Mandarin conversations

 

My goal is to learn Mandarin to better understand cultural contexts, mingle with people of China, Taiwan, and parts of Singapore, and finally--to enjoy the Tao Te Ching in it's original language (sans Classical Chinese). Your goals may be similiar or completely different, I'm just looking for someone to grow our language skills with

 

(我说点点普通话，我要一人话普通话也谁)

So how is your experience thus far? It will be interesting to know more about your level of Chinese now and what are the sources you are using reading, learning in Chinese?

Enjoy!!

[小梦想]

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Edited August 10, 2018 by 小梦想

[Mig]

Hey, immersion is a wonderful way to start.

 

I have been studying Chinese privately now for over 2 years and have a pretty good understanding of the language and the pronunciation. I am by no means fluent and still have so many common every day words to learn. I also live in china.

The language is incredibly difficult, for me at least, and takes a long time to learn. Everything just sounds the same in the beginning and the same word has many different meanings. Our ears aren't trained to pick up tones to the level that a native Chinese can. This means we just have to work hard and keep at it.

 

I have found the following 3 things especially useful for expanding vocabulary, speaking and listening skills. Reading is a whole other thing. Trying to read before you can speak makes the task twice as hard. Best to have some speaking down prior to starting to read in my opinion.

 

A website called fluentU is wonderful. It's paid site, but they use real world clips, songs, cartoons, trailers, etc. and translate them real time, and then use the vocabulary to study. They have 1000s of videos and have different levels to choose from. Really worth while.

 

A phone app called Anki, its a spaced repetition software. This means it doesn't come with Chinese at all. You need to input things you wish to remember yourself, but then the software helps you to study in the most efficient way possible. It really makes a big difference. There are also "packs" you can download from online. These are Chinese cards and content made by other people and uploaded online for anyone to use if they wish.

 

Lastly, when you Chinese is at a level where you understand basic things well, and you can follow simple conversations, watch Peppa Pig. It's a show for children, and has very basic but good Chinese. Also, the English peppa pig episodes are translated sentence for sentence from English to Chinese. You can watch and English episode, note the content, and then follow the Chinese along. 

 

Hope this helps.

 

PS. Pleco is a phone app, an electronic dictionary. Well worth while to get and will help you out loads. You do however need a VPN and to download the official pleco via the web, as the pleco available in china is no longer the same as the original available outside of china.

Your input is much of help and I appreciate it. Recently, I was listening Dashan, one of the first Canadians and/or westerner to make it happen as a foreigner in mainland China. Another one is a lady Jin xiaoyu. Quite impressive their command of putonghua. Since you are in mainland China, your feedback certainly can be helpful for those who want to learn the language and the understand the complexities of its culture and language diversity. Myself, I just discovered phone apps and I see the world indeed has changed. It is amazing. Also, heard from Hugo Barra, android developer, the staggering development of technologies in mainland China. Compared to the old days, 30, 20, 10 years ago, this time in history is day and night. I just can not believe it. Currently, I am testing Chinese skill android app and is phenomenal at all levels. Today, what we have as linguistic resources is far beyond one can imagine. Keep the good work and kudos. Tell us how all that is helping you become a daoist practitioner!!

 

Merry Xmas!