Learn Chinese with One-on-one Personal Tutoring

My experience is a little bit different from most people I think. I came to China for my own personal reasons and in the beginning I hardly spoke any Chinese which made things a little difficult for me. I thought about taking private lessons from friends but my progress was quite slow, so I thought if I get a professional tutor things would go much better. My tutor was organized by Go Abroad China, one on one classes can get pretty boring but when you are an adult I think you just have to keep going. I didn't have a rigid course so to speak, but a lot of the time I discussed with my tutor that I needed to learn things relevant to my everyday life, like being able to get around, or asking for directions, or basic things I could speak to my ‘ayi’ (housekeeper) about. Learning like a student wouldn’t have helped me much in my opinion, I think lessons must be tailored according to the client’s situation. Overall I am satisfied with how my lessons turned out, Xie Xie!

I had Chinese private lessons, shared apartment housing and an internship when I visited China. The Chinese lessons were with my own private teacher a couple of times every week. Of course there is a chance that one on one tutoring can be plain and almost boring at times but actually I really appreciated the effort that my tutor really put. She chose a great textbook for me to learn from, when you get all that attention from one teacher is really helpful and I know my improvement is very high. We moved at a pace that I was comfortable with, and the timing was really flexible depending on my availability from my internship work. I think that is the best thing about having a private tutor. I learnt early on that reviewing a lesson before actually studying it is helpful considering the Chinese style of teaching, and then extra study time on my own again. My tutor really had an impact on me, she took me to a lot of places so that learning Chinese wasn’t just about looking at a book. With Go Abroad China I got help with most of the preparation before arriving in Beijing, like visa, accommodation and finding a professional tutor; when I arrived in China everything was ready for me so it was easy living there.

When I travelled to China, my only reason was to do an internship but ended up combining it with private Chinese language lessons. This is what I think about those lessons: Go Abroad China as an agency was already helping me arrange my trip to China. When it came to the Chinese lessons, I decided to go with the private lessons. First of all I am a total beginner when it comes to Chinese language so I felt that I needed my own personal teacher who would take it easy with me. Also, since the majority of the time would actually be about my internship, I needed to learn Chinese on the side without having the added pressure of going to a classroom everyday and catching up with classmates. I had most of my private lessons on the weekends, but only a couple of hours during the weekdays. In the lessons, my teacher had already picked out a textbook for me to suit my beginner level. I learned by literally repeating words after her, I would also listen to a tape recording. The tape recording was exactly like a recorded oral version of the book and so even on the days that I didn’t have any lessons, I could play it on my laptop. In the beginning, I didn’t really focus on the writing as my teacher advised that it is best to gather up my vocabulary first. In a day, I was probably memorizing 15-20 new words; my textbook was scribbled all over with my own notes! After spending a great deal of time focusing on the vocab, it was then time to learn how to write characters…it was quite something. I’ll tell you that characters are not the easiest things to remember. My individual lessons primarily followed the textbook but occasionally my teacher would walk me on the street and try to identify common things that I could learn as well. Of course I would have liked to stay on a bit more - it certainly would have helped my Chinese keep improving. Although in the beginning it took some convincing for me to take on the Chinese extra lessons provided by GAC, but I ended up thinking it was a good idea. I think it’s a nice idea for GAC to offer internships and have a choice to pair it with Chinese lessons or not, depending on the individual.