Experience Summary
*Tutoring Beginner to Intermediate level students*
Studied Mandarin Chinese for a year at two different local community colleges (MCTC & Inver Hills), lived & studied abroad at Jiaxing Univeristy in northern Zhejiang province (just south of Shanghai) for two years where I earned a 2-year certificate in chinese language (Mandarin) & culture, married to Chinese woman with whom I communicate in Chinese, spent additional eight months in China recently from December 12'-July 13', will be continuing my education in Mandarin Chinese for life, have tutored friends in China, taught part-to-full-time English to Chinese students the entire time I lived in China, have relied heavily on both in & out of class materials and constantly innovated new ways to make my studying more efficient so I have a good understanding of how to sculpt studies to achieve personal goals and find outside resources to help students succeed. My experience is in simplified chinese characters (Mainland China, Singapore). Wikipedia page on simplified characters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters
Teaching Style
Socratic, Casual, Adaptable, Simplified Characters (used in Mainland China, Singapore)
My Hobbies
Speaking Chinese, enjoying the different foods of the world, basketball
Other Comments
SKILLS: My skills, ranked from strongest to weakest are: listening comprehension, speaking, reading comprehension, typing, and writing. *NOTICE* - PLEASE READ IF IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR YOU TO WRITE CHARACTERS BEAUTIFULLY* If you're looking for someone to help you or your child learn to hand-write immaculate Chinese characters I suggest you find a native Chinese speaker that was educated in Chinese as a child. I can teach writing but my own characters look like those of a child to a Chinese speaker's eyes. If you or you're child would like to learn how to write characters beautifully I'm not your guy. I can, however, teach the basics of writing, and help you set up a study plan that will allow you to improve your writing far beyond mine. More likely than not, they'll be far more beautiful than mine as well.
A mandarin was an official of the imperial Chinese court. Because there are so many languages and dialects in China, mandarins from all over used the same language to communicate and it eventually became known in English as Mandarin Chinese, or, "language of the officials". What is most commonly referred to as Mandarin today is generally actually "Standard Chinese" or “???” "putonghuà", which is a standardized language based on the Bejing dialect, a member of the Mandarin branch of Chinese languages/dialects.