I recently resumed Mandarin lessons with my tutor. During my last Mandarin lesson my tutor reviewed time words and phrases such as "what time is it now" (xiàn zài jǐ diǎn, 现在几点)We started class (shàng kè, 上课) in the morning (shàng wǔ, 上午) and finished class (xià kè, 下课) before afternoon (xià wǔ, 下午).
My tutor is a very good teacher. She is having me practice pronunciation and tones a lot right now too. She says it can be hard when you're learning, but I'll thank her later.
Your reply comment on the Money Saving Mom post was emailed...so exciting to find someone else living in this country. My VPN is being slow today, so not sure how much time I'll have to look around at your site, but added your blog to those in google reader.
ReplyDeleteKeep it up with the Mandarin. Pretty soon your kids may be speaking it better than you...as is my case. but my husband is Chinese so Nathaniel gets plenty of practice with his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. After year two I quit worrying so much about tones and focused on acquiring and using my vocabulary, that's worked out pretty well for me though there have been plenty of times when I've tried to say a word in isolation (while teaching English) and get the tone wrong which causes the kids to roar with laughter. It's such a fascinating and complex language.
It is nice to find someone else living in this country. I checked out your blog a little too, I like the variety of things you talk about. We are all working on learning Mandarin, it's a challenge, but a good one.
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