Award-Winning Private Mandarin Chinese Tutoring in Alexandria, VA

"The student had his Chinese final the following day, so this was our last session until the fall. We focused mainly on going over the grammar structures from the semester, and worked a little on vocabulary and pronunciation. I quizzed the student by giving him sentences to translate and having him make up sentences using a certain structure."

"Today we did a project together. We created 3 types of trees (apple, pear, and orange). After cutting them out and coloring them, while using Chinese, then we matched fruit cut-outs to the trees (apple to apples etc.). Then we reviewed fruit names. After that we did writing practice, and a review game. The review game involved making a target and choosing vocab words to go with each color on the target. Whichever color was hit on the target corresponded to a vocab word, if Ss read vocab word correctly they get to keep the card and the point. "

"We focused on characters, tone pronunciations, and a bit writing today. First we reviewed the 12 animals and numbers in characters for preparation of writing sentence of one's age, like "I'm __ years old". Than we practiced the tones in simple syllable and then asked the students to recognize the tones from the characters of the vocabulary we did today. At the end of the session, every one wrote the sentence of expressing one's age in Chinese characters. Students also learned to write their own Chinese horoscopes. "

"Each week, we continue to build upon the previous week's phrases and vocabulary, while learning new vocabulary. We practiced mixing previous phrases with new phrases so the student understands how to construct, deconstruct, and organize sentences on her own. Today's focus was on her likes, dislikes, and vocabulary of foods. She is a quick learner and, through continued repetition, she can gradually master the intonations to perfect her pronunciation. Pronunciation is a core focus right now in each session, as that is key for her to progress in conversational Chinese."