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Profile
Nĭ hăo! My name is Sheri and I am from Indiana, United States. I am learning Mandarin Chinese for both my job and personal interest. I am a scientist and manage laboratories globally, so I travel all over the world and love to visit new places and experience as many new cultures as possible. I am addicated to c-dramas, so if you chat with me and you are from China, be prepared for a lot of questions about your TV shows! :) Currently watching: 三生三世十里桃花
Learning
Chinese (Mandarin)
Language Skills
EnglishNative
Lesson Feedback
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Teacher reviews
Chinese Teacher John
Chinese (Mandarin)
Feb 2, 2017
Sheri is very positive. She listens to some Chinese programs and they are helpful. This Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Chart with Audio is also very helpful! https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php
Chinese Teacher John
Chinese (Mandarin)
Jan 26, 2017
We are practising Pinyin right now. Sheri's pronunciation is great! Especially when she repeated after me, it is wonderful. She is good at music too. I think it helps! I look forward to seeing her again.
Chinese Teacher John
Chinese (Mandarin)
Jan 22, 2017
Sheri's pronunciation is really good. It will be easier for her to learn Chinese. It is my pleasure to help her.
Activities
  • Commented

    Thank you everyone for your comments!

    Yes, right now I am only learning pinyin so that I can pronounce the words properly and have  a spoken conversations with my tutor.  I can write in pinyin fine, but I haven't learned many characters yet and probably won't until I get a handle on basic conversation.  I guess if someone wants to be a language partner with me and type conversations, I'll just type in pinyin without tones for now! :)

    0 voted
    March 4, 2017
    0
  • Answered
    I would say, "I would have never expected that."
    0 voted
    March 4, 2017
    2
  • Commented

    When initially was trying to find a Mandarin tutor, it was tough.  There are so many to choose from!  I narrowed my choices down to a handful of tutors based on experience, ratings, written reviews, pricing and most importantly, time slots available!  I'm 14 hours behind China and have a pretty busy work schedule, so it was actually difficult to find a tutor that had a schedule that matched up with mine.  I also carefully reviewed each tutor's profile and embedded video to try to get a sense of personality. 

    Finally, I sent a message to a handful of tutors and explained my interests in learning a new language. I asked them to describe the approach they would take in helping me reach my goals.  A few tutors didn't respond to me, but of the remaining tutors that did respond, one stood out.  I felt like he was going to provide the teaching style that I would enjoy and he seemed very flexible about learning styles. I scheduled a trial lesson and was very pleased. I have since stuck with this same tutor and love his teaching style.  I really lucked out in finding a great tutor from the start!

    I think it's a little tough as a new teacher to get students, because I know I was looking for teachers with a lot of past lesson experience on italki and that had high reviews.  Getting your students to provide written lesson reviews on your profile is important too, because those comments also help us get a sense of personality and style with a variety of different students. 

    0 voted
    March 4, 2017
    0
  • Posted
    Chinese (pinyin) on computer keyboard?

    This may be a stupid question, but I can't figure out how to type pinyin with the tones on my computer keyboard. Does anyone know how to do this?  Typing in pinyin without the tones makes me slightly crazy. :P

    I installed a Chinese keyboard on my computer through the keyboard settings, but I can't seem to make it work properly.  I added the Microsoft Simplified Pinyin New Input Style but I frankly can't figure out how it works.  It's not terribly intuitive and when I type it isn't giving me tone options. Maybe I've added the wrong one?  

    I can type pinyin with tones on my iphone (VERY slowly) but i would like to do this on my computer so that I can type faster.  Any ideas would be appreciated! Thank you!

    March 3, 2017
    9
    2
  • Commented
    I think it entirely depends on the person learning the language.  I have always heard that Mandarin was the hardest language to learn, so I was hesitant to try it.  I had taken French for about 6 years in school and it was tough, so Mandarin seemed impossible.   Now that I've been studying Mandarin with a tutor for a few  months, it is not impossible at all.  I am a musician, so the tonal aspect of the language makes total sense to me and isn't hard for me to pronounce.  The sentence construction is also very intuitive. I'm already having conversations in Mandarin (albeit basic) much faster than I ever was able to with French.  I think the hardest part of Mandarin is memorizing the gazillion characters, but if memorizing isn't difficult for you, then Mandarin might not be as hard for you as it would be for someone else.  I'm not finding it any more difficult than French, and in some ways, easier.  It just depends on how your brain works and your motivation level.
    0 voted
    March 3, 2017
    0
  • Answered
    You can say it a number of ways: - It gets quite busy at the beginning of the term. - At the beginning of the term, it gets quite busy. Where I live, term isn't used as frequently and we would just use semester: - It gets quite busy at the beginning of the semester.
    0 voted
    March 1, 2017
    1
  • Answered
    "How do you measure his ability?" is be correct. If we would use the term "weigh" in discussing ability, it would be use more in comparison to something or someone else. You would be "weighing" it against something else.
    0 voted
    February 27, 2017
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  • Corrected
    0 voted
    February 10, 2017
    0
  • Commented

    I have several people I'm language partners with, but I think it depends on what you are looking for.  I am a very new learner (just a month in) so while I can write some things in Mandarin, I have a very limited vocabulary and couldn't carry on much of a conversation live.  I am just not quite ready for live chatting. I do Skype with my tutor and we work on conversation, but if I did this with a language partner it would be a 1 minute conversation about my name and a few simple greetings.

    I am completely willing to have discussions on text chat, however, if someone wants to work on their writing or just ask questions, or even learn more about culture.  I have plenty of questions!  The only issue with this is that I'm about 14 hours behind my friends in China, so it's the middle of the night there when it's the middle of the day here.  It makes it a little difficult for us to connect live.  Sometimes I can chat with people in my evening and their morning, but again I'm often busy with my kids and they are at work.

    Also, someone might not respond to you because they are overwhelmed with requests. I joined about a month ago and have probably gotten 50 requests for language partners. I simply can't keep up with that many people, so I have to stick to people who are native Mandarin speakers, and who are willing to chat in text until I can feel comfortable with conversations live on Skype.  And also ones who aren't mad at me for learning pinyin first. Haha!

    0 voted
    February 8, 2017
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  • Corrected
    0 voted
    February 7, 2017
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