Miya

Thanks @Blaveloper. I'll have to do some more research. Looks like every teacher has their good and bad points. I also have to factor in price because the lessons on there seem to be pricier than even real life one-on-one lessons.

@Blaveloper - Would you say that italki is worth the money and is there a Japanese teacher on there that you recommend? I just briefly checked the site out and while it looks promising, I'm not sure if the results will be worth the price. The average charge is about $20 a lesson (or an hour??) and that seems really pricey to me.

I'm kind of ashamed to say that I don't study English... I technically "practice" it everyday because I use it to communicate and it's part of my job, but I don't do anything extra to study it. I really should work on improving my English though since recently, I've discovered that my vocabulary is very limited despite English being my most "fluent" language. I will probably start watching more American shows, something that I rarely do, to help improve my vocabularly.

For me, I consider myself fluent enough when I can speak, read, listen, and write just like the average person who speaks that language natively. That doesn't necessarily mean I know every single word and grammar rule for that language; it just means that I can use that language and communicate with someone who speaks that language natively.

Never heard of this, but it seems interesting. I'm not surprised that the internet came up with a term like this, lol. So is 'rule 34' supposed to be used as a noun?

I think both are okay and there isn't a "correct" way to write it. I use "jeez" just because but I know people who use geez and it doesn't bother me at all.

I don't really listen to Mandarin songs since I prefer Cantonese songs. But if you are interested, some of my favorite singers are Joey Yung, Kelly Chen, and Hacken Lee. You can search for their songs on youtube. Here's one of my favorite lives from Joey where she sings the theme songs to a popular TV drama: https://youtu.be/PcA34Pj3BJc

Like John Snort said, there are tons of free Chinese learning opportunities online. If you ask me though, I would recommend taking an actual class (in real life). It will help a lot more than studying online, especially if you want to be able to speak Chinese decently well.

Not sure if I am too late for this, but 寬恕 would be a better translation for "forgiveness". 原諒 also means to excuse or forgive. 寬恕 best fits your description though. I've never actually heard of 勘弁 being used in Chinese..

Wow, sorry to hear about your terrible experience. I had no intentions to study at Mandarin House (didn't even know what it was before this post), but it's always interesting to read about other people's stories. It sounds like this school really wasn't managed well and gave its students a lot of trouble. I'm sorry about what happened to you and I hope you'll continue to study Chinese despite this horrible experience. Maybe you can go back to another part of China and study there.

I don't have a favorite tongue twister, but I teach English tongue twisters to my Japanese students. You're right, it's a great way for them to practice pronunciation. My Japanese students have a hard time with the "s" and "sh" sounds so the "She sells seashells by the seashore" one is a great one for them to practice the two sounds.

I'm also a fan of Japanese music. It's really the whole reason I got into Japanese. Listening to Jpop has helped my listening so much. I also like Cantonese songs, but that's because I can (more or less) understand most of it.

I learn one language, master it (or well, I get close to mastering it), and then I learn another. I have tried learning 2 languages at once and it just didn't work out for me. I got confused and it just made things harder. In my case, I was studying 2 languages which are similiar - Chinese and Japanese. Even though I am a native Chinese speaker, I got confused and mixed some things up. Plus it was extremely hard for me to manage my time so that I could give both languages the attention they deserved. You'll find that even if you're learning languages one at a time, it's faster than learning 2 at once and not being able to get a good grasp of either.

I don't know about others, but I didn't have the opportunity to take foreign languages until (senior) high school. I took 4 years of French and I took all 4 years seriously. I studied really hard and paid attention in class. I have always had a passion for learning languages and I think learning French in high school motivated me to look at other languages.

Pretty much agree with Blaveloper. I think paying for lessons motivates someone to work harder. The only time where this wouldn't be true is if that person isn't geniunely interested in the language. For example, if a mom signs up her child for a lesson and pays for it.... doubt the child will be motivated if he/she isn't interested.