Three Months Personal Chinese Tutoral Class

Three Months Personal Chinese Tutoral Class

Three months personal Chinese tutoral class for 18,000 dollars
You can have a class anytime in my empty schedule box
if you want to learn Chinese from Mon. to Fri.
Each class one hour


Note : I'll leave my morning and early afternoon empty for the students who choose 
            this package.


Making a Class Appointment

Check Katrina's class schedule   --> 

Find empty boxes in my schedule -->

Make an appointment for your class -->

Come to class on time


For more detail, please contact me at the info below

Gmail :  katrinali0816@gmail.com

The Introduction of Chinese Pinyin - Initials

Initials


A Chinese character has only one syllable, which consists of two parts: an initial (consonant) and a final (vowel). The consonants always appear initially in a syllable. There are 21 initials for the standard Chinese pronunciation and they fall into six groups as follows:

b	p	m	f
d	t	n	l
g	k	h
j	q	x
z	c	s
zh	ch	sh	r

Pronunciation Hint:

The initials of 'm', 'f', 'n', 'l', 'h', 's', and 'sh' are pronounced the same as their corresponding ones in English.

'b' is analogous to the sound of 'p' in the English word 'spin'. (unaspirated)

'd' is analogous to the sound of 't' in the English word 'straight'.(unaspirated)

'j' is analogous to the sound of 'g' in the English word 'genius'. (unaspirated)

'z' is analogous to the sound of 'ds' in the English word 'beds'.

'zh' is analogous to the sound of 'j' in the English word 'job'.

'g' is analogous to the unaspirated sound 'g' in the English word 'get'.

'x' is analogous to the sound of 'sh' in the English word 'sheep', but with the lip corners tightened up backwards.

'r' is analogous to the sound of 'dge' in the English word 'lodge'.

Please pay attention to the six aspirated 'p', 't', 'k', 'q', 'q', 'c', and 'ch' sounds.

Attentions must be paid to the differences between unaspirated sounds and aspirated sounds.

b/p d/t g/k j/q z/c zh/ch

The Introduction of Chinese Pinyin

Overview
  

Pinyin is a way to represent Chinese characters and express the sounds in the Chinese language using the alphabet. 

There are other systems to express Mandarin, but Pinyin is the most accepted and widely used. Once you learn Pinyin you will know how to pronounce any word in Mandarin using a Chinese dictionary. Pinyin is also the most common way to input Chinese characters into a computer. Although Pinyin and English both use the Roman alphabet, many letters are not expressed with the same sounds that English uses.

Initals and Finals

Words expressed in pinyin use a set of 21 sounds representing the beginning of the word called initials, and a set of 37 sounds representing the end of the word called finals. These combine to form about 420 different sounds.

Example:

The word for “Flower” expressed in pinyin is: huā

In this word, the letter “h” is the initial and “uā” is the final.

Words are often combined to form compound words

The word for “China” expressed in pinyin is: zhōngguó

zhōng means middle.
Initial: “zh”
Final: “ōng”

guó means country.
Initial: “g”
Final: “uó”

Tones

Words in Mandarin that have the same pronunciation can have different meanings depending on how the word is said. The "tone" of a word describes how the the pitch of the speaker's voice changes as the word is said. There are four "tones" in Mandarin. 

The tones are represented in pinyin by marks above the words.

Chinese Pinyin - Tones

This video gives the introduction of the language Chinese and also the tones of the language.


Tones

In Mandarin, words that have the same pronunciation can have different meanings depending on how the word is said. The "tone" of a word describes how the pitch changes as the word is said. There are four "tones" in Mandarin. The tones are represented in pinyin by marks above the words and are read from left to right. The absence of a tone also has meaning.
For example, the word "ma" can have a number of different meanings depending on how it is said.

Word with tone	Description of tone	Description of tone	Name of tone
mā	Mother	The straight line over the word indicates that the word should be said with a flat and unchanging high tone.	1st tone
má	To bother	The mark going up above the word indicates the word should be said in a rising tone.	2nd tone
mǎ	Horse	The down and then up mark above the word indicates that the word should be said with a falling and then rising tone.	3rd tone
mà	To scold	The down mark above the word indicates that the word should be said with a falling tone.	4th tone
ma	Grammatical marker used in a question.	When a word has no tone or mark above the word it is said to be neutral and is pronounced in an abbreviated manner with no emphasis.	Neutral

Using tones 1, 3, 4, and 5 in order we can form the sentence: mā mà mǎ ma?
This sentence asks the question: Did mother scold the horse?
The following diagram shows how the tones are pronounced in relation to each other.

Class Schedule

Here is the schedule for all my classes (Chinese&English)
If you wish to learn Chinese with me and would like to know my work schedule.
Please check the table below
As a part-time teacher, my schedule changes every month, so I'll keep posted my latest work schedule on this blog.  :) 

The yellow boxes show my available time to have classes.

	Mon.	Tue.	Wed.	Thur.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
早 上				9	10	9:30-12:30
		12:00-1:00
	5:30-7:00	4:20-6:20	4:10-5:40	4:20- 6：20	2:30- 4:00	1:30-3:40	1:30-3:40
	7:30-9:30	7:00-8:00		7-8		8:20-9:50
		8;00-9;00 Ian	7:30-9:30		7:30-9:00

Learn Chinese with Yangyang - Pinyin Lesson Introduction of Pinyin and M...

Youtube is a very good source for learning all languages.
Here is a very interesting video about pinyin lesson with a beautiful teacher.  :)

Recommended Material

Live Interactive Chinese  Live互動華語

 This is the material which is introduced by one of my friends who is also a certified Mandarin teacher.  The reason that I recommend this magazine is because this material can highly raise a learner's interest not only from its cover but also the context inside. For now, I don't have this magazine, but I will be using this magazine as one of my materials in the near future.

Live Interactive Chinese magazine + CD-ROM employs innovative multimedia techniques to teach Mandarin in a comprehensive way. Each issue includes news, an illustrated dictionary, background to Chinese characters and Asian attractions. To connect to Chinese popular culture, Live Interactive Chinese also provides movies and music videos. Our products have a variety of audiovisual content designed to help beginners learn Chinese step-by-step, from basic everyday Chinese to advanced business Chinese.

 

Materials

Here are the textbooks that I used as my class materials  :) 

1. Far East Everyday Chinese  遠東生活華語

This is the book which is highly used in almost all my classes.

The textbook, with its 12 chapters, provides the learners with texts in modern standard  Chinese. Each chapters is equipped with a variety of exercises in phonetics, grammar, contextual meaning and usage to help the learners improve their communicative skills. However, as a native speaker of Chinese, it is still not a perfect ideal material for learning chinese, which is why I now use this material as a guideline then do some adjustments on it, make my own handout for my students.

2. Illustracted Chinese-English Dictionary　中文圖解辭典

This book contains most of the practical terms used in daily life. There are many categories, all with their own picture themes, making this an ideal learning tool that can be used long-term.
It also uses simplified Chinese characters, and each phrase has pinyin and the English definition next to it. So in my class, I usually offer traditional Chinese characters on the side for my students.

 3. Mandarin Chinese

 The book contains twenty lessons with review exercises in every lesson and it also has instruction integrates conversational skills with proficiency in grammar.
The reason that I use this as my material is because it has shorter and easier conversation for each lesson, which is easier than Far East Everyday Chinese. But it is a simplified-Chinese materia and the expression in the converstaions are too MAINLAND CHINA which makes me to type my own traditional Chinese handout for students.  :P

4.  Easy Way to Learn Chinese Characters  漢字速成課本

 This book is intended for beginners of Chinese language learning, who are willing to take in some knowledge about Chinese and interested in learning the language.
In this book, you will learn how to the strokes, stroke order, components and structures of Chinese characters. For the further lessons, you will be learning the meaning of radicals and some other phonetic radicals. But the material only shows the simplified Chinese characters.

Location & Environment

Here is where I have all my private classes (Mandarin & English)

It's a little office which is fully equiped as a classroom for all my little group classes.   :P

The office is located at this link below.


http://maps.google.com.tw/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=zh-tw&geocode=&q=%E6%96%B0%E7%AB%B9%E5%B8%82%E6%B0%91%E7%94%9F%E8%B7%AF10%E5%B7%B717%E5%BC%843%E8%99%9F+2%E6%A8%93&sll=23.63446,120.970459&sspn=2.646754,4.603271&brcurrent=3,0x34683608af7574fd:0x9643333e378eabc8,0,0x34684a77b55ae7f7:0x5e4ce862e2a11ffb&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=300%E6%96%B0%E7%AB%B9%E5%B8%82%E6%9D%B1%E5%8D%80%E6%B0%91%E7%94%9F%E8%B7%AF10%E5%B7%B717%E5%BC%843%E8%99%9F&z=15

My Biography - Katrina Lee

Katrina Lee

I'm a Chinese and English teacher who was born and raised in Hsinchu, Taiwan.  I have 7 years of teaching experience in English, as well as 1 year of teaching experience in Mandarin, having started teaching right after getting my Mandarin teaching certificate.  I have students from America, Canada, Korea, and South Africa and I am still expecting to meet more students from all over the world!!!  :)

I graduated from Nan Ya Institute of Science and Technology, majoring in Applied Foreign Languages.  I can speak four languages- Chinese, English, Hakka, and Taiwanese.


As a bilingual speaker of Chinese and English and one who is also teaching both languages, I find people always either automatically rely on their mother tongue automatically or focus on GRAMMAR too much, when it comes to learning a foreign language.
Both problems can seem helpful when starting to learn a new language but they can also be seen as a big obstacle in learning a foreign language.

English is a language I've been learning for a long time, I devoted very much time and effort, when I was a student.
Chinese, Hakka, and Taiwanese are all my native languages that I acquired natually.

In my Mandarin classes, I give words and phrases, to students, that are useful in their lives.
I also give sentence patterns and words that can be paraphrasesed in a structure.
I also believe that motivation is a huge factor in learning a language, and my job is to raise students interest and give them the words and phrases that can come in handy when it comes to  their daily lives.

I now have an English learning website for all my Taiwanese students, and they all LOVE my blog (http://polyglot-katrina.blogspot.com),  Now, it is time for the students from foreign lands who are expecting a fun-loving adventure in the world of Mandarin!!!

Enjoy!!!   :)

An Introduction of SMART Mandarin

To All Readers:

My name is Katrina Lee, I'm the founder of this blog.

In this web space, you will see information on materials, courses, and everything to do with learning Mandarin in Taiwan with ME!

As a foreigner in Taiwan who wishes to learn some survival Chinese, you may turn to some language exchange websites. Unfortunately those sites don’t show you HOW to learn Chinese! 

At SMART Mandarin, I'll be sharing HOW to learn Chinese from my point of view as a Mandarin & English teacher. 

This space is not only for sharing my experience as a language teacher, but also a space for people to share their Chinese learning experiences.

I am also available as a private or corporate teacher. If you need my services then you can contact me via the contact details below :)

Skype :  katrinali0816@gmail.com
MSN : katrinali0816@hotmail.com
Mobile : 0988 909 812