Why You Should Learn Chinese if you want try Asian Languages Part I I'd recommend Chinese(Mandarin) for you because Chinese is very different from what you are speaking or learning, such as English, Spanish, German, Portuguese which are phonetic languages. Chinese is a ideographic language, which means the elements in the language represent the concepts or ideas or the things directly, rather than a specific sounds of words in language. For example, 人 means person, which looks like a person walking with hands removed. Then we use 众 to mean a group of people, which you can see that we have 3 persons in it! Antoher example is 伞(umbrella), looks like exactly an umbrella! We actually have a unique writing system, which can date back to thousands of years ago, when people wrote or draw the words on the shell bone. Those words pictured what they saw in the old times. Even in modern Chinese, we can get some clues why it is written that way. For example, 日 means sun, 月 means moon and 明 carries a meaning 'bright' because in the old days there were no other sources that could bring you 'bright light'. Another point to learn Chinese instead of other Asian languages, in my humble opinion, is its great influence to the languages of borded countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam. Actually as far as I know the old Korea, Japan and Vietnam used Chinese writing system as their official writing system and shared a lot of common cultures. Even in modern Korea and Japan, you can see a lot of evidence of Chinese charactors! So if you master Chinese, it will defefintely help you learn languages, cultures, histories of other asian countries, e.g., the most influential history book in Vietnam was written in traditional Chinese! That being said, many westerns are daunted to learn Chinese because they think it is too hard, especially for writing (yes, even if you can communiate fluently in Chinese, it is likely you can't write nor read because of lack of writing pracrice). But trust me, if you begin writing, you'll love it because the process of writing Chinese characters is kind of the way doing art. Another challenage thing is that Chinese is tonal languages, which means different intonations might mean different things! On the other hand, the good news is that Chinese grammer is straightword for English speakers and much simpler, e.g, we don't have verb inflections, no tense, no articals, no plurals, no phrasal verbs etc.

My Ninth Lesson With Marie Yesterday evening I had a conversion with Marie and she is a young girl from Canada and a native English and French speaker. She also studied Spanish and Mandarin. The interesting thing is that she likes to talk with her dog in different languages. That dog is really quad-lingual! She is kind of the way teenager, who often stays up to late in the night and wakes up late in the morning and then have brunch! We talked about site touring about China and she also told me something about Singers from Canada, whom she dislikes (LOL). I also taught her some mandarin and she told me she would minor Chinese in the next year. WOW

My Eighth Lesson with Diana Yesterday morning I had my eighth lesson with Diana. She is extroverted Persian American and she was really easy-going. It was really pleasant to have conversations with her because of her engaging smiles, vigorous gestures, which always encouraged you to speak English. I rehearsed my upcoming presentation with her and received many useful corrections and advice from her. I was especially grateful of her corrections with any, even minor, grammar or vocabulary mistakes since people tend not to correct you if he/she can understand you even if you make some mistakes. I'd suggest any teacher in this site that it is always better to correct anything you think of inappropriate, even it is a nuanced mistake. Yeah, I'd keep practicing voicing 's' out for plurals and 'ed' for past sense verbs. Thanks you Diana!

My Seventh Lesson With Lloyd Last night I had my lesson with Lloyd. He was always helpful and offered to start the session earlier than scheduled as much as he could. So I think he loves teaching English, he enjoys it. I can feel it, really! I learned a new useful phrase 'speech crutch', which help you organize your sentence and give you time to think when you need pause. Probably the most used speech crutch is 'You know', 'well' especially for Chinese. My crutch word is, 'right'. I don't know why, but I use this word very often. Well, I use 'You know' and 'Well'' sometimes too. I introduced Chinese 'hotpot' to Lloyd and made him hungry. We had good conversations and I learned about his life. I was kinda surprised to learn that he didn't speak good Philippines even though He was Philippine! He was raised in Canada with his family in his childhood so He is actually a native English speaker living in Philippine.

My Sixth Lesson with Justin This morning I had my sixth lesson with Justin and there was 12 hours difference between our zones, so it was evening in his time. He is extrovert young man who loves travel a lot. We started with several questions he carefully prepared (I noted he was writing something when I spoke and read something when he asked), so he was obviously a diligent teacher! It was always conformable to talk with him that made me relaxed, witch I consider a very important factor to speak fluently in English. I felt I was making progress every day though I couldn't speak well-organized sentences with accurate wording. It seems that I seldom use linkage word like 'however, therefore' when I am speaking. I need to work harder on it!

My Fifth Lesson From Nicholas This evening I had my fifth lesson from Nicholas. He is American living in Germany because he was tired of being in U.S. and wanted to try something new so he went Germany alone. This is second teacher that I met having the same idea. These kind of people look brave to me. We discussed movies, TV series, soccer and so on. I tried to speak as much as I could, with some grammar mistakes and a lot of wording ones, which I probably wouldn't make if I wrote it. So the point is, speaking is just another thing, compared to writing. You wouldn't expect you speak well if you just write well. I really need to more practices to get a higher spoken English level.

My Fourth Lesson From Zoie Zoie helped me find that I didn't pronounce 'th[ee]-' like theme and 'th[i]' like theater correctly. I tended to pronounce theme the way like 'th[ai]m'. Probably it was because I didn't get used to the combination of 'th' and 'ee' and my [ee] wasn't stressed good enough. Besides pronunciation, we enjoyed good conversations ranging from daily life to work life. I leaned a fun job type, standardized patients, which pretend to be patient to aid the students in medicine to get comfortable with patients. That's it. We had fun and I am making progress! Thank you Zoie.

My Third Lesson From Justin This evening I had a wonderful lesson with Justin, a energetic guy who loves to travel and make friends with local people. We talked about how to make friends with local people and I learned a new word, coacher, with whom you can join the local people more easily. We shared some experience in a city far away from hometown and discussed local foods especially spicy food that we both mouth-water for. I introduced hotspot, a very spicy food originated from my hometown Chongqing to Justin. Meanwhile, he encouraged me to practice English as much as I can and gave me some advice for my upcoming lecture in a technical summit. Thank you Justin.

My first English lesson from Zoie This morning I had my second lesson from Zoie, a very kind singer and songwriter. She spoke slow and we had smooth conversation. I think my conversation skill got better after the first lesson because I spoke with more confidence even though I was still stuck on L and N. She noticed that I was okay to say words with N but fail to say words with L mostly. I noticed that when she exaggerated the words with L, she laid down her tongue quickly to let the air go through the mouse and even put the tip of tongue out of mouse. I'll practice more on the difference of L and N definitely ! Have a nice day y'all, go to work now!