Aegis: Thanks for asking. Although I’ve done many lessons here as a teacher, this was only my second one as a student (last week’s Hebrew teacher is highly recommended).

In my first Chinese lesson, I was mostly concerned with the teacher’s ability to get me talking despite my low level in Mandarin. As expected, production was a bit difficult, as I’ve trained mostly listening and reading. The main pronunciation point identified by the teacher was the difference in manner of articulation of s, z, and c. Next time, we’ll do a quick run-through of sh, zh, ch (just to err on the side of caution), work on tones, and do more conversation. In the meantime, I’m continuing with shadowing practice, which should cover a number of issues. 

Thanks, Aegis, it’s great to have some input from such an accomplished learner of so many diverse languages.

Yes, the last syllable of 晚上 was just terrible — I really need to drill that 3rd tone 5th tone combination some more. Actually, I was in the middle of a heavy-duty shadowing session when you posted your comment — I’m trying to get the knack of combining lexical stress with phrase level intonation.

“一” (and 是) with the neutral tone: I do a lot of listening, and it seems to me that those words are usually pronounced without tone when they’re not being emphasized. I’ll have to pay more attention. 

开始新的一天: I never would have thought of phrasing it that way, but that’s exactly what was provided by four native Mandarin speakers as corrections to my notebook entry last month. The other phrases in this latest version were mostly reworked by a native speaker in a more “spoken Chinese” style.

Thanks for the encouragement, Aegis! Frankly, I’m just thrilled native speakers actually understood everything.

I have my first ever live Chinese lesson scheduled for tomorrow (here no italki), so it’s wonderful to have such a good idea of some of the things I’ll need to work on.

I’m so happy with all the help from the italki community.