"Platform Period" Theory--what to expect after learning Chinese for some time I wanna talk a little bit about the process of learning language. After learning the basics of Chinese, you may find that your pace begin to slow down and you can't make as fast progress as you did in the beginning any more. This is the point where a lot of people give up because they need to see their progress to motivate themselves. If they don't, they suspect that they are in the frustrating wrong way. But in many cases they aren't, they are just in the what I call “platform period”. See it below. After this period, you will find yourself fly in the air in whatever way you want. Some people may not get into this “platform period” at all(I hope you don't!). Some people may be struck there for a long time. The best way to get over is practice with patience. Hope it helps you know what to expect in the process and prepare yourself well.

The hard way to improve your listening ability of Chinese--it worthes your time! What I did when I was preparing for TOEFL was "listen and write down". Find some Chinese conversations, news or short essays with translations. Don't look at translations. Listen to the material and write down what you hear. You can stop, repeat or even slow down the material with your player. I recommend you to listen one sentence at a time. If you don't catch it, repeat it as many times as you want. Typically, at early stage I use 40 minutes to 1 hour to listen and write down to a material that's about 5-10 minutes long(Normal speed). It worths the time because it's gonna lock the impression of the pronunciation in your brain and make you react properly and quickly next time you hear it. Then compare your work with the translation and find all the tiny difference bitween yours and the translation. I think the difficulty here is to find listening material with PINYIN translation. Check if your Chinese textbook has CDs that you can use. I will try to find some for you too. Another thing I did was listen to audio book. Choose the book that you are interested in so you can keep making progress. It's convenient because it doesn't require you to stop what you are doing. Hope it helps. Permission needed to redistribute.

The difference concerning describing sports in Chinese ti1 & da3 & wan2 ti1: kick (soccer) da3: beat (basketball) wan2: play (when you don't know what sport "wan2" is indicating)

Different word of "wife" in Chinese qi1 zi3 lao3 po2 Comment: qi1 zi3 is more formal. But when you call your wife face to face, you don't want it to be such a formal scene, then you can usc Lao3 po2. Lao3: old. Po2: old woman. It's not rude to call your wife an old woman in Chinese. It shows that she is your dear.

How to pronounce PINYIN "x" in Chinese This is a little tricky. But try to practice with this rule: When you pronouce "shee" as in sheep, you are actually making a circle with your tongue and upper jaw in your mouth in the back of your tongue. And when you pronounce "s" as in serve, you are making a circle with your tongue tip and teeth in your mouth in the front of your mouth. Now, what "x" need is a circle that's between the above two, i.e. in the middle of your tongue. Struggle with it! And master it!

We are two people! Two!!! We are making request to italki customer service to change profile picture as well as introduction, because we are two people now to provide Chinese learning classes! Let us introduce ourselves one by one. Hi there I am Stephen. I am from Nanjing, China and I am a native Chinese speaker. I am a USC(yay football!) students with computer science as my major. My family used to be the host family of an Italian students for half a year. She turned out to be very fluent in Chinese. In our class I am in charge of pronunciation and listening. I am Ari. I am from Los Angeles. My native language is English of course. I am a music student at the USC Thornton school. I am a passionate musician and dedicated student but I also have many interests. One of my very great interests is also Mandarin Chinese. I speak the language and, although I am not super fluent, I can hold a decent conversation. My part of class will be about Chinese grammar. 我们正在联系italki客服要求更改这个账户的头像和介绍，因为我们现在是两个人一起教中文课程！请允许我们分别作一下自我介绍。 你好我叫Stephen，我来自中国南京。我的母语是中文。我来自南加州大学（橄榄球牛校！）。我的专业是计算机科学。我的家庭曾经接待了一位意大利交流学生半年，等她要离开的时候她的中文已经非常流利了。我在课堂中主要负责发音和练习听力。 我叫Ari，我来自洛杉矶。我的母语当然是英语了。我是南加州大学Thornton音乐学院的学生。我是一名充满激情的乐者、学生，同时我也有很多其他爱好，其中之一就是中文（普通话）。我可以说中文。尽管不是超级流利，但是我可以进行正常的对话。我的那部分课主要是讲解中文语法。 A photo of us is attached! 附我们的照片一张！