Dali

Dali is probably a good teacher for a beginner or intermediate level student. He had a hard time adjusting to my high intermediate level needs: 1) a recording of the conversation (which was not made) and 2) short sentences (instead of individual words) which I could incorporate into my Chinese. After a lesson, I have very little that I can actually use.

I love Dali's passion for the subject; he is very learned on Chinese for sure. His English was understandable enough that I could understand everything without effort. I especially liked that Dali has a passion for history too, which is initially why I picked him. I didn't see much of his teaching capabilities today since we had more of a "let's see what we're going to do" introduction lesson, but I'm sure I'll see more of it in the next lessons and I can make a better judgement call then. Very excited to see where this will go!

Dali is an incredible teacher. After every class I feel that I have made progress. The hour spent learning with him flies by and I always feel accomplished afterwards.

Although I still haven't noticed much about Dali's actual teaching capabilities since we are mostly doing Pinyin revision, I can tell his heart is in the right place for sure and he is very passionate as a teacher. Today he stayed ten minutes later than scheduled just to answer a question and he didn't show any signs of being bothered by this. I also love that he throws in cultural factoids and historical factoids from China wherever it is relevant. I am looking forward to finishing Pinyin and getting to use Chinese with him and I am curious to see how he will tackle this. In any case, Dali's personality is great and although I haven't been able to see his way of teaching about Chinese yet, I can say that he has a great personality and as far as Pinyin is concerned, he knows how it works very well and is able to correct and explain pronunciation, so this makes him very good that (though I don't think with western principles like the IPA or linguistic terms like retroflex consonants).

Truly he is the best Mandarin teacher I have ever had. I love taking his classes and learn so much. His way of explaining things makes the most complicated things easier. Each lesson is tailor made for what your goals are and where your weaknesses lie.

What an exceptional class. It was such a pleasure working with Dali. His class was interesting and informative. I am very excited to continue learning from him.