Tips For Meetings With Volunteer Tutors

Our experience with the Mandarin Community Tutoring Project in the ACT indicates that it is advantageous for both sides if the language partners agree on some ground rules for their meetings early on.  For example, how much time is to be spent on each language if the meetings are seen as a language exchange. 

For the student learning Mandarin  

Since your volunteer tutor is unlikely to be a trained language teacher, it is very important to take control of your own learning, particularly if you are a beginner learner of Chinese who is not enrolled in a formal Mandarin language course.  Some strategies students have found useful are to:  

·         Set some language goals for yourself, for example decide each week on what you want to practise or learn to say in Mandarin   

·         Spend some time each week reviewing what you have covered in your meetings 

·         Make use of local public libraries to experiment with different Chinese language textbooks and other resources