How to improve your Mandarin speaking skills with a tutor

Improving speaking ability is probably the main reason students of Chinese enlist the help of a teacher.

This does not mean that finding a good teacher to practise speaking with is easy, or that finding one will actually improve your speaking ability, though.

In this article, I will discuss what to look for when finding a teacher, some common problems you may encounter and what to do about them, along with some suggestions for more advanced learners.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#267).

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!

In this article

1. Learning Chinese with the support of a teacher or tutor
2. Are you ready for a speaking lesson?
3. Finding the right teacher
4. 6 common problems with speaking lessons and what to do about them
   1. Problem 1: The teacher keeps introducing new words and grammar points
   2. Problem 2: The teacher corrects me on one thing, then when I try to fix it, she corrects something entirely different
   3. Problem 3: The teacher speaks too much English
   4. Problem 4: The teacher speaks too much in general
   5. Problem 5: The speaking lesson is just like any other lesson
   6. Problem 6: Speaking practice consists of reading scripted dialogues in a book
5. Additional considerations for non-beginner learners
6. What speaking with a good teacher can be like
7. What makes a great speaking teacher for you?
8. More about tutors and teachers on Hacking Chinese

Learning Chinese with the support of a teacher or tutor

Before we discuss what can be done to make the most of a speaking lesson, we need to recap the most important points from a short series of articles about teachers and tutors:

• How to get the most out of your Chinese tutoring sessions: The student side of the equation. Make your sessions count by taking charge of your own learning. Set clear, specific goals, prepare ahead of time, and communicate openly with your tutor. Progress comes from being active, curious, and reflective, not just showing up.
• 7 characteristics of a great Chinese tutor or private teacher: The teacher side of the equation. A great tutor listens well, adapts to your needs, and gives targeted, useful feedback. This article helps you spot who will actually support your speaking goals and make lessons both effective and enjoyable.
• How to find the perfect Mandarin tutor for you: A complete guide. Don’t expect to find the right tutor on the first try. This guide shows you how to search smart, try multiple options, and decide when to commit. It also compares online and offline tutoring to help you choose what fits your situation best.

I will repeat some things said in those articles that are especially important for speaking.

7 characteristics of a great Chinese tutor or private teacher

Are you ready for a speaking lesson?

Yes, you are.

Skilled teachers can hold conversations with complete beginners, even if it can be quite demanding for both the teacher and the student, especially if no other language than Chinese is used. If some English is allowed, the pressure eases and most students, except the most anxious, should manage fine.

If you do not feel ready for your first speaking lesson (even though you are), you can build some confidence by listening more. Not understanding what is going on can quickly undermine your confidence. Here are some suggestions for you:

• Beginner Chinese listening practice: What to listen to and how
• The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese

You might also want to check Unlocking Chinese: The Ultimate Course for Beginners and The Fluent Listener: Navigating Spoken Mandarin Like a Fish in Water.

It’s also essential that you learn some basic phrases to learn Chinese in Chinese, such as:

• How do you say X in Chinese?
• What does X mean?
• Can you please say that again?
• Can you speak slower, please?

I have collected many more such classroom phrases here: Classroom Mandarin: Essential expressions for learning Chinese in Chinese.

Classroom Mandarin: Essential expressions for learning Chinese in Chinese

You are ready, though. A good teacher will be able to adjust to your level, and there is really nothing to worry about. The only case where you might not be quite ready is if you enrol in a formal class with other students at a level much higher than your own, but even that can be done.

Finding the right teacher

Before you start working with a teacher to find a setup that works well for you, make sure the teacher is quite good to start with. This was covered in part 2 in this series.

While you can influence how most teachers teach, especially if you are the only student, it is extremely difficult to change someone’s basic approach to teaching, let alone their personality or attitude.

Therefore, you should try many teachers before you decide. If they offer cheaper or even free test lessons, try them out!

After a lesson, ask yourself these questions:

• Did the teacher adjust the content based on my stated goals?
• Did the teacher adjust her language to my level?
• Did the teacher use mostly words I already know?
• Was the teacher patient and willing to repeat or rephrase things until I understood?
• Was the teacher patient and allowed me to speak, even if I needed time to think?
• Did the teacher only use English occasionally when really necessary?
• Did I feel comfortable with the teacher?

As many of your answers to the above questions as possible should be “yes”. The most important thing is that you feel motivated to learn and that you use the lesson time to practise what you want, which in this case is speaking.

The more teachers you can choose from, the more selective you can afford to be. The importance of some of these questions depends on your goals. For example, if you want a teacher to explain how Chinese characters work as a beginner, you will need some English. This is fine. If your only aim is to improve your conversational Mandarin, though, there is little need to use English at all.

6 common problems with speaking lessons and what to do about them

Here are some common problems with lessons aimed at improving your speaking ability, collected over years of first learning the language myself and then hearing about other students’ frustration.

Problem 1: The teacher keeps introducing new words and grammar points

This is a common problem, and almost all but the most experienced teachers are guilty of it. The problem is not necessarily that they think you should learn all those words or think that learning a new grammar point is more important than speaking.

Instead, it’s likely that they either do not know how hard it is to handle all these new things as a student (if the teacher is a native speaker) or they have forgotten how hard it was (if the teacher is an advanced second language learner).

Explaining a new word or pattern is also easier than figuring out clever ways to use only words the student knows, so it becomes an escape route for stressed teachers.

If your goal is to improve speaking ability, especially fluency, there should be a minimum of new words and grammar patterns.

You should learn words and grammar largely by listening and reading, not by a teacher telling you what words mean and how grammar is used.

Only truly significant gaps in your knowledge should be filled during a speaking lesson.

How to become fluent in Chinese

Solution

Focus as much as possible on what you already know. Let the teacher know that you are already learning too many words and probably cannot manage more right now. Tell her you want to master the words you have already learnt instead.

Naturally, it takes a teacher some time to adjust to your level and get to know which words you know and which you do not, so you have to be patient.

However, it is easy to tell when a teacher throws in a new word just because she thinks you might need it someday, and when she does it because she mistakenly thought you already knew it. The former is a problem; the latter is not.

If the teacher keeps overwhelming you with new words, it may be time to find a new teacher.

Problem 2: The teacher corrects me on one thing, then when I try to fix it, she corrects something entirely different

Moving the goal posts when practising is an issue not limited to language learning. The issue is that the human mind has a limited bandwidth and simply cannot focus on too many things at once. If you put too many things on your mental workbench (also known as working memory), something will fall off. This is not your fault; it’s just how the human mind works.

So, if you make a tone mistake and the teacher points it out, you are more likely to make other types of mistakes if you concentrate too much on avoiding that same tone mistake again. Then your teacher picks up on one of these new mistakes, which in turn leads to more mistakes, and so on until you just want to scream.

Solution

This is a hard problem to solve. It has bothered me for a long time; indeed, one of the earlier articles here on Hacking Chinese is about this topic, but I still find myself doing it to students occasionally as a teacher, although I would like to think I have become better at avoiding it.

Don’t try to improve everything at once when learning Chinese

The solution is to persist and focus on one issue at a time, and only switch focus once you have made real progress. As a student, always repeat what your teacher says when she corrects you, and make sure you get it right.

Some teachers do not like telling you directly that you got it wrong the tenth time as well, but it is sometimes possible to sense this anyway. If your teacher corrects something else while you are focusing on her previous correction, say that you think it is really important to fix that issue first.

Another option is to focus on one issue per lesson, so agree in advance that only tones will be corrected during this lesson, and then you can focus on grammar next time.

Problem 3: The teacher speaks too much English

This is a well-known and much-debated issue. If your goal is to improve your conversational ability, most of the lesson, if not all, should be in Chinese, with only occasional explanations in English.

Teachers and students use English for many reasons, but the most common one is that it is easier and reduces friction. Some teachers have also spent a lot of time learning English and might feel it is a waste not to use it.

How much English is too much?

That is hard to say, but the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) recommends using the target language 95 percent of the time, which seems like a good guideline.

Solution

If you are a beginner, learn some classroom language first. If you find yourself or your teacher saying the same things in English repeatedly, stop and learn how to say those things in Chinese instead.

For all learners, not just beginners, imposing a no-English rule can help. If you are confident enough to use only Chinese for the whole lesson, do that, but most students should start with a shorter time. Agree with your teacher to spend the first ten or fifteen minutes of the lesson only in Chinese, then go back and clarify things afterwards if needed.

Will a Chinese-only rule improve your learning?

Also, note that some things are easier to do without resorting to English. If the lesson focuses on meaningful exchanges about topics you care about, that’s doable in Chinese almost at any level.

If the lesson is about explaining the intricacies of Chinese grammar or how Chinese pronunciation works, then that will be hard to do in Chinese. Fortunately, if your goal is to improve your speaking ability, you don’t actually need explicit instruction, so sticking to Chinese is easy.

Problem 4: The teacher speaks too much in general

This problem is less straightforward than the others. It could be argued (and many teachers and researchers do argue) that language is mostly acquired through comprehensible input, and that speaking is the result of acquisition, not the cause.

Learning Chinese through comprehensible input

You don’t have to be a comprehensible-input purist to believe that comprehensible input provided by the teacher is extremely important; I think so, too.

If your teacher speaks almost all the time, it could therefore be valuable, but it might not improve your speaking much in the short term. If you speak all the time, you do not really need a teacher; you could just speak to yourself (that is not a joke).

Find a balance. And make sure you listen and read enough outside of lessons.

Still, there is a skill component of speaking that requires practice, too. If you focus mostly on talking about things you’re familiar with (both topic and language), a good teacher can help you build fluency and confidence talking about these things in Chinese.

Solution

There is no one solution for this since there may be many reasons behind it, but start by talking with your teacher about it, then try to speak more yourself and see what happens. Prepare more before lessons to feel more confident if that is part of the issue.

If you still struggle for a chance to speak, you may need to find another teacher. However, in my experience, most teachers speak a lot because students do not, and silence can be awkward.

Problem 5: The speaking lesson is just like any other lesson

This has happened to me many times in formal education, and it can happen with private teachers too. It says “speaking” or “conversation” on the schedule, or that’s what you’ve agreed on with your private teacher, but the lesson is just like any other lesson.

You go through a new text, new vocabulary and new grammar. You read the text, talk about the words and drill the grammar patterns.

If your aim is to improve speaking, this approach is a waste of time. To be honest, I don’t think it’s a very useful approach in general, no matter what your goal is (except for getting a good grade); I’ve even switched schools because of this.

Solution

Since this issue is clearly caused by mismatched goals, you need to clarify what you want and the teacher or school needs to clarify what they can offer.

If you are the only student, any competent teacher should be able to tailor the lesson to your goals. Tell your teacher you would rather just talk and not study new material. The suggestion below about discussing a prepared topic also works.

Problem 6: Speaking practice consists of reading scripted dialogues in a book

This probably comes from older teaching methods that do not involve much real communication. Reading can be great for a number of reasons, but it’s not time well-invested if you want to improve your speaking ability. The fact that it’s a spoken dialogue written down does not help.

Real communication: What it is, why you want it and how to get it

Solution

Start with a familiar topic, which could be the dialogue mentioned above, and talk about it instead. Talking about a known topic makes sure you know enough words to actually talk about it.

Additional considerations for non-beginner learners

Most of the advice above applies to all students, but here are some suggestions that are particularly relevant for more advanced learners.

• Ask for more honest feedback. If you can already speak Chinese at a conversational level, you probably do not need a teacher just to talk with, but you do need a teacher who can spot your weak points and help you strengthen them. So finding a teacher who can do this is important. You are unlikely to be able to train your teacher to do this, but at least be clear and tell the teacher that you want honest feedback.
• Ask for stricter feedback. When teaching beginners, teachers typically do not aim for perfection, but move on as long as it’s clear what they mean. If you are at a stage where you want to go beyond simply being understood and would like to speak idiomatic Mandarin, you need to let your teacher know. They might be used to a much lower standard, so asking them to raise the bar is a good first step. You will probably need to remind them of this from time to time. This is particularly true for pronunciation.
• Explore alternative paths – There are many ways to say the same thing in any language. You can make a lot of progress by being able to say something in just one way, even if you also need to understand other ways of saying it when other people speak. If you want to take your spoken Chinese to the next level, try spending time with a teacher exploring these other ways of saying things you already know how to say. Paraphrase, rephrase, or simply experiment more with your teacher’s support.
• Explore new topics – To broaden your horizons, agree on a specific topic in advance and discuss it with your teacher during the lesson. This could be a topic related to your job or field of study, and it can be based on written material. For example, you might both read an article on an interesting subject and then talk about it in the lesson. This is useful because you can prepare and learn the necessary vocabulary beforehand, which means the lesson time is well used applying these words rather than encountering them for the first time.
• Sort out nuances – One of the hardest parts of learning Chinese on your own is working out small differences in meaning, such as between near-synonyms or grammar patterns that seem to mean the same thing. Although I have written an article about how to deal with this problem, the truth is that the most effective way to approach it is to go through the trickiest problems with your teacher. Keeping a notebook is very helpful; otherwise you will forget most of the really interesting questions. Please note that you need to be at an advanced level before most of these minor differences really matter.

What speaking with a good teacher can be like

Learning to speak Chinese with a good teacher is very demanding, sometimes even exhausting, but it is also encouraging, fun and rewarding.

As I mentioned in the introduction to this series, it is unlikely that you will be able to upgrade your teacher overnight simply by pointing out a few issues.

My hope is that you can use this article not only to improve the quality of your speaking lessons but also as guidance for what to look for in a teacher. The easiest way to train your Chinese teacher is to find one who’s good to begin with.

What makes a great speaking teacher for you?

This article series is based on my own experience learning and teaching Chinese, discussions with hundreds of other students and teachers, as well as a good deal of reading and research.

However, there are many problems I have not encountered, or there might be important details I have missed.

What do you think? What makes a really good teacher for speaking practice? Do you have any suggestions for other students looking for such a teacher? Have you encountered problems I have not discussed here?

Leave a comment below!

More about tutors and teachers on Hacking Chinese

1. How to get the most out of your Chinese tutoring sessions: The student side of the equation
2. 7 characteristics of a great Chinese tutor or private teacher: The teacher side of the equation
3. How to find the perfect Mandarin tutor for you: A complete guide