My Cantonese tutor’s name is Shelley. She’s bilingual (Cantonese and Mandarin), and speaks English quite well, too. She grew up in Hong Kong, and went to university on the mainland. For someone like me, she’s pretty much the perfect language teacher – multilingual herself, and willing to accommodate my style of learning.
I was a little apprehensive about finding a tutor. I haven’t had a formal (paid) tutor since I started learning Mandarin in 2003, and even that wasn’t a good experience (I didn’t really know how I wanted to learn, and she didn’t really know how to teach – at least one side in the relationship needs to know what they’re doing for it to work out). Added to that was a seeming reluctance by many Cantonese speakers to teach their own language – I had two people contact me and then proceed to explain to me in no uncertain terms why my desire to learn Cantonese was, at best, misguided and, at worst, absolutely doomed to failure.
Ultimately my decision was driven by a need to achieve a relatively high level in a short amount of time. I have a deadline (next January or February) and certain goals, and having someone to ask questions to and get direct guidance seemed to make more sense than pure individual study. I won’t, of course, relax my listening regimen or anything like that. Instead, I’ll be taking what I come across in that environment and bouncing it off a sympathetic native speaker who is ready and willing to answer my questions.
As with the rest of my Cantonese experiment I’ll let people know how it goes here. For now, I can say that my chances of passing that interview early next year are getting better all the time.
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How is the Cantonese project going, by the way?
Bryan,
Very good question!
I plan on posting about it in the pretty near future. Stay tuned!