Dawn

Dawn is a very passionate teacher, you can tell she really wants to preserve the Min Nan language. She also comes quite prepared to class with target language, and talking points. I also like how she uses the ESA boomerang model of teaching, as well as share some elements of connected speech that make your Hookien sound more local.

Another great lesson! She is always so prepared, with an interesting PowerPoint to go through. We review what we covered towards the end as well, and also review stuff from the previous lesson at the beginning, which is extremely helpful.

As an ABC trying to re-connect with my heritage language, my knowledge of Mandarin is pretty patchy, as I mainly learned by osmosis through exposure with my parents and Chinese school classes from when I was a kid, many years ago. Dawn has been helpful in patching my language deficits and guiding me through my weak spots. I'd say I'm at an intermediate level, and I appreciate her clear diction and adjustment of her speaking speed to my comprehension level. With her conversation classes, it's mainly free-form but she will take the time to identify commonly used sentence forms/phrases that pop up during our conversation and work through multiple examples to ensure that I understand how it is used. She uses a shared google document so that it is easy to access for review after the completion of the lesson. I'd definitely recommend Dawn, or at least a trial lesson with her!

很有意思的課！我們今天花時間聊了壞習慣和怪怪的習性這些主題。我覺得Dawn老師很細心。辛苦你了！她每次都幫我糾正錯誤。我確定她會讓我的中文進步。

Very helpful lesson!

Dawn is very detailed oriented and focused. She is very good at picking apart my grammar and pronunciation and writes detailed notes in a google document which serves well for me to review later. She is also very good at piecing together what I'm trying to say. For instance, she realized I was trying to say xi2 guan4 (habit) when I was saying xi1 guan4 (relationships), which I was very impressed by. The class time goes quickly because I'm engaged, having fun and learning a lot in her classes.