Chien-Ni Hung

My name is Chien-Ni, I am a native speaker of Mandarin and Taiwanese. I have been living in the UK for on and off 7 years now, I am a sociable person, easy to approach, I am interested in art, cinema, theatre, literature and so on and I am also really into cooking and enjoying good food.

I believe in learning languages through culture and daily experiences rather than learning it through textbooks and this has always been the case for me when I learnt other languages. If you also share the same belief then my class may be the right one for you.

Teaching Experience:
Most of my teaching experience comes from language exchange, often with native French or Spanish speakers. I have also taught Mandarin to some British students before. I am familiar with the common mistakes that non-Mandarin speakers may have and over time I have developed my way of teaching and explaining things which seems to make it
easier for the students to further develop their language skills. In terms of teaching Mandarin, I have only taught adults in the past but I have experiences teaching English and art to children and teenagers in Taiwan.

Tutoring Approach:
I believe the best way to learn a language is through its culture, so in my classes I would always prefer to teach the language through an activity such as watching fragments of a film, listening to a song, cooking a small dish or writing up a scenario and so on, anything that would generate a more visual and experiential memory as that seems to help students remembering what they learn. But of course this is after certain basics are taught so that we are able to further utilise what we learn in these activities. I also think games and jokes are often very helpful when used in the right context, especially jokes as it tells you a lot about a culture, its language structure and the different sense of humour.