Find a Chinese tutor near you in London

Learning a foreign language is never easy as it involves going outside of your comfort zone. This is even truer when it comes to learning Chinese as it uses a completely different writing system to our own and it's almost impossible to decipher without any prior understanding of it. There are few languages less similar to our own than Chinese. However, with the help of an experienced Chinese tutor or teacher, you’ll quickly be able to learn the basics before moving on to having basic conversations and asking everyday questions.

While Chinese has never been the most commonly taught language at GCSE and A Level, its numbers have been increasing in recent years. European languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, and German have traditionally been more popular. In fact, Chinese surpassed German at A Level this year. Given that Mandarin Chinese has over 900 million native speakers, you’d have thought that this would have happened a number of years ago. But China is a faraway land, not a European neighbour like Germany or France. Students have previously preferred not to learn this confusing and distant language.

A Language with a Reputation for Being Difficult

Mandarin is a tonal language which uses four different tones that can change the meaning of each syllable. The Pinyin romanisation system represents these tones by using diacritic marks over the vowels: a macron, an acute accent, a circumflex accent, or a grave accent. That isn’t all, though. You can divide Mandarin Chinese into two main groups. Simplified Chinese is used in the People's Republic of China whereas Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan. The Pinyin system can be used to help those familiar with the Latin alphabet learn Chinese.

However, students shouldn’t overuse the Pinyin system and should instead focus on learning Chinese characters and what they mean. With a bit of study, you’ll be able to recognise the most commonly used characters. After a few classes with a private tutor, you'll be able to phonetically transcribe some Chinese words with the help of a Chinese dictionary and be familiar with a few expressions to help you get around Chinese speaking countries. Reading and writing in Chinese may seem like a long way away, but you can always speed up the learning process by immersing yourself in the language.

You can learn Chinese quickly. However, it'll probably take you longer than it would be learning a language more similar to English.

If you want to reach an advanced level in Chinese, you’ll need a good understanding of grammatical structures, vocabulary, speaking, etc.

There are plenty of reasons for learning Chinese.

Chinese Lessons in London

Chinese lessons are a great way to deepen your understanding of the language, improve your speaking skills, and get to grips with the writing system. Private classes will be like a linguistic exchange to help you improve your knowledge of the foreign language. No matter where you’re living in London, there are plenty of tutors all over the city. Whether you’re in Camden, Greenwich, Enfield, Croydon, Richmond, Islington, Hackney, Barnet, or Fulham, you’ll be able to find private Chinese tutors. There are 120,000 people of Chinese origin in London and they make up a third of the country’s entire Chinese population.

Would you like to learn Chinese? You could do a language exchange with a native Chinese speaker and help them to speak to speak English while they help you with your Chinese. You can find Chinatown in the City of Westminster. Of course, this isn’t the only place in the capital where you can find Chinese speakers. However, it is a useful place to start looking for Chinese immersion without having to take a plane to China.

Learning Chinese to Travel to China and Taiwan

What better way to discover a language than to immerse yourself in it and the culture? If you want to immerse yourself in the Chinese language and culture, you can go to places like Beijing, Guangzhou, or Taipei. Spending time in Mainland China or other Chinese-speaking areas is great for learning the language. Once you leave the major cities, it’s unlikely that you’ll find many people who can speak English, even among the younger generations. While the internet can help you learn to say the odd phrase like “ni hao” (hello), it can’t help you in a conversation.

Taking Chinese Lessons with Superprof

If you’d like to become an intermediate or advanced speaker of Chinese, you need only to find the right private Chinese tutor on Superprof. Your tutor can tailor their conversation or writing tutorials to you in order to get the most out of every hour you spend together. Regardless of your level on the CEFR, be it A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, or C2, you’ll be able to find a tutor to help you.

The basics of the Chinese language

Remember that Mandarin isn’t as difficult as you might think: A lot of words are made up of common characters and syllables:

Let’s have a look at “tai”, “zhong”, “guó”, “bei”, “nan”, “jing”, “shan”, “xiang”:

Tai = city, 台

Zhong = middle, centre, 中

Guó = country, 華

Bei (or Pei) = north, 北

Nan = south, 南

Jing = capital, 京

Shan = mountain, 山,

Xiang = elephant, 象.

With just these 8 characters, you can make plenty of Chinese words:

Zhongguó, The Middle Kingdom

Tainan, “the city in the south”, Taiwan

Taizhong, “the city in the centre”, Taiwan

Beijing, “the capital of the north”, China

Xiangshin, “elephant mountain”, a famous mountain in the southeast of Taipei, Taiwan

Taipei, “the city of the north”, the capital of Taiwan

Nanjing, “capital of the south”, southeast China.

 Learn to speak Chinese with a private tutor

If you want to learn Chinese as a beginner, you’ll need to familiarise yourself the pronunciation of Chinese words and the different tones. You’ll need to learn characters, grammar (pronouns, adverbs, verbs, adjectives, meanings of words, etc.), vocabulary, and writing. Head to the site and find the right private tutor for you: compare rates, qualifications, and experience, etc.