The nice folks over at Hanbridge Mandarin reached out to me in order to provide me with a free-trial of their online Skype school.  In the following review I will give an honest run-down of my first impressions and my experience.

Initial Impressions:

Hanbridge is a mandarin school based out of Shenzhen, I first learned about them when I was approached by one of their staff through facebook about receiving a free trial lesson in exchange for reviewing their service.  Their staff are very prompt and focused and gave me a good overall first impression of their services.

Having previously worked for a Skype teacher portal where I had to handle freelance Skype teachers, my impressions of online Skype schools were that they were a cost offering and that in order to preserve margins, they would skimp on service and customer satisfaction.

This was not the case.  Hanbridge staff were very intent on making sure that my experience was a good one and took great care to arrange appropriate material prior to my trial lesson.

So without further adieu, I will dig into the nuts and bolts of Hanbridge and their Mandarin classes.

I will segment this review into three sections –

• Before the lesson
• During the lesson
• After the lesson

Before the Lesson

Before I had my lesson, I took an assessment which helped the teachers assess my levels of Grammar, Vocabulary, and Listening.  I was impressed at the depth of technology, as I have seen similar online Skype schools provide online assessment that was not as thorough, and did not include listening.  I was able to complete this assessment by using my phone which was great because I was able to do it while sitting on the couch.  I was not expecting it to be mobile accessible, that was a nice surprise.

After I finished taking the self-assessment, the course consultant connected with me on Skype to chat briefly in Mandarin and to ask what I would like to cover in my trial lesson.  I requested business mandarin as I often speak with Clients in Mandarin and I wanted to learn some more useful phrases for doing business.  She arranged my lesson time and provided me with a link to the lesson session via email.

During the Lesson

Hanbridge Mandarin uses a customized version of Cisco Webex.  I was highly impressed with the usability of the software as well as the stability of the video and audio connection.  As I speak with many clients in China via Skype, I have had almost nothing but connection issues with VOIP.  Thankfully, this was not the case.

The lesson software itself is very easy to communicate with.  You are connected to your teacher via Video and you can communicate through chat as well as by drawing on the lesson powerpoints.  Here is an example of a class session:

The classroom contains a virtual whiteboard and a full set of communication features that make communication between the teacher and the student very easy.

At this point in the review you may be thinking… “the technology seems nice…but what about the teacher”.

Like any school, Hanbridge succeeds on the fact that its teachers are great.  The teacher that I had, Xia Xia (Forgive me if I’m forgetting your name!) was very pleasant and friendly, she was fully fluent in English and had a very versatile teaching method.

When I would make a mistake in grammar or pronunciation, she would make sure that she would correct me after I was finished with my sentence.  This encouraged me to speak more. She was also very helpful by giving me alternative examples and separate use cases so that I understood how to use the word or phrase that I was learning in many contexts.  I was very pleased with her level of proficiency as a teacher and her ability to manage the lesson, switching from friendly communication to instructive.

The course material was well laid out and custom created by the teachers.  It was functional and practical and it was not overly produced which I liked.

After the lesson:

After the lesson I was given the option to save all of my lessons notes, video, and presentation, which would be very useful for students who are taking regular lessons.  The staff were also careful to follow up with me to make sure that I had a good experience.

All in All, I can highly recommend Hanbridge Mandarin as an online school. The quality of their instruction and their focus on providing a good experience shows through at every step of the process.  You can tell that they are serious about expanding their business through a quality offering.

Score 9.5/10

Pros:

•  Very easy to enroll, pay, and schedule lessons through their online system.
• Software is easy to use, stable and helpful.
• Teacher was fantastic.

Cons:

At $25 per lesson, it can be a bit pricey for the budget conscious language learner.  But in light of the quality, this is not unreasonable.  The market average is in this range.

Everyone has that one friend, the one with the terrible Mandarin accent. They speak in a flat monotone, with no emotion and no respect to timing.  It’s as if they were bored and reading pinyin as if it was English.

Most of the time, secondary speakers of Mandarin just don’t understand how bad they actually sound to a native speaker. I think that this is due to several reasons, and can be helped.  Here are a few of the things that I think cause a bad Mandarin accent.

1) No one has ever mentioned that your accent is terrible.

Accents are often viewed as something that just can’t be helped, something that we are born with.  This perception is completely untrue.  If this were true, there would be no need for speech pathologists or diction coaches.  An accent is something that you can tweak and intentionally craft.  When most people speak a language they are not thinking actively about how to manipulate how they are sounding, they first imprint a sound and then focus on the output of the memorized sound. Accent training requires that we be more active in our output.  The view that it is something that can’t be helped does make a bit of sense because it is very hard to change the way we sound, however it is not impossible. So we should try our hardest to improve our accent.

2) You imprinted yourself with sound patterns that you self-developed without hearing them from a native.

The problem with learning from a book and not speaking to, or listening to natives, is that you will not be able to get a feel for where words begin and where they end.  Cadence and timing are just as important to sounding like a native as tones. If you’ve learned the wrong cadence and timing, it’s very hard to change that without having to think about each word.  If you are not including listening to native speakers and speaking with them in your learning routine and making it just as important as learning new vocabulary, you should listen to more Mandarin.

3) There is a “culture block”.

Some people just can’t bring themselves to make an effort to sound like a native.  They may try to imitate it with about 65% effort.  This lack of effort is because they fear that if they try their hardest to have an authentic accent, they will either fail, someone will think that they are mocking or they are “not being American”.  This is just my opinion but after speaking with people like this and asking why they don’t seem to try to have an authentic accent at all, they usually answer that they don’t want to be rude.  I have also seen that after being immersed in the language their accent does improve over time.  So I believe this is mostly a mental problem.

These are all reasons that Singing is a great way to improve your accent.

Singing helps you develop a natural timing and cadence, it gives you a feel for tones, and it`s a powerful memorization tool.

Don’t believe me? Let’s do an exercise: how many songs can you currently sing from memory in English? How many times has a song come on the radio and you were able to effortlessly sing along with it even though you had put no concentrated effort into learning it?

Human Beings have been using songs since songs were invented to pass down oral traditions of history and language. Also, most early stage language acquisition occurs through song with native speakers.

On top of that, it’s really fun, and singing along is an objective way to measure progress and set goals. Too often we get sidetracked with learning because we are unable to see any real progress and we get discouraged. Singing along with a song is something that you can rapidly see progression in, so it acts as a great motivator. Plus it`s really fun to perform in front of your native friends.

Below, I have included a list of Karaoke Songs that helped me when I was first learning. Please try to follow along with the pinyin and sing out loud, because not only is it fun, but you’ll notice in a few weeks that you won’t feel as tongue tied when learning new vocabulary:

曲婉婷 – 我的歌声里

那些年 – 胡夏

心跳 – 王力宏

愛我別走 – 張震嶽