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[Lotus Eater]

I had it as part of my deal - 2 hours per week with a grad student.  However, we got to be friends and quickly fell into talking and not studying.  Then I gave myself some 'bootcamps' where I hired teachers for up to 6 hours per day every day for a few weeks to give me a boost.  And then I hired one of the Chinese teachers here who teaches foreign students Chinese to teach me for 2 hours twice a week. This worked well until May, when I got too busy and was away too much.  Will start again after summer.

[icebear]

An obstacle in Shenzhen (less than elsewhere in Guangdong province) is that many people's first language is Cantonese, not Mandarin. Although the fact that Shenzhen is such a melting pot makes it reasonably easy to find people with clean accents for language exchange. If you have any specific questions regarding the city feel from to PM me, I'll be in SZ until early August.

[Stil]

You can ask potential teachers what they scored on their oral Mandarin proficiency test. Above 87 is news desk material 82-87 is very, very good.

[Lotus Eater]

An obstacle in Shenzhen (less than elsewhere in Guangdong province) is that many people's first language is Cantonese, not Mandarin. Although the fact that Shenzhen is such a melting pot makes it reasonably easy to find people with clean accents for language exchange. If you have any specific questions regarding the city feel from to PM me, I'll be in SZ until early August.

Where to then Icebear?

Dialects make things very tricky anywhere, so you need to check which people do ahve a relatively standard Beijing accent.

[icebear]

I'm aware of that Lotus, just commenting that he should be aware of that fact if he's planning on going gungho with the language studies (which I think is a good idea, wish I'd been serious about it before I arrived as opposed to starting 6 months late).