I'm incapable of self-teaching a language. I need the external motivation from a set schedule, and the interaction with another human to keep me progressing.
I moved to Hong Kong this year from San Francisco to do these classes (and because I wanted to make the move). HK speaks Cantonese, so it's not full immersion. But you're a lot closer to China here and there's a decent amount of Mandarin around. The best thing to do would be to move to the mainland, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but every class my teacher and I basically spend the first hour (before getting into the official material) just chatting about life. A lot of it is about mundane topics (travel, food, what we did in the previous day, my adventures hitting on girls, etc.). We do it all in Chinese. She helps me by adding to my vocabulary as I try to express these things in Chinese. She adds new vocabulary constantly to this as well, waiting for me to get confused and prompt her about it. These conversation are the most helpful part of the class. They're natural and real. They hit topics I'd use in real life daily. They also involve natural repetition helping me naturally add the vocabulary and grammar to my repertoire.
> I’ve tried this approach but it’s impossible to find a tutor in SF :/
I’m really surprised by this — Chinese is everywhere in the Bay Area.
Suggestions:
1. Contact the Chinese department at a local university (e.g., USF) and ask a professor there. They will know tons.
2. Go to any cram school with marketing aimed at Chinese kids (Maybe something like Kumon. There are cram school ads in Chinese everywhere) and ask if they know someone. There are a lot of folks who teach Chinese to heritage speakers of Chinese (i.e., folks who speak it in the home but have not learned it formally). The teaching technique is a little different, but you can probably find someone who has taught non-heritage speakers if you specifically ask for it.
Sign up for lessons online at italki.com! I've only used it to do language exchange, but they have a bunch of teachers there who teach via Skype, and you'll probably pay less than what you would for a local teacher.
I moved to Hong Kong this year from San Francisco to do these classes (and because I wanted to make the move). HK speaks Cantonese, so it's not full immersion. But you're a lot closer to China here and there's a decent amount of Mandarin around. The best thing to do would be to move to the mainland, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but every class my teacher and I basically spend the first hour (before getting into the official material) just chatting about life. A lot of it is about mundane topics (travel, food, what we did in the previous day, my adventures hitting on girls, etc.). We do it all in Chinese. She helps me by adding to my vocabulary as I try to express these things in Chinese. She adds new vocabulary constantly to this as well, waiting for me to get confused and prompt her about it. These conversation are the most helpful part of the class. They're natural and real. They hit topics I'd use in real life daily. They also involve natural repetition helping me naturally add the vocabulary and grammar to my repertoire.