Jenni Simppula (Finland)

master graduate of horticulture and landscaping at Oulu University of Applied sciences

When I started my mandarin course I didn´t know what to expect. Especially because I had just arrived to China and knew only some words in Chinese, like Xièxie. I also knew that the characters here are not very easy to learn. The course started with phonetics which was the hardest part of all, because in Finland we don´t have similar phonetic forms. Still in my opinion all things we learned at lessons are useful in normal life. We also had chance to propose themes which we liked to learn and that was great.

The teacher was an expert and also lots of fun. She encouraged me when I sometimes felt that all the learning is hopeless :). There were six students participating in the course and we formed a great team, helping each other’s out.   After this week’s final test I felt that I would like to learn even more. 

I have just started to understand how to express myself in Mandarin and learn about basics of the language. So, if you have any spark to learn difficult but interesting language, Mandarin Plus is excellent change to do it.

I suggest that you participate all the lessons, because speed is quite fast and you don´t want to “fall off a horse”.

Oh, and the teacher also gave us beautiful Chinese names which was exciting and also helped us some way to adjust to Chinese life!

Thanks a lot,

Jenni Xīn Róng.