[My Students] Jason Rosen's Comment

While living in Taiwan for one year, I was fortunate to have taken Mandarin lessons from Peter Su for about 2 hours each week. Initially, I was hesitant to start up lessons, because I was not sure if I would be able to learn a significant amount of an entirely new language in such a short time. Boy, was I wrong!

Peter has an excellent style, and caters his lessons to the needs and strengths of each student. Up front, Peter asks what each students’ goals are, and tweaks his lessons accordingly. If the student is unsure, Peter is able to take lead and teach from his standard lessons plan. No matter the level of experience (I had none), Peter is able to understand how much to challenge each student to ensure maximum success and succeed. His experience is evident in his teaching process.

In addition to being able to accommodate students of all levels, Peter’s approach to teaching is unique in that he goes above the call of duty. Each student is not just another means of payment, or an extra few hours of work. Peter gets to know each student individually and is able to connect with them because of his friendly personality. Whether by teaching foreign students about local culture and customs, or by simply offering to chat and laugh in a new café, Peter’s personality resonates with his students. At the end of my year in Taiwan, Peter, myself, and a few of my American friends rented bicycles and we rode around the city together, capturing our final views and tourist spots of the beautiful city of Taipei. This is more than I would expect from a language tutor.

Though I was skeptical at first, I am eternally grateful that I took Mandarin lessons with Peter. Not only did it make me more successful at my job in Taiwan since I was able to speak with and email non-English speaking co-workers, but I have been able to maintain an elementary fluency and converse with Chinese speakers back home over 1 year later. For anyone on the fence, I strongly recommend Chinese lessons with Peter!

Jason Rosen

[My Students] Nancy Zanaty

I am very pleased to write this letter of recommendation of behalf of Peter Su, who was my Chinese teacher in Taiwan from August 2015 to August 2016.  I am an engineer who was sent to Taiwan for a one year work assignment, and wanted to learn some Chinese to make the most of my experience. Peter taught me in a one-on-one setting as a private tutor for 2-4 hours per week. He is very knowledgeable and professional and I am incredibly lucky to have been taught by him.

Peter is a very experienced teacher and this is evident in how much he understands his students. In my lessons with him, he would not only explain fundamentals of Chinese, but he was also able to point out frequent mistakes or confusions that native English speakers make and how to avoid them. Because of Peter’s vast experience, he also knows the best resources for Chinese learners and even supplements his lessons with his own useful handouts.

One of Peter’s best qualities as a teacher is that he is incredibly patient and friendly. He was always very open to answering my questions and working at my pace any time I struggled. He also went beyond his duty as a language teacher and also taught me about the culture of Taiwan and fun things to do and see in my time there.

In my year with him, my Chinese speaking, listening, and reading comprehension improved dramatically. I would recommend Peter to anyone who wants to see real progress in their journey to learn Chinese, whether they are interested in developing their conversation skills or their literacy skills. I am truly grateful for the opportunity I had to learn from him.

Nancy Zanaty

[My Students] Ronald Mangubat

I have long been looking for a language teacher who can help me with my Chinese language skills and Peter Su came in at the right time. 

He is kind, patient and teaches Chinese in a very practical way. With him, I don't really feel like I'm attending a class but more like I'm  meeting

a friend over coffee. He also explains things very well in English so I don't get lost whenever I encounter some difficulty in learning Chinese.

Good luck on your journey to the US!

Ronald Mangubat

[My Students] Lou Keith

I studied Mandarin with Peter for 18 months (four hours a week until April 2016). 

Peter's a great tutor - he's patient, relaxed and funny. He works at your pace, so you feel challenged but never too far out of your depth. The great thing about studying one-on-one is that you get a lot of speaking practice, which is exactly what you need when living in Taiwan. 

The conversation practice revolves around your interests, so if there's any specific vocab or any aspects of Taiwanese culture or history you want to understand, Peter can help you out. We used the Practical Audio and Visual Chinese textbooks supplemented with extra vocabulary worksheets and conversation books. All in all I really enjoyed learning Mandarin with Peter, and I'd highly recommend him to anybody!"

Lou Keith

外國人來台3誘因！繁體中文排第1

https://news.tvbs.com.tw/life/658981

[My Students] Derrick Hurst's Comment

I studied Mandarin with Peter for just over a year, and found him to be not only an excellent and rigorous teacher, but also an informative ambassador to help me navigate, understand, and appreciate the culture of Taiwan.

I moved to Taiwan from California in 2012 to work for a Taiwanese company. All of my coworkers spoke Mandarin, and the business was all done in Mandarin. While I could get along without it, clearly I needed to learn the language to succeed in the job.

When I first found Peter, I had been taking classes at a local university to learn basic Mandarin. The class format wasn’t working well for me because I was traveling a lot for work and missing lessons along the way. I started interviewing individual tutors that could be more flexible with their schedule. My first impression of Peter was that he is a serious, hardworking tutor, and he would encourage me to be the same as a student. This impression proved immediately to be correct. His lessons followed a framework set up by the most popular series of Mandarin learning books, but went far beyond with weekly written lessons teaching context and language about real-world events, places, and things that would immediately be useful to me at work and out in the world. The combination of the two, along with Peter’s always-available readiness answer questions quickly started opening doors for me and helping me understand the new culture in which I was living. My language skills increased so rapidly that supervisor at work would proudly show off my spoken and written language to his friends and clients.

As I continued to work with Peter, our relationship grew larger than the simple teacher/student arrangement we started with. His openness and enthusiasm led us out of the classroom and into sharing experiences in the real world. We would try out different coffee shops and practice our language there, he would tell me about unique cultural sites and events to visit, and sometimes visit them together. In a moment of truly unique cultural blending, he invited me to join him and his friends at a local Taipei professional baseball game. It was an amazing experience to see the game, so rich in American tradition, played out with the same rules but a completely different set of traditions in the grandstands. A great deal of fun to discuss the differences of American games vs. Taiwanese games. I hope to be able to return the favor one day and take Peter to a game here in the USA.
I’ve moved back to the USA now, profoundly changed from my time living abroad as anyone would be. Looking back at it as I often do, I can clearly see the two different experiences- before I started working with Peter the culture seemed opaque and the simplest exchanges with people was riddled with misunderstanding and difficulty. After meeting Peter, things started making senses, people opened up, and life became a whole lot easier. I give him so much credit for working hard, pushing me, and having patience and diligence to help me understand how and why to speak the local language. I hope he has the opportunity to share that experience with many, many more students and colleagues.

Derrick Hurst

Dh.hurst@gmail.com

老外學中文 什麼地方最痛苦？

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