Kersten CP #3

On Friday, February 3rd I met up with my second conversation partner, Zhiji, at Subway on Campus from 2:30-3:30pm. He has a really busy schedule, but said meeting up at this time is good for him. We both introduced ourselves since this was the first time we met each other in person. He is from Wuhan, China, and has been living in America for the past few years. He is also studying statistics, and wants to get a PhD. I told him that my roommate is also from Wuhan, and would like her to meet him in the future. He told me that Wuhan has an accent, but I couldn’t really tell when he spoke. His English is really good as well. He doesn’t agree with me, but both his spoken and written English are above average in my opinion. If he did have any mistakes while speaking, I tried my best to point it out so he was aware for the next time he said the same thing. I told him I was a Chinese major, and he wanted to see my book. After showing him my textbook, I read aloud some of the Chinese passages in Chinese. He said my tones are pretty good, but some of my emphasis on words isn’t needed. I usually try to speak Chinese neutrally, but I guess I was unconsciously stressing some words over others since English has stress patterns and that’s what I’m used to speaking. I read the same sentence over again after he exemplified how it was supposed to sound. I had better pronunciation and stresses on the words than previously. He said with practice I can sound more authentic when I speak Chinese and lessen my accent. Overall this was a really helpful meet up, and I will work on trying to be more natural when speaking Chinese instead of stressing certain words over others. We agreed to meet up next Friday.