Hi everyone,

I am hoping that I could get some advice on setting progress goals from some more experienced users on the forum.

I just got to Shanghai and am going to be here for about 3-4 months and my main goal is to improve my chinese. My family is from Shanghai so I can speak the dialect pretty well but my Mandarin is pretty awful. I have taken 4 semesters of chinese in college but that was 3 years ago so I am fairly rusty.

What are your thoughts on how much I should hope to accomplish in 3 months?

Well, you are in a very specific case :

1) You already speak a chinese language (different from mandarin, yes, but from the same family)
2) You already took 4 semester in chinese

In my opinion you can easily get a "daily" chinese within 3/4 months, it depends on how often you will interact in Mandarin.

I haven't done a Chinese immersion yet, but my immersion in Spanish was life-changing. I think you can make a LOT of progress in just a couple of months if you jump in with both feet.

I would recommend leaving behind all other languages and speaking ONLY Mandarin during your visit. If you can find a one-on-one tutor or teacher while you're there, that would be ideal. Speak as much as possible, and get people to correct your mistakes. Ask people how THEY would say things. Write phrases down and repeat them to yourself, then try to work them into conversation.

James