Welcome to Mapping Mandarin™

Todd is an excellent tutor. He has very high standards for teaching pronunciation -- in my experience, most native teachers will accept your pronunciation as valid far too early, even going so far as to say that your pronunciation is “標準” ("standard")...even if people can barely understand you.

Deep knowledge of the language and the culture!
Todd has been my Mandarin teacher for about three years. I began at zero having no knowledge of pinyin, tones, pronunciation, grammar, or characters. I am now working through a Chinese science-fiction young adult novel. [M]y pronunciation and tones are often much better than others I've practiced speaking/listening with, and my command of the grammar, characters, and vocabulary continues to grow at an accelerated rate. I'm extremely happy with my progress and have more desire to learn than when I started. There are a few points I really value from Todd's teaching style and expertise. One, I signed up to learn Mandarin but I'm also learning Chinese culture. Two, Todd understands the challenges I face in learning Mandarin with English as my first language. He's able to explain and bridge gaps in my understanding because of his intimate awareness of the learning process. And three, I'm learning to speak Mandarin without translating. My material has no English and is the same as a Chinese student would use. I feel like I'm getting a lot of cultural insight and learning more colloquial language.

Knowledgeable and Excellent Teacher
I found Todd for my daughter, a sophomore in college. Her classes are getting difficult and she needed support. She is in 3rd level Mandarin and is very happy with Todd. We feel so fortunate to have him. Thank you so much.

Todd was the exact teacher I needed to push my Mandarin level up significantly. He speaks clearly and slowly, which is huge for a beginner and which helped me get a solid grasp of the basics. He's also very much able to understand my fumbling about with trying to cobble sentences together and is able to render them in a way that a native Mandarin speaker would. He's incredibly impressive with how much Mandarin he knows, even though he isn't a native speaker. He knew how to push me in a constructive way with my pronunciation, vocabulary, and sentence structure that I couldn't have learned myself. Highly recommend!!!

I have been taking lessons with Todd for nearly half a year now, and I couldn't be happier with the progress I've made in learning Mandarin. I went from zero knowledge of the language, to now being able to read elementary level stories and hold basic conversation. As a native English speaker, I found it helpful that he had already gone through a similar learning journey, and was aware of the common challenges and insights that came from that perspective. As an adult learner, it was important to get a teacher to match my learning style, which he excels at.