So… I’ve met so many amazing, interesting and obviously brilliant classmates here. I would be love to be able to speak with them and get to know them outside of class as would happen in an in-person setting. I do know that sometimes there are meetups which I haven’t had the pleasure of attending yet. I hope to attend the next one.
So my ideas is… what about a Student Conversation Club where student, say divided by level, could come in and just chat with fellow classmates and put their “Zhongwen” into practice? I would love to be able to do this as a sort of freer less structured practice of my language skills. And because I think that my classmates are so very interesting.
Thanks for entertaining the idea!
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That’s a great idea. One issue is that students have very different schedules and time zones so getting everyone together at the same time is challenging though. Especially if it’s specific people you want to talk to.
That’s what makes written communication very useful because people can log in when they are free and don’t need to all be there at the same time.
We used to have a 只说中文 category on here but we didn’t have anyone post so I deleted it again. Should we start a topic for that? 
By the way when you click on a class mates picture in your past classes you will be taken to the forum here (if they are on the forum) where you can message them.
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I am very happy with seeing my fellow students in advance. I didn’t contact any up to now but thought about exchanging prepared sentences for the upcoming lesson and similar things.
I know @Baeli-Mandarin-HSK_1, you do no writing, so that’s no option for you. Speaking - understanding other foreign speakers is sometimes even harder for me (if it’s not the usual sentences ;-)) - I’m mostly missing the clear tones. 
and everybody has already some special extra vocab. At my level I still prefer to listen to Chinese or audios only. I am afraid of copying other’s mistakes.
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Hi Sonja,
Quick tip from me for something I found really useful and engaging recently:
If you are an Anki user (an SRS flashcard app), you can actually download the Audio files from the Flexiclasses chapters and put them on repeat in Anki, so as to have further repeated listening to the same material (this way you can review it faster and more easily).
Just a thought of mine, as what I was doing recently is downloading videos from Youtube, separating them into 1 minute segments with Audacity and uploading them to my Anki. I’m having a blast just sitting and listening to them on repeat and training my ear. Douyin is by the way a great resource for that as well!
Regarding the meetups, I’m up for one as well!
I think Zoom now has some kind of apps for games and such, and there’s probably social ones on the internet as well (Cards Against Humanity, anyone?), which will definitely be a lot of fun.
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How about something like a monthly meet up divided by level? I played charades the other night with some chinese friends and it was great practice, speaking games would definitely be fun in a meet up.
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I think that’s a great idea. My worry would be that we might not get enough people together yet though. We are trying hard to get Flexi students to join the forum but many seem to be shy/unaware so far 
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I wonder whether it’s worth asking teachers to spend 2 mins introducing the forum for their next classes or something? I think the only way I found the forum was asking a question via email to Andreas and then being redirected here - I don’t know how other students would find it other than by chance clicking on the button
Also, I would love a meetup with a charades-like Chinese game, I love those kind of word games so much!
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