Hello! So, I’m an upper intermediate learner. I have a number of teachers and language partners, so I spend a good amount of time speaking mandarin (at least, for someone not living in china or taiwan). Up until now, my emphasis has been on being able to converse… I’ve focused on understanding and being able to express complex ideas. The plus side is I’ve had a lot of success in this. The downside is that the emphasis on conversation has made my grammar a bit weak…confounding this is the fact that once you reach a certain level, if you express yourself 80% “correctly” (from a grammatical perspective), many teachers will struggle to stop the conversation and correct you (even if you yell at them to do this :P). While I can of course seek out stricter teachers, I think that there is space for being a bit more strategic about this. I’m curious if you have any advice or suggestions for resources? This could be activities to do with teachers, things to read, etc.
I’m definitely planning on going through some sites that have fairly comprehensive intermediate and advanced grammar lessons (this one and others), but beyond that I’m not quite sure. One nice thing is that for a long time, I haven’t translated in my head – I can just express myself. This means that conversations flow fairly naturally. The downside is that the grammar that comes out isn’t always correct! So I need to bridge that tendency!