I’m doing my best to learn chinese, both spoken and written. I’m taking a class for the spoken stuff, but I’m not getting much practice reading, just because everything is so structured, and is always accompanied by both english & pinyin. I don’t really feel like I’m getting much practice just reading & recognizing the characters themselves.
What I’d really (really) like would be to find some one who speaks / reads mandarin who would write to me, and read my responses, and kick me when I get something wrong 
Of course, as it is now I know just about nothing…for an idea of my current written vocabulary see chapters 1 - 7 here. Very little.
Anyone interested (or have better suggestions)?
Thanks a lot,
Yeah! I’ll take one too. I just need the motivation to do some practice outside of class. But I probably won’t write much, since even a short composition is a hell of a lot of work for me in Chinese.
Any native Chinese-speakers?
I see from NoCoolUserNames GQ thread that he and dakravel are also semi-but-not-really mandarin speakers. I wonder just how many we have here, anyway?
I’m an absolute baby Mandarin student, but ShirtNinja13 is actually pretty good. Not native, but decent.
You flatter me, love
That said, I’d love to correspond with you, if you want to start something up. That, and I’m currently living in China, so I might be able to point a native speaker or two in your direction. Drop me an email, if you like.
bamf
You might also consider pinyin chat at www.zhongwen.com. You can have some very basic conversations there–plus they have a handy dictionary built into the site; there is usually at least one native speaker there that will chat with you and correct you if you so desire. If you’re interested in chat using characters (and you’re computer supports it), there are dozens of sites for that as well.