Studying Chinese in China

[profamericain]

I am wondering if anyone knows of any kind of survey among people who have studied chinese in china to see if there is any consensus as to what are the better schools for studying chinese in china.

I have spent four summers in beijing studying chinese. This summer will be my fifth. My first three summers were with ACLS (Worldlink), which went bankrupt after the director absconded with all the money. My choice of ACLS was somewhat arbitrary, based to a certain extent on how professional the website looked. Last summer I studied with CLE, to which I was referred by a former ACLS teacher who told me a lot of their teachers had moved on to ACLS. (That could be because both were located at Jianwai Soho.)

I have looked at the websites of many schools and they all look pretty much the same. Perhaps they all are really the same. Small class sizes, similar textbook choices - NPCR or Boya or Short Term Spoken Chinese, field trips, etc. I have thought about attending a university, but their large class sizes intimidate me, although those westerners I have met who spoke the best chinese all have attended a university.

Any ideas or comments?

 

[gato]

Boomerang Language Institute (BLI) has a pretty good reputation as it's founded by ex-IUP teachers.
http://www.blichina.com/
Taipei Language Insitute (TLI)'s Beijing branch also has a good reputation.

You probably look around on Chinese-forums, as there are more discussion of schools there.
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php ... institute/
BLI (Beijing Language Institute)
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php ... ngnanjing/
Learning Chinese through a self-found tutor or a school in Beijing/Nanjing?

 

[arc892]

I wouldn't recommend those private schools, they can be quite dodgy as you found out.

The best teachers will be at the universities...Beida, Qinghua etc. The class sizes are really not that large because they divide all the people up into many levels. In my classes (advanced) there were max 15 people.

The most highly regarded programs are at National Taiwan University and Qinghua. I forget the exact name of the Qinghua one, it's associated with Princeton, though I don't think you have to be a Princeton student :?: The Fudan summer school was very average, very much rote learning, no discussions...you know what it can be like. The classes in Beida are closer to how languages are taught in Western countries.

If I was starting to learn Chinese again I would go to NTU for the summer.
http://cld.liberal.ntu.edu.tw/en/language.htm

There are also great places to learn Mandarin in Hong Kong.

 

[LongShiKong]

Both in Canada and in Beijing, I found myself in 'jiao-shu' classrooms--heavily book-oriented lessons any foreigner could've taught having mastered the given textbook. Furthermore, on more than one occassion, I found myself correcting the Chinese teacher's tone representation.

In Canada, I wrote the administration on behalf of all of the students in my class demanding the college (Vancouver Community College) provide us with the accompanying audio--they refused.

I've been teaching English for 10 yrs and feel that a major part of the problem in edu cation in general (not just language teaching) is due to the nature of the publishing industry itself--the vast majority of published resources are text-based which by nature is self-study, yet classrooms (and learning) are and should be much more than that.

 

[Z-Lo]

Hi. I have researched Chinese schools in China pretty extensively, but almost exclusively university programs, and have taken the full-time long-term courses at several universities in several cities. I actually find this topic very interesting.

I find that it largely depends on your priorities versus your budget. There are many many variables to consider, and the program itself is only part of the larger picture, in my opinion and experience. A person's reasons for studying Chinese will probably determine those priorities.

For example, are you sticking to Beijing? I was previously not tied to any certain place and primarily wanted to study language, so I considered factors such as climate and a Mandarin dialect being the primary local language. Class-size was another factor I investigated. I also didn't want to learn Chinese in an overly "Westernized" environment, like Shanghai. I even factored in the quality of the school's facilities such as gyms in my decision making. The school's location within the city may also be relevant. The variables are endless.

Anyway.

If cost is not a major consideration, I hear that the Chinese programs at the larger more famous universities are good, but have no direct experience myself. (I can't really speak about private schools, which tend to be many times more expensive.) However, large famous universities may have a large number of foreigners, maybe a lot of westerners, and that is something I have avoided. But for some people maybe that is desirable.

In the end probably no program is perfect and you won't really know what it's going to be like till you get there. And, of course, you will get out of it what you put into it. So I would identify a couple of priorities (and be prepared to compromise on other things). Otherwise, it is difficult to comment more specifically.

 

[LongShiKong]

If I just wanted to improve my Chinese, I'd leave China and return to Canada. My Chinese friends there are much more westernized in their thinking--less hesitant about correcting my mistakes and far more capable of recognizing my strengths and weaknesses. In addition, cities like Vancouver have no shortage of friendly Mandarin speakers. I even met some in a small university city.