Best Place to Live and Study Chinese?

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  • #49013
    Avatar photojoel8a
    Participant

    Hi guys, I am looking for a place to study in Chengdu for the winter (from January to February). I would really appreciate if someone can tell me his/her opinions.

    Also, i am thinking to live in a home stay, so if any of you know where can i find one, please let me know.

    Best,

    Joel

    #49014
    Avatar photoTrond
    Participant

    I am taking classes at Mandarin House at the moment, and I am very satisfied. Good teachers, small classes or private lessons, and many possibilities if you dont want to study full time. You can read more here:

    http://www.mandarinhouse.com/learn-chinese-in-chengdu

    #49037
    Avatar photoCharlie
    Keymaster

    The best place to live is probably the one closest to where you will be studying or interacting with China most! Hard to say where those places are without knowing more about your situation. Home stay is a good idea for accelerated learning.

    #49059
    Avatar photojoel8a
    Participant

    Thank you Charile and Trond, I still do not know where to study Chinese. I checked mandarin house and the price is really high and It looks that Chengdu does not offer winter programs, so does anyone knows other school where can I learn Chinese this winter (January) close to the US consulate, thanks!

    #49079
    Avatar photoMiro630
    Participant

    joel8a,
    Pls could you advise what is your current Chinese level and what is the time you want to invest into learning Chinese? Concurrently what is your target for this learning course?
    I guess that having this information more people can contribute with their advise.
    In any case let me mention couple of brief general recommendation based on my own experience.
    If you are starting with Chinese so I am afraid there is no other way than to go for formal classes and learn the phonetics and basic grammar structures. This is relatively slow and boring process but managing it properly will make your life much more easier later on.
    Shall you already manage Chinese into intermediate/lower intermediate level so I would more recommend selfstudy (about two hours a day aiming at characters and new vocabulary) combined with practising the language (for me the best worked going to tea shops and talking with the shop assistants; talking Chinese to my Chinese friends usually did not work well at all as we almost always ended up talking in English).
    This I would support by formal classes – about 2 hours a week – in order to get the proper explanation for your eventual language related questions as well as proper evaluation and guiding on your the most common mistakes.
    Shall your Chinese language level reach advanced level then you shall probably go for tailormade programs depending on your target – area you want to improve.

    #49087
    Avatar photojoel8a
    Participant

    Thanks Miro, my current level is lower intermediate. My principal target is speak chinese and visit chengdu. Like i said, i am looking for a short time program during the winter, so i really want to stay with a family and enroll a program in a small school, institute etc etc. The  problem is that I don’t find neither a school with a cheap price to take chinese classes  nor a cheap homestay.

    #49097
    Avatar photoMiro630
    Participant

    Dear joel8a,

    If money is the issue so I would really recommend you following system:

    1) Come to Chengdu (as per my opinion Chongqing would be even better because the city is really less international but the public transport infrastructure is much much better)

    2) Select the cheap accommodation in some very local part of the city well away from any expat community (therefore Tong Zi Lin you should not even consider) but still with access to subway station – here considering roomsharing with Chinese person who cannot speak English would be great – as you are aiming for Chengdu so I assume you have some contacts here and they could assist you to find such deal.

    3) Study every day for about two hours on your own with emphasize on vocabulary and characters

    4) Find the nearest tea shop (for me Tian Fu Ming Cha worked the best  but for instance Zhu Ye Qing will do equally well). In here I would suggest to experiment a bit and visit several as you shall ideally find at least one or two where you feel comfortable talking to the staff and where the staff is happy seeing you (generally they will be happy even if you buy nothing, or really little, because due your presence there will be probably coming more people to have a look at you and some of them will also buy the tea).

    5) Enjoy the tea – they provide free samples for potential customers to try the taste and some of the tea is pretty good – and talk talk talk. In such environment you can easily spend 2-3 hours just drinking tea, eating the tea biscuits and talking. The shop assistants usually cannot speak English and will be usually quite happy being able to talk to the foreigner in Chinese (plus the benefit for them is increased flow of real customers – they work on commission so this is certainly for them the incentive to make you return to the shop).

    6) If you combine two or three such shops so you will have the whole day of free Chinese conversation. You can also add majority of the people who’s job is to stand on the street and attract customers or to sit in the household reception. Usually they will be also pleased to talk to you but I would bet on teashops.

    7) Subsequently I would combine it with so called ‘language exchange’ – ideally finding some university students who wants to improve own English and agree on several meetings a week – always one day talking in English and the other one in Chinese only – such arrangement you could get also for free and provided you select the right partner so the person may already point out the main mistakes in your pronunciation and grammar what can be of high value for you.

    8) Subsequently I would take about 2 classes weekly with any of these schools with clear requirement of them to analyse your most common mistakes accompanied with recommendation how to prevent them.

    Pls keep in mind that such a program requires a lot of discipline as you will have nobody to supervise you at every given hour and all will basically depend on your free will to work hard.

    But the advantage of such a program is that it’s really cheap and efficient (you cannot get it cheaper unless you apply for one of Confucius institute scholarship what is then another alternative). If you would be really working every day about 6-8 hours on your Chinese with the rest of the time intentionally spending with the Chinese friends whose English is at best much worse than your Chinese so after several weeks you shall notice huge improvement.

    Pls do not get me wrong – if your level is lower intermediate so there is no way to bring it in 1-2 months into upper intermediate level unless you have real talent for languages. But you will basically acquire certain language stereotypes, improve your pronunciation which is in Chinese quite important, increase your vocabulary and the most importantly the Chinese becomes for you a natural tool for communicating with the people. It’s already not bad for the start. But you shall be willing to accept a lot of internal ‘torture’ because it’s unlikely you will really enjoy  any conversation in Chinese until you reach upper intermediate level.

    #49131
    Avatar photocoryg
    Participant

    If your on a budget I recommend taking a look at this online course from this Swedish guy.  The first level is free and level’s 1 and 2 go on sale for $10-15 once a month.  He has his own site but I don’t know if it is functional or not.  Check out:

     

    https://www.udemy.com/chinese-made-easy/

    http://www.dominochinese.com

    If your at an intermediate level this also maybe too easy for you.  I found his Level 0, 1 and 2 to be very helpful.  First course is free.

     

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