Chinese Learning Options

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  • #48882
    Avatar photoaux
    Participant

    I’d like to improve my Chinese and I was considering a couple of options when I finish my contract in March:

    1) Study Chinese for a semester or two here in Chengdu. I realise that Sichuanhua doesn’t make it the best environment but I do like the city.

    2) Move to a smaller place and try immersion.

    Any ideas/suggestions? Good immersion programmes? Scholarships? Any info is helpful.

    Cheers 🙂

    #48884
    Avatar photoDeven
    Participant

    Honestly, the classes at the Universities (from experience and from friends telling me) are pretty average. That being said, the one semester I took at Sichuan U really helped me, but it was mainly from being very active in class and always talking to the teacher. The materials and class book is pretty useless. This goes for most Universities around China. They don’t get how to teach foreigners Chinese.

    I’m doing some private classes now which aren’t too expensive and great for me because the class is really tailored to what I want to learn. I can explain more if you want.

    As for immersion programs, I’m not sure of any in Chengdu but I know they exist. It depends on what you want to do with Chinese and what you want your living situation to be. I have a few friends in “smaller” places and it can get very lonely.

    Hope that helps a bit!

    #48885
    Avatar photoaux
    Participant

    Ah sorry, I should have added that I’ve had a private tutor for about 4 months now and she’s been great. Have the basic structures there now, it’s just I need more immersion. I want to commit a decent amount of time to it but of course I do need a visa so that’s why I was thinking the university route. Can always make a bit of money on the side tutoring or whatever.

    My aims are really to get to a elementary/intermediate level if possible. I actually enjoy living in difficult situations but yes, I can imagine it would be very isolating in some places…

    #48886
    Avatar photoDeven
    Participant

    Yeah I know a lot of people that do the Uni route for a visa. And it well help with immersion as the classes are all in Chinese after a certain level (I’d demand to be in that level if I were you).

    In terms of living in difficult situations, I think Chengdu is a nice balance because it’s less developed than Beijing or Shanghai, but it’s still fun and diverse. I’ve been in the same position as you before and I’m very glad I didn’t move to some place where I was the only foreigner or something like that. You can immerse yourself in Chinese here for sure, and actually enjoy yourself haha

    #48887
    Avatar photogreenarcher
    Participant

    Maybe you need more local friends who you can practice Mandarin with. Watch more Chinese TV shows and movies without the subtitles, start with rom-com genre so the vocabulary won’t be very deep. I liked watching those dating game shows before. Leave the TV open while sleeping if you can, listen to the local radio too.

    If you can afford it, 1 semester should be enough to polish your Mandarin in a university. If you are very motivated and eager to learn, things will be much easier.

    It took a mere semester or two for Africans in our school back in Beijing how to speak decent, conversational Mandarin. At the end of the day it will boil down to you.

    #48891
    Avatar photoaux
    Participant

    Thanks guys, some good advice there. Think I’ll have proper look into doing a semester here in Chengdu 🙂

    #48894
    Avatar photoLongWang
    Participant

    That dating game is actually pretty good for listening practice, and I like it that they have the subtitles underneath, so you can confirm you are undersanding correctly and can look up words you dont know. Newer chinese movies have chinese and english subtitles, which can be helpful.

    As regards to going to Chinese Uni, I felt it was useful. I hear from others that sichuan uni methods are pretty poor, lots of focus on hand writing (Pretty, but useless) and learning characters, but slight neglect on listening and speaking. I went to xi nan cai da, and although not without its faults, I would recommend it.

    Immersion – useless in sichuan.

    #48895
    Avatar photoMiro630
    Participant

    Let me add my 2 cents.

    If you already practised for 4 months with the private tutor so you shall have the idea about the language basics (pronunciation, basic grammar, vocabulary etc.).

    What I find important are two main things:

    1) Learn every day (at least 30 minutes, one hour better)

    2) Practise practise practise

    The first one is self-explanatory (and I would not neglect writing of characters as it will firstly help you not to end up illiterate and secondly it usually helps to remember the word).

    The second part then looks to be your concern.

    What worked very well for me is to go to teashops. These are usually equipped with tables and chairs where potential customers may taste the tea.

    The shop assistants are in average quite interested in talking to foreigners and the possibility to enjoy tea releases the stress from the ‘forced communication’. It’s also not really weird if you spend there one hour drinking tea and communicating. Especially in the initial stage when your Chinese is not so good then you will need plenty of time just to exchange (and comprehend) the basic phrases. And as your level increases so the communication will be smoother and smoother.

    Another option are the janitors in your neighbourhood buildings.

    All these people’s job is to stay in the place quite a long time and they usually welcome every chance to beat their boredom.

    I also have to say that I do not see a big deal with Sichuan dialect, or better its form of Mandarin – ‘chuanpu’. Majority of the younger people can speak pretty decent Mandarin just with inevitable Southern accent and few Sichuanese words. Nothing wrong with that – if you learn it you will be perfectly understood through out the whole country and you will also not have major problem to understand other regions Mandarin (if not too tainted by local dialect – I still struggle to fully understand many Hong Kong people Mandarin …). Saying all of this it’s of course clear that till upper intermediate level you will understand the best Sichuanese and Chongqingese Mandarin and you will be the best understood in here. But after reaching intermediate or upper intermediate level so the difference will not be big.

    This all I would recommend to combine with one or two lessons weekly with a teacher who will explain you your language related questions and points out your main mistakes together with the hint how to get rid of them.

    Usually it makes little sense to hire private tutor extensively over the long period of time because the private school main interest is to earn money. Their experience with majority of the foreigners is that almost each foreigner after coming to China starts learning the language but really few of them can make it up to fluent conversational level or even higher.

    This fact then pushes them to act in the way allowing them to keep the customer. The classes are then ‘tailor-made’ – usually the meaning is – ‘entertain the customer so he/she stays with us long term and spends his/her money in our school’.

    Also there are relatively few good teachers knowing how to teach foreigners efficiently (and that’s really difficult because native English speakers, French speakers, German speakers or Slavic languages speakers need different approach and will have different problems). Majority of the teachers are young girls with little to no experience in teaching. Pls do not get me wrong – majority of them are really trying hard but it may not always suffice – you need talent, knowledge and experience – only the effort helps to achieve positive result.

    By the way there is nothing wrong with commercial school approach – teaching Chinese is a business like any other. Just worthy to be aware of that.

    But unfortunately the result is that it’s really really hard to find good school and good teacher. It’s already obvious from the approach – the elite schools in the West are testing their students on regular level and if the student cannot achieve the required level within the provided time so such a student is forced to leave the school and opt for some less demanding. So far I did not hear about any private language school in China testing their students and making them fail or even expelled in case they do not show adequate progress …

    But back to the topic.

    Once I met one European guy in Chongqing – he lived in China for several years, passed HSK 4 but basically was unable to communicate in Mandarin. When I asked him how is this possible so he told me it’s really hard to find a person with whom he could practise the language. When I showed him around telling him that 99% of the people around us speaks very fluent Mandarin so he looked at me in total disbelief.

    What I want to say it’s all about the attitude. If a person decides to stay in own apartment (and I know some of such foreigners who basically refuse to leave their apartment!) or meet just with another foreigners so it may be really hard, if not impossible, to learn the language properly.

    On the other hand if you go out and simply try and try and try so you shall see the progress pretty quickly, if the practising is accompanied with regular study.

    🙂

    #48906
    Avatar photoaux
    Participant

    Ah excellent reply, thank you! Great information.

    As most of you have said it’s all about attitude and indeed, I have been too lazy in this area. I can speak bits and pieces of a few other languages (only one ‘fluently’) but I was immersed in those situations and perhaps that has coloured my view of language learning. But yes, it’s all about taking every opportunity to use the language. Also need to make my Chinese friends to actually speak to me more in Chinese, they of course want to speak English the whole time.

    #48907
    Avatar photoMiro630
    Participant

    aux,

    Actually I am not sure that the idea to make your Chinese friends speaking to you in Chinese may work. Unless you set up clear time and rules and will organize it as a lesson so this may not work at all. The point of being with friends is communication. The reason why so many male foreigners marrying Chinese girls speak just rudimental Chinese is that they both have common communication tool – usually English. Learning new language is not an easy task and when you have other means of communication few people can be persistent enough to go through the ‘torture’. On top of that majority of Chinese people really wants to practise and use their English so they will not really discourage you when you will tend to give up on speaking Chinese.

    The reason why I mentioned tea shops and janitors is that really few of them can speak any English – thus you are forced to use your Chinese as there is no other way of communicating together. And as these people must stay in their place for long hours so they really appreciate anything what can bring a bit of ‘life’ into their working routine.

    But at the end it’s totally up to you. Chinese is not that difficult as basically each Chinese managed to learn it. But it still requires a lot of discipline to learn it …

    #48911
    Avatar photoCharlie
    Keymaster

    There’s already a lot of useful information in this thread but my position (which has kind of already been said here) is that it’s hard to generalize about what is the best way to learn. A lot of people benefit greatly from the structure and routine of classes at university, while others excel with resources to learn on their own. The most important thing is having motivation to succeed at learning Chinese, and to immediately use what you learn, in my opinion.

    With that said, there are a number of articles published here on Chengdu Living about learning Chinese, you can find a full list of these on the series page.

    #48913
    Avatar photogreenarcher
    Participant

    You can use books published by Beijing Language and Culture University. This series in particular: http://www.blcup.com/CW110?id=1013

    #48977
    Avatar photoSandro723
    Participant

    Need find a local to talk everyday 🙂

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    #49018
    Avatar photoKun Peng
    Participant

    you can try to live in host family or find a Chinese roommate with proficient English.

    #49386
    Avatar photoaux
    Participant

    Right, so I’ve decided I’ll do a semester studying here. Which is the best university to study Chinese at in Chengdu?

    #49486
    Avatar photoEnrique X
    Participant

    You can always practice with me. My mandarin is clean (especially in Chengdu,you know it lol). My mobile: 176 0801 3702. WeChat me.

    You can always contact me if there’s any problem.

     

    #49537
    Avatar photoyyw201
    Participant

    Does any one have Mandarin tutors they can recommend in Chengdu around Jingjiang area? What’s their going rate?

    My husband is learning Mandarin and he’s struggling with my family all speaking Sichuanhua around him.

    #49636
    Avatar photodove
    Participant

    I would suggest Sichuan University if you really want a semester.

    #49948
    Avatar photoKathy Huang
    Participant

    Hey

    I am a local person here and I studied in Australian around five years. Now I am working as a data analyst. I am a girl. Last year I just received an International Chinese Teacher Certification. So I would like to teach you chinese  for free if you want to learn native chinese. I am happy to teach you. My email is [email protected].

    #49957
    Avatar photoaux
    Participant

    In the end I did sign up for a semester at Sichuan University. As some of you warned me, the teaching quality is very poor but it provides me with the environment (and visa) to learn quickly which is great. I’d recommend this option but only if you are committed to learning outside the classroom with other students and Chinese friends.

    Kathy: Thank you for your offer but I’m already having a lot of extra practice so I’ll pass 🙂

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