bigger class, better teacher, or smaller class?

[hunxueer]

hi all,

i'm looking for some of your guys' opinions on a dilemma i'm encountering. let me first give you the background information: i've been living in china just over 2.5 years, the first two of which i studied on my own, with friends, and tutors when i could find them (usually never last longer than a few weeks with any given tutor unfortunately). last semester i enrolled at a university to study and was put (rather arbitrarily; there was no exam or anything, and indeed, they were originally going to put me in the very beginning class) in the second-semester-level class, which i now feel was a bit low for my liking, but i didn't want to be that presumptuous and not be able to keep up.

anyway, after that i'd thought about studying on my own, but again couldn't find a tutor that was particularly suitable. so i decided this time to enroll at sichuan university (not where i was studying last semester), which has chengdu's largest chinese-language program for foreign students. prior to the placement test i crammed and placed into 中级一 first level. for this level there are two classes, and in true chinese-university style, all students in one class attend each of their respective subjects together. each class has a series of subjects, including general chinese, listening, speaking, writing, general knowledge about china, and phonetics/pronunciation. the former meets four times per week, and the others only once per week. this was the first week of classes, and i noticed that my general chinese class was getting smaller and smaller. turns out all the students were deflecting to the other class because the teacher is quite a bit better than our teacher, whose teaching method consists of having each student read a line out of the text and then asking if we have any questions about it. no discussion of the vocab whatsoever unless it comes up in the form of a question. she doesn't really seem to prep for class. the other teacher, by contrast, (i went to his class today to see for myself) goes over each vocab item clearly and thoroughly and types up everybody's homework sentences and reviews the mistakes we've made, and by the end of the 90 minutes today i feel like i absorbed much more than i did in the three 90-minute periods i've had with the other teacher.

so i too could deflect, but this means i'll be joining a class of close to 40 students, when the class i should be in must have about four or five students by now. obviously this gives a much better chance for interaction and question-asking, but if we can't really elicit the information we want out of the teacher, what's the use?

as i'm not attending the classes for credits, i'm pretty free to attend whichever ones i want, and not attend the ones i don't want. my original idea was to attend the better teacher's general chinese class and then stay with the smaller group for all the other classes, but this proves to give me scheduling conflicts, and would force me to give up either the spoken chinese or the phonetics class, which i'm not sure i want to do.

augh, decisions, decisons!

has anybody experienced anything like this? what would you recommend? since this semester's costing me a whopping 7,250 rmb i'd like to get the most out of it that i can, but i'm not sure which is better.

sorry for the rambling....

[Koneko]

Personally, I would opt for smaller class since you learn things slowly and you get more attentions.

K.

[HashiriKata]

I'd say: go to the better class and at the same time report to the university that your original class has almost no students. The university will look into it and a change for the better may happen.

[muirm]

Have you thought about giving the crappy teacher some feedback? Maybe tell him/her the truth about the mass exodus, and see if he is willing to change his teaching style mid-semester.

If you can't/won't do that, then I myself might also stay in the smaller class. It gives you more opportunities to ask questions.

[mr.stinky]

if seems like you don't need to attend a university for the visa, so why go if you're getting

nothing out of it? why waste your time and money. surely there must be some private

schools and/or institutes that can provide you with individual instruction in a city that

size. jeepers, even pay the big kuai and hire the good teacher at sichuan u for 10 hours

a week of private tutoring.

[flameproof]

augh, decisions, decisons!

What is there to decide? You need to do what is best for you, that is, were you learn most. You are not in a primary school that you HAVE TO attend.

I would quit school altogether and learn on my own. That is far more efficient and the speed is much faster. But it takes more motivation.

It seems you complain a lot about teachers. Nothing wrong with that, I would probably do the same. Most so called "teachers" really don't deserve the name. I would just design a good method that works on me and then have the "teacher" (but could be really anybody then) only use my method.

Then the "learning" is in my hand, and that's where it should be IMHO