International Youth Uni & Taipei Language Inst.

[mikeh]

Hi. I'm thinking about moving to Beijing for a year to study mandarin. I'm definately at a beginners level now, but hoping that by the start of 2008 I'll have advanced a little further.

I was looking at TLI Taipei Language Institute as it seems to have a great reputation and I know from my own experiences learning spanish (much easier, I know) the difference private tutition with a good teacher or teachers can make.

As far as I've been able to find out TLI has 2 schools in Beijing; one in the centre and another in the northeast which is a joint school with International Youth University (IYU)

http://www.iyu.com.cn/other/school_js.htm Is IYU's website. As far as I can tell, they also offer short courses (small group and private) at roughly the same prices as TLI and 1 year courses, which seem to be more large-group, university type classes.

So my question is, has anyone attended this university. It doesn't seem too well represented on the forum, so any comments about it would be welcome. Also for those who've attended TLI on IYU's campus, are the classes entirely seperate?

Any other suggestions would also be welcome.

[myann23]

I don't know much about the University, but all I've heard are good reviews for TLI in general. They also publish their own materials and I've heard good things about those as well. They are pretty pricy though. I'm thinking about signing up for one-on-one with them, but the price is holding me back.

Say, where exactly are you at the beginners stage? I'm doing Pimsleur and Assimil together right now, but haven't started characters yet. If we are close enough together, perhaps we could save some money by doing a small 2 person tutorial thing together. You definitely save money by doing an $8/hour 2 person class vs. a private tutorial that is $13.50 an hour. Also, you can learn more by watching each other make mistakes.

Free free to e-mail or PM me if interested.

Regards,

Mike

[mikeh]

I'm probably as beginner as beginners get. I actually don't have a teacher at the monent so I'm using www.chinesepod.com which isn't bad, but it's hardly a class or tutition. I'm trying to learn the characters as I go though.

If we're at the same level or close to each other come 2008 I'd love to share classes. I'm currently working in Bolivia, which means that it's proving reasonably hard to find a good teacher (I've actually met 3 mandarin speakers here, but none have the time nor inclination to tutor me), but once I do find one it'll be cheap enough for a decent amount of private tutition each week. Should be less than $4 per hour, so I'm praying for rapid-ish progress.

When were you thinking about starting/applying myann23?

[onebir]

I think the reason the International Youth University students aren't well (at all?) represented here is that that they're mostly Japanese (&/ Korean). I shared an (mini) apartment with one when I was at TLI in 2003. So the good people of Chaoyang were treated to the spectacle of a short westerner & a tall, fat, fuzzy bearded Japanese guy walking down the street talking pidgin Mandarin....

[myann23]

Mike,

I'll be in Beijing in May, but I won't start my intensive language training until August or September probably as I'll be teaching English in the summer for a full-time schedule. I'm going to self-study with Assimil and Pimsleur, maybe some CP until TLI.

My advice for learning Chinese until you get to China - input, input, input! Get as much listening done as you can. I'm trying to do that with my two sets of materials. Assimil is really great, simple, and efficient. Pimsleur is slow, as everyone says, but I think it's good for getting acclimated with simple Chinese sentence structure and pronunication. What I do is edit the lessons to cut down the long silences, which make most lessons in the 15-17 minute range, about half the normal time. Makes it really efficient! You will get benefits even if you don't repeat after the speaker. Just listening is fine.

Keep in touch going forward, and let me know about what you choose when you come to Beijing.

Mike

[mikeh]

Yeah, will definately get in touch on here before I head off for Beijing. My class here starts this coming week, so I'm looking forward to getting started.

Good luck teaching btw, I just found out this year that it's much harder than it looks