Recommended Chinese language schools or teachers in Shanghai?

[Willensmacht]

你们好，朋友们。

I will be spending a year in Shanghai starting October and my goal is to prepare for the 汉语水平考试 coming up in spring of '08. Can anyone recommend me any Chinese language schools or private teachers? Preferably ones with which you have had direct experience.

Thank you for any tips.

[one99]

I realise that this thread is very old, but I found it as I am also looking for Shanghai language school recommendations.

Here are my thoughts on three schools:

Mandarin House (People's Square & another location somewhere)

* Overall the best chinese school that I have been to for group classes. The teachers are experienced and professional. The books and courses concentrate on speaking/listening. But avoid their school shared apartments which receive many complaints. Also the school is expensive and they are very clever at getting as much money from you as possible and they are not very flexible in allowing any changes.

Kong Han Mandarin (Jing'An & other locations)

* Very small school. Advertise cheap prices. Had a look and met the teacher and was disapointed. The teacher did not seem to understand how westerners learn.

New Wave Chinese (West Nanjing Road)

* Another small school in a hard to find location. Teacher that I had was OK, but not good. She was quite recently graduated. Prices much cheaper than Mandarin House.

[SuperGoose]

One99,

Did you happen to have contact information for Kong Han? I googled "Kong Han Mandarin" but they don't seem to have a website.

I plan on checking out New Wave as well. I'm just looking for some group lessons that are reasonably priced. Everything in Shanghai seems like a slap in the face compared to where I used to study in Shandong.

I'm also curious if the classes are mostly made up of western peeps or asians? I usually prefer the latter, though I'm not partial to hiking it out to Gubei to on a daily basis.

[SuperGoose]

In partial reply to my own post, I went and checked out New Wave, and their clientele is entirely western. Classes there are geared towards basic and elementary learners. I was told the only options were to take the more costly private classes, to find friends or wait for people willing to join at my level.

This is going to be tough.

[mafi]

Hello, I am a new user of these forums which I found by chance when looking for reviews of Mandarin language schools. I would like to go to Shanghai this October for about two weeks to study Mandarin. Currently, I learn it in an evening class and our instructor promotes In-Mandarin language school in Shanghai (http://www.inmandarinchina.com/). Does anyone know the school and could tell me if it is any good? The offer price for two weeks of study plus accommodation (in a family, I believe) is 790 euros.