University location and accents

[handbus]

I was graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University last year and I love my SJTU very much. But I think SJTU is only an engineering university. If anyone wants to learn Chinese language in Shanghai, Fudan or SHISU will be a better choice than SJTU.

[Tsunku]

I'm late on this topic, only log in every once in awhile now.

I live in Kunming and I went to uni here for one semester. After about a year total living in Kunming I notice that my Chinese does have a slight but distinct southern accent. It's most noticeable when I talk with Northerners. None of my Chinese friends think it's a problem for me to speak with a southern twang. Even if I go North, I'll still be understandable, and they even claim that the southern accent will lend me credibility -- obviously I picked it up through experience in China, not through books or classes in school. So I've never worried about having to live in a place where the putonghua is "standard." Putonghua is basically a construct anyhow.

Kunming is a nice place to live, and as Pazu pointed out, there's lots to visit nearby. Nanjing is also good, if you can stand the heat, and Hangzhou is a good city too.

[mingli]

It's best not to confuse the reputation of the Chinese University host school with the language program's quality of instruction. I've been at CCLC, the program located at Taiwan Normal University, a school with an excellent reputation, going on a year now, and have been disappointed to find that many teachers here prefer using traditional Asian teaching methods (i.e., teacher talks and students listen).

I highly recommend CET's program in Harbin, both for the quality of instruction and its extremely capable and caring program director, Lao Gan (if he is still working there?), who weaves through all the Chinese government and university bureaucracy with ease. Harbin people speak very standard Mandarin, and don't speak English so well, which makes for a terrific language environment. The best language school in the US, Middlebury, sends their students to Harbin. If I wanted to get the biggest bang for my four months I'd buy wool socks and long underwear and head north.