BLCU: Intensive vs Regular Semester

[greenarcher]

i know the intensive class has 2 additional hours per day, are these additional subjects?

does the intensive class learn more than the regular 4-hour class?

it's just an additional 2 hours a day but the tuition fee is almost double, i'm wondering if the price tag is worth it. im planning for a 1 sem stint.

thanks in advanced.

[Yvito]

Hi GreenArcher,

It depends on what your current Chinese level is and where you expect to be after the semester. Being in my 2nd intensive semester, I can only speak for myself here.

As you mentioned it costs almost double the normal price but has only 2 more hours. The 6 hours per day are split up into 3 different subject per day (zonghe, kouyu, tingli). Also the tuition fees include class trips within mainland China, "normal" classes do not feature.

The intensive course is certainly not for everyone, nor is it intended to be.

I do not recommend to take intensive if you plan on having a social life. The 6 hours a day are not just 2 additional hours. The whole course is much faster than normal. The workload is a lot, making your social life, if you take the course serious, almost non-existent. That being said you will progress very, very fast. (compared to normal students anyway). Remember you will not learn Chinese over night, but depending on how hard you study you can certainly accelerate things a bit.

Since I know I am lazy I took intensive to get my ass kicked. Now I love it, well almost.

Hope that helps.

Y.

[fanglu]

Something I noticed when I did that course was that students in the intensive course seemed to be friendlier with each other than in the standard course - I guess that's a function of spending more time together (and not just the class time, at least some of the 2 hour lunch break you're going to spend with some of the other students at least some of the time). That's nice in itself, but it also meant for me speaking more Chinese than I would otherwise have as I was usually in a group that included non-English-speaking people and so we tended to speak Chinese.

Obviously there's nothing to stop you doing this if you take the morning course, its just been my experience (admittedly at different schools) that it happens less.

[greenarcher]

wow thank you very much for registering here just to answer my question. i really appreciated it.

it seems that the intensive class will really "bear more fruit" than the normal class. i can speak, write and read a little already and i really hope to be fluent after 6 months. i am doubting the normal class will cut it so im planning to take the intensive class.

any other perks the intensive class has over the normal one besides the field trip?

i have no problems studying 5x a week but i hope to have the weekends off. i might also have plans of out-of-town trips on my own and i was wondering if this is doable maybe for just 2-3 days to nearby cities like tianjin.