Studying Chinese this summer

[jj74]

Hey guys,

I would like to go to China (Beijing) this summer to study Chinese and stay with a Chinese family and combine it with volunteering if possible.

I would be staying there for about 2 months. I was researching companies offering this and found quite a lot.

My budget is up to about 2000 pounds excluding flights and pocket money.

I found some companies that look suitable but I am unsure if I can trust them that they will provide the service that they promise.

Two of the best value ones:

http://clumandarin.com/datesandfees.html

http://www.languagesabroad.co.uk/chinese.html

Therefore I would like to ask you for any advice when choosing a company and for any experiences with studying chinese in china over summer?

Thank You

Any Advice Much appreciated

Jakub

PS:I will post more names of the companies I am considering later, need to gather up the list first, hopefully you will be able to give me some advice meanwhile

[BeijingDaniel2011]

Hi Jakub,

I hope your search is going well and your preparations too.

I actually work for a Mandarin School in Beijing (Live the Language) and we offer a number of courses running this summer combining study, homestay and possible volunteer opportunities. We combine language learning with practical application hence offering Chinese study with homestay/volunteer opportunities. We only hire teachers who have at least a Bsc in teaching Chinese as a foreign language and 2 years teaching experience and we thoroughly vet our homestay families carefully to make sure our students can get the most out of their stay.

If you would like any further info you can check out our thread on Chinese-forums here: Live the Language. Or if you have any questions please don't hesitate to PM me or email (daniel@livethelanguage.cn)

Anyway, good luck with everything and if you have any general questions about Beijing I'd be delighted to help out.

Best

Daniel

[JenniferW]

I've just got back from a 4-week trip staying in Beijing, having Chinese lessons at Live the Language, and it's been an excellent experience. Not sure if what they offer suits your budget, but I'd recommend them if it does. I'll think about going back to them next year for more of the same. They have their offices and a small school in Chaoyang, so you can have lessons there, but they also send tutors out to wherever you live or work (inside the 4th ring road), so there's flexibility if you need that.

I'm at the bottom end of the intermediate level, taking the New HSK 4 exam next month (in the UK), and I asked for classes where I could focus in particular on that - and got exactly what I wanted (one-to-one). I also asked for some oral classes because in my real-life conversations in China I tend to have the same simple level conversations over and over again, never tackling using more complex grammar, etc, and I thought that oral classes with a teacher would move me on from that - and again I got exactly what I asked for. I had 15 hours of tuition a week, and it was more than enough. I could have done with a bit less input and a bit more time for reviewing the lessons, etc. I was also trying to fit in meeting up with friends again and having a few days off. The rate per hour was no more than many private tutors advertise at (120 RMB / hour), and I very much came away feeling I'd had my money's worth. They were a pleasure to deal with, too.

They also sorted out accommodation for me, in the price range I wanted, at a location which worked really well. They'll find you a cheap hostel, an expensive hotel, or something in between (which was what I wanted). They also arrange homestay, but I have no idea what the cost of that is.

For volunteering, there are always adverts in the listings magazines for Beijing - have you searched around in them?

[jj74]

Thanks for the advice guys, but after searching and digging around and reading more about this, I decided that I am not going to go to China with one of these madly overpriced agencies that offer programs for double the price.

At the moment my first choice is BLCU for 2011 6 week summer programme which is only 4800 RMB for tution fee and another about 3800 for the campus single accommodation.

However, I am still not 100% sure, because what I read so far about BLCU and universities in general is that they concentrate on reading writing and rote learning of the characters too much! I dont want this!

I want to learn to speak and listen mainly as I am beginner and learn some charcaters on side of that.

Therefore I am looking for some good, well established and similarly priced private schools in Beijing now. Specifically a school that would concentrate mainly on speaking and that would give me some flexibility about what I want to learn

So guys, could anybody please recommend me (asap) any private schools in Beijing that satisfy the criteria above?

Thank You

[imron]

You won't find similarly priced private schools - because you're not getting the same product. Private schools typically offer smaller classes and more tailored lessons, and it simply costs more to provide this sort of learning than the bulk tuition offered by universities.

[Kiz]

As far as I know, university programmes are always cheaper than private schools. If you want to learn more about speaking and listening, you can just make friends with native residents and chat with them more after school. Actually, I think establish an emotional relationship is the fastest way to learn the local language~

[JenniferW]

There is a solution to your problem. Start with your budget - how much are you prepared to spend on accommodation, and how much are you prepared to spend on tuition.

As regards accommodation, there are hostels in Beijing where you can get a room for the same sort of price as the upper end of what BLCU offers, but you may have to book it for yourself. It's quite likely, though, that wherever you book lessons, they'll handle the accommodation booking for you - and get you a discount.

For tuition, with private sector tuition, because it will focus on exactly what you want to do, and you can include one-to-one classes, it would be sensible to plan for FEWER hours of tuition than in the typical university group class. And use the other time getting out and about more - on your own. The experiences you have that way you can then feed back into your private lessons, and build on, in a way you can never do in a standard group class.

So, look at the prices of the different private schools we've recommended, and see how many hours you could afford to buy. I'd attended standard university short courses with 20 hours of classes a week, so I booked up 15 hours of private lessons (all one-to-one). Looking back, I think I would have done better with fewer hours in class, and more time to work on my own reviewing the lessons. With 15 hours, for 3 weeks, I came away never having quite caught up with everything.

Most of the private schools offer group classes as well as one-to-one, so you could also mix and match to get yourself more hours of tuition at a lower cost - and still getting much more of a focus on what you want to do.

[amandagmu]

My personal recommendation is #1 don't do a homestay. I tried doing that my first time in BJ and it was a disaster. The family wanted me to be there to practice English with their kids, not teach me Chinese. The parents had both been educated in the U.S. and had no intention of ever helping me gain a higher level of Chinese. You may get lucky and have the reverse, but I'm not the only person with this experience. Usually the expectations of one party are not the same as the other, not to mention I found the family I was living with to have, shall we say, rather arcane ideas of what it meant to be a 25 year old female in a new city.... I was not given keys to the house and they wanted me home every night for supper, which they claimed was safer for me. Maybe it was a ploy for more English with their kids, who knows..... I left after two weeks and voluntarily lost my money.

HOWEVER I can highly recommend finding Chinese roommates. I suggest posting a message on couchsurfing.org in the Groups section for Beijing. Lots of people find places that way. You can also scour thebeijinger.com, but that tends to be mostly foreigners. Couchsurfing is a younger crowd of people, many local Chinese, and does not attract agents. It should also fall in your budget.

As for uni programs, I agree with what everyone else here has said. You also need to assess your personal learning style/behaviors and how serious you are about "learning" Chinese. BLCU is not the best program (imo) but if you want to hang out and party and just have some cheap tutoring on the side, it's a nice and comfortable place to start. You won't get much homework and few of your classmates will bother doing what you do get assigned, so in the end the classes tend to get dragged down by large classes full of lazy classmates. You can make headway on your own, through one-on-one and tutors, but it's really up to you. Trust me on this one. I took the high beginner classes when I was at BLCU-summer (6 weeks) in 2005.

[jj74]

Hey there, thank you very much for your replies! 很好， 很好， 谢谢你！

Thank you amandagmu for your advice about homestay and BLCU, as I was seriously considering this, but wasnt sure if it would suit me and not limit my freedom. University is not a good choice for me because I am serious about learning as much as possible and in an effective way.

I will try to find a Chinese flatmate and I will stay in a flat or hostel near my school.

So I have decided that I won't do BLCU.

At the moment I am seriously considering Minsi International, http://www.bjminsi.com/cc.php,

they offered me 120 hours of private classes 1-1, 3 hours a day over 9 weeks, for only 80 RMB per class. I also really like they sylabus

(see attached), because they concentrate on daily life situations and Spoken chinese mainly.

I am also considering Live the Language as recommended by you guys, I like that they offer all those extra cultural classes but they are more expensive.

I am not sure if it would be better for me to do 1to1 classes with Minsi International, or do group classes with Ltl. I want to learn but I also want to make friends there and meet people.

What do you think would be better choice?

I am also considering http://www.getin2china.com/. Their website and service offered looks pretty good and their prices are good too. And apparently they have 300 students.

At the moment I cant decide. I will call all those companies and decide then.

Any other advice would be much appreciated. If you have any similar experience to share, please do so, its very helpful!

[amandagmu]

Just one thing to say about the 1-to-1 versus the group classes: would it be possible for you to do both? I found the most effective quick learning method for me was having once per day or once every other day 1-to-1 with my other classes being small group classes. For example, a M-F schedule with 3 hours of group classes each day and 1 hour of 1-to-1 either each day or every other day. There might be a private school willing to do this for you (not sure which one....) if you're at the beginner or low intermediate level. When you e-mail or call them just ask if they have a combination schedule or could do one for you at a decent price. They'll likely sponsor your visa with a small deposit....

FYI, since no one has mentioned this to you yet, most of these schools offer a free short lesson (30 minutes or so) for you to try out a class. When you speak to them ask if they will be willing to do this with you over Skype. I did this with 1-on-1 mandarin before taking some Skype lessons with them when I was still at home, and I did it again with That's Mandarin once I got to Beijing and wanted lessons in-person.

[Mulletious]

Since you've only seemed to get recommendations for Live the Language I feel I should give you some names of other schools which also have a decent reputation:

Sinoland: http://www.sinolandchinese.com/index1.asp

Thats Mandarin: http://www.thatsmandarin.com/

BLI: http://www.blichina.com/

I think for many of the University Programs the deadline date probably has passed, but there are a few like PIB: http://www.princeton.edu/~pib/ , also some CET programs: http://cetacademicprograms.com/programs/china/chinese-language-beijing-china/

For my input, I went to BLI for 8 months and found it extremely effective (if you can afford it). It is in one word: intense, but I found most students that study there progress extremely rapidly. Of course, you work your ass off in the program, but it pays off in the end. For a 2 month program I would highly recommend it: the teachers work on all aspects of the language and will cater to your likings and interests, developing a curriculum around you rather than a pre-planned one that may not be as effective. This is what I found to be the best aspect, as the curriculum is very flexible to the student, rather than the student having to force interest in a topic that may not be to their liking.

However, I have heard these other programs are also good and are worth taking a look at. If you are truly wanting to attend one of these smaller programs, I suggest you don't sign up in one until after you arrive. Each of the programs should give you a free test class, from that you will be able to determine if their teaching style is suitable for you. I know your time is limited though, so this might be a bit difficult to do.

Good luck!