A good 1-2 month program for a beginner + any advice on East West Connection?

[Gnom]

Hey,

I'm interested in studying Mandarin in China during my university holidays (as someone with no Mandarin) for a maximum of 2 months. I've noticed that East West Connection seems to offer a program that would really suit me: a one month intensive program with a focus on spoken Mandarin. The details are here - http://www.east-westconnection.com/One-Month-Mandarin-Intensive-Program-Chinese-Course-Beijing.html . So far I've been unable to find much reference to it outside of its website so I was wondering if anyone had any experience/knowledge of it? Otherwise, is there any other places you would recommend for someone to go to gain reasonable spoken competency in 1-2 months.

Thanks

[driftman]

There are about ab million language schools around in Beijing, most of them reviewed on here somewhere, I think a quick search will get you some good results.

I havent studied at East-West Connection, but I have a friend who studies at and likes http://www.newconceptmandarin.com/ they have a school in the Lufthansa area.

I am studying at http://www.livethelanguage.cn, they have a pretty long thread on here as well (http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/26383-live-the-language-ltl/). I quite like my teacher and the classes after some not so happy experiences in the past, though I have been doing Chinese for a few years now, so our situation is probably a bit different, we focuse a lot on spoken Chinese as thats what I need for my job.

I have seen quite a few students taking holiday classes at Live the Language, they seemed happy, though I cannot comment on details of the program.

Wherever you go, 1-2 months will get you to a basic conversation level in a best case scenario - assuming you are similarly tone deaf as I am at least....

[Friedrich]

I hope you dont mean full conversations with reasonable competency after 1-2 months...

I agree with Driftman though, have been studying with www.livethelanguage.cn since December and I think I can recommend them, at least from the results I have been getting. Despite myself being a little bit of retard when it comes to learning languages, I met a couple of guys in Wudaokou last weekend who have been studying at BLCU for almost two semesters now and their level (at least spoken) is definitely not what we are at now after five months.