Tsinghua versus BCLU versus Beijing University

[kckathi]

Dear all,

as I wanna study next fall for a semester in beijing I need your help.

I read a lot about tsinghua, peking university and bclu and still can´t choose.

All are approx.the same price, same lenghts, 20h/week, september-february.

peking uni and tsinghua definitely have a better reputation but are their chinese courses also better? and are they also as international as BCLU?

I do wanna learn chinese but my level is still pretty low so I wanna have some engl.native speakers in my class and not only japanese and koreans.

what should I do then?

cheers,

kathi

[歐博思]

I go to Qinghua's program this semester. Concerning your desire to have more English natives in your class than Koreans and Japanese, don't worry --- they are all in advanced

[kckathi]

thanks!

how many are you per group and from which nationalities are the students?

are you happy there?

[stephaniepainter3]

I am from the USA and will be studying at Tsinghua this Fall. I am also accepted at BLCU, but over all Tsinghua just seemed better.

[歐博思]

Stephanie, since you both are going/considering going to Qinghua next semester I will also try to answer your PM here.

Kathi: Yes I am very satisfied with coming here. Each class has around 16 students from a wide variety of countries like: Philipines, Malaysia, USA, England, France, Korea, Japan, Pakistan, India... and these countries almost all stress English education. So even the non-english natives in your class might speak very good English. This is good when you can't express something in Chinese, but sometimes you would prefer to speak Chinese Regarding Koreans and Japanese, I hang out with a group of Koreans mostly, yet we don't mind sacrificing English/Korean while communicating in order to practice Chinese most of the time. Lastly, almost everyday there are people handing out flyers for their clubs in front of the cafeterias. If you want to get involved it is very easy - I joined the Tennis Club.

Here is a link to the Chinese Language Center inclding lots of information : www.hanyu.tsinghua.edu.cn

Stephanie: Classes Mon-Fri every day, 4 hrs a day divided among 2 classes. Subjects include Speaking, Listening, Comprehensive, and Intensive Reading. I think the textbooks are very good and easy to follow. Back in the States our class used the Integrated Chinese series of books. Those are quite popular but I like the books we use here better. Great textbooks here.

I do live on campus. If you live on campus you will live in the Zijing interational students dorm, which are quite clean. My roommate is Korean and is a really great guy, and my floor seems to be dominated by Malaysians. Hard to say who you'll be living with really

Yeah, I'm from the USA. Did my earlier messages grammar had a Chinese flavor? I wouldn't be surprised - you'll be impressed with yourself later when you forget a word in English but instantly speak it out in Chinese

祝你们好运!