Liaoning Normal University

[roddy]

This topic is for discussion and reviews of Liaoning Normal University. Accommodation, courses, on-campus facilities and activities - anything to do with Liaoning Normal University goes in here. If there's a lot of discussion about any one particular topic we might split it into a new thread and leave a link here.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/14185-liaoning-normal-university-via-hycc/ bit old (2007)

[Base7]

I've just arrived at LNNU, I will be enrolled here as a language (non-degree) student for the academic year 2014-2015. I want to post regularly about my experiences at the university, because it may be useful or interesting for other (prospective student) readers.

Preparation

I am in China on a Confucius Institute Scholarship (lots of information about that on chinese-forums). I picked LNNU as my first-choice university and Ludong (in Yantai) as my second-choice. I picked Dalian because it appeared to be a very pleasant city for studying, the environment is pretty clean, and it is not as mega-big as cities like Beijing. I picked LNNU because its campus is (somewhat) in the city center (as opposed to Dalian Foreign Languages University).

My experiences with contacting the university beforehand were very good. I emailed (in Chinese and English) to the address given on the site and got a pretty prompt answer (in Chinese). The university has an English site which, though a lot less extensive than the Chinese version, lists the important information. I don't know how it will go if you e-mail in English, but in Chinese, the communication was pretty smooth. I e-mailed several times with questions and updates about the scholarship process, and each time got an answer after two days~one week. The head of the scholarship affairs, teacher Yu, was very friendly and helpful, offering advice and suggestions. So big plus for the communication.

Arrival

I have a friend in Dalian who picked me up from the airport, so I did not use the airport pick-up offered by LNNU. However, it is available: if you let them know your arrival time, they arrange for a student to pick you up. If you arrive during the 'registration period' the pick-up is free, otherwise it costs 60 RMB (for 20 RMB, you can take a taxi to the school). However, I am not sure what the 'registration period' is.

After arriving at the university, we went to the International Exchange center, offices 1105 and 1106, where everything happens as far as scholarship students are concerned. The staff there in principle do not speak English, only the employee in charge of Confucius Scholarship students spoke English. I don't know whether they always have an English-speaking staff member on hand or not. If you don't speak any Chinese, you could have a difficult time.

Registration went smoothly, though I must say I arrived a few days before September 1st (the official start of the semester), so it may be busier if you arrive later. First, we went to the dorm and got the key to the room. Then I registered at the university, filling out a form and handing in my invitation letter, JW202 form and photos. After that, there were some other forms to sign. I needed quite some cash: e.g. for buying internet access, deposit for the room key, fee for the residence permit application, and fee for the physical examination. I don't know if they take credit cards. However, not all of it needs to be paid at once (I could pay for my room the second day, the physical exam is not until next week).

Accommodation

As a scholarship student, you have no choice about where you live if you want the scholarship to pay for the accommodation. It only pays for one bed in a two-bed room in building # 6 (the cheapest foreign accommodation building). This building has shared kitchen, bathrooms and showers. There are 13 rooms to a hall, and they share one kitchen with three induction-type cooking plates, two bathrooms (male and female) with six stalls each (squat-style toilets), and two shower rooms (male and female) with five stalls each (hot water from a boiler, so always available but may run out). You can have the room for yourself, but you have to pay for the second bed, so I have to pay 40 RMB per night (while according to sicas, a bed in building # 6 only costs 29 RMB per night).
The rooms are nice though: clean (though the inside of one closet was stained), spacious (~6 x 4.5 meter), with a little (sometimes walled-in) balcony with sliding door. There are two desks, each with lockable drawers, and the room itself also locks. There is a water boiler, a cupboard, and a closet with a hanging space (but no hangers). There is an airconditioning unit, pretty nice when it is as hot as it is now. There is also central heating, no idea how well that performs though.

Cleaning of the common areas is done every day, but your own room is not cleaned, which means the cleaners do not have the room key (or at least that is what they told me). A broom and mop are provided for the room. All this is pretty ok. However, a few things are annoying:

• The room key is a card, and like in a hotel, the room's electricity only works when the card is in its slot. This means that you cannot charge appliances when you are away, and you cannot run a desktop computer or external harddrive or anything which needs constant power when you step out to go to the bathroom.
• There are only two electrical sockets in the room.
• You can buy internet for your room, but it is wired (ethernet). You have to log in with your login details to access the internet. There is no wifi. This means that you have to set up a modem or wireless access point, or else you will not have internet for your phone. The internet costs 50 RMB/m for up to 10GB, or 100 RMB/m for unlimited.
• The mattresses are Chinese style, which means very hard and unyielding. There is a thin cover, but I still find it very hard if you are used to western mattresses.
• There is also no campus wifi, or rather, there is wifi, but only teachers and staff can access it. There is open wifi at the Exchange building, but only directly outside the office (the signal weakens quickly). There is also open wifi at the International Students' Restaurant.
• There is absolutely nothing provided in terms of utensils; apart from two fridges, the cooking plates and a microwave oven, there is nothing in the kitchen or bathroom. No bowl, no pot, no cup, no dishwashing brush, no basin, no toilet paper, no towel, nothing. So you have to buy everything.

(picture of the room)

 

Campus

The campus is very beautiful, located on the north and south side of a big road (Huanghe Lu). I only know the norht campus so far. The campus climbs a hill, so the streets are inclined. This does make it easy to get your bearings. The international students' buildings are pretty far back, so it is a 5-10 min walk from the gate. The area seems to catch a nice breeze (it is currently hot here - 27C).
There are teeny shops selling water at various street corners, and a somewhat larger supermarket near the main building, so you can buy basic necessities on campus.
The campus is quiet, has lots of green, a great sports stadium and several basketball fields, in addition to the classroombuildings and dorms. The international dorm # 6 is at the end of a dead-end street, so it is pretty quiet. In general, the campus is calm, not many cars, lots of people walking, many trees providing shade. Though it may get busier once the semester starts.

Environment

I have not explored the environment thoroughly yet, but on Huanghe Lu, and in the streets between it and the north campus, there are plenty small restaurants, lots of banks, a few KTVs, and a large shopping mall annex movie theater, in the basement of which is a pretty large Carrefour-like supermarkt which sells all kinds of appliances as well as fresh food.

Schedule

Classes have not started yet. The schedule for the first weeks is as follows:
1-2 Sept: Orientation (basically registration and getting settled in, which I have already done)
3 Sept: Placement exam. This will be some sort of exam (no idea how long it will take) to determine in which class the language students are placed.
4 Sept: Physical exam. This is an obligatory health check for foreign students. Since everyone goes together, there will probably be lots of waiting in line: the advisor told me to bring food so that I could eat something as soon as they finished drawing blood, because it may take a long time before that happens (because of the waiting in line apparently).
5 Sept: Receiving text books
9 Sept: Start of new semester
12 Sept: Opening ceremony

So it seems to take quite some time before things really get going. However, it is nice to arrive early, because it gives you time to get settled and buy necessities. If you're bored quickly, however, it is better to arrive later, because nothing is arranged or organized for the students except for the schedule outlined above.

[Base7]

Placement exam

 

This morning, I participated in the placement exam at LNNU. This is used to decide in which group to place you. The exam consists of two steps: a written exam and an oral exam. The written exam was a bit like a miniature HSK: all students sit in a classroom and get a paper exam with (mainly) multiple-choice questions. The first part is listening, which is done live: the teachers say a few phrases, then you have to answer a question. The rest of the exam is grammar, reading and writing. Most is multiple choice.

 

After the exam (which takes me about 30 mins), we file out into the hallway to stand in line for the oral exam. There are four rooms, but all students have to go one by one, so there is quite some standing in line. The oral itself is a bit disappointing; mainly the teachers asks me questions about how long I've studied Chinese and which HSK level I have, and she seems to base the placement on this information rather than on my actual speaking proficiency. Case in point: she tells me which group I will be placed in, while I have not seen her actually look at the results of my written exam beforehand. Unless the second teacher has done this quickly while I was talking to the first.

 

In any case, I hear that during the first three days of class, you are still allowed to switch to a different level if your assigned level is not suitable. I have been placed in the Intermediate (of three) level, but I think I will try for the High level during those first three days; I'd rather be in a difficult class than in an easy one. Also, other students with HSK 4, who I think have the same level as me (they know the same amount of characters and their speaking and listening skills seem similar to mine) have been placed in the High level; so it seems it should be doable for me as well.

 

Classes do not start until next week, but we get our books on Friday (in two days), so that should give some indication of the level the class will have, I hope. The class schedule will be pretty relaxed: classes are from 8.00 - 11.30. There may be the option to do extra classes in the afternoon, but I have not heard anything about this yet. In general, the information provided during orientation is pretty sparse. Perhaps more will be conveyed during the official opening of the semester. As of now, we have not received any information about extra classes, eating on campus (do you need a card? where are the cantinas?), library (can you borrow books? do you need a card for that?), sports or other facilities, a campus map, where you can buy things, public transport, etc. You just have to figure everything out for yourself (which is fine by me, but may not be for everyone).

[Base7]

Physical examination

 

Today we had the physical examination, which is obligatory for students studying one year or more. I think it is necessary for applying for the temporary residence permit we need (the visa you enter the country with is only valid for 30 days). You can do this in your own country, but since I could not obtain any information beforehand about what should actually be tested during this physical, I opted to do it here in China instead. It costs 500 RMB, and the greatest disadvantage is the waiting in line (because all students go together).

 

The actual physical itself was not so lengthy: it consisted of visiting, one by one, a series of exam rooms in which various tests were done. All this went pretty smoothly, it took about 40 minutes, I think, for seven examinations (a chest X-ray, an ultrasound, drawing blood, a urine sample, an ECG, an eye test and a blood pressure measurement). The rest of the time was spent travelling to and from the hospital by bus (30 mins or so one way), waiting to get registered at the hospital (about 45 mins), and waiting for the other students to finish (about 3 hours). All in all, the whole thing cost about six hours.

 

The organization by the LNNU teachers was not very efficient. Especially after arriving at the hospital, there was a lot of standing around unsure of what we were supposed to do while the teachers ran around talking to hospital staff. I have no idea whether they did not arrange anything in advance or whether there was an unexpected situation at the hospital. It would have been nice if the teachers had informed us of the procedure beforehand (in Chinese, if not in English), so that we knew which steps we were going to have to go through. I don't know whether the reason they did not do this was because they did not consider it important, or because they themselves did not know what the procedure was going to be like.

 

In any case, the physical examination was no big hassle, just time-consuming with a lot of waiting around. Bringing food and drink is a good idea since, at least in this hospital, there was no option to buy anything anywhere. Getting the examination done at home would be a lot quicker, but maybe more expensive, depending on your medical insurance etc, and since I do not know which tests they will perform on the blood and urine samples, I am still not sure exactly what the physical should encompass.

[edelweis]

thanks a lot for the write ups Base7. I hope you have a good time in Liaoning and you continue to keep us updated about life at LNNU

[Base7]

Class division and procedures

I thought I would report a little bit about the class division and attendance procedures at Liaoning Normal. Keep in mind that other universities may handle matters differently - as a matter of fact, until recently LNNU used different methods as well.

The class division was published on Friday Sep 5, two days after the placement exam. The division was pinned on the notice board outside the office of student affairs. I notice that LNNU is not very sophisticated at communication: I have not received any email with information yet, even though this would be a very handy medium for conveying things like class schedules, rules, etc. They do not give out any prints or hand-outs, either. Instead, the information is posted somewhere - so everyone just takes a picture. Not printing hand-outs saves trees, I guess, but why they would not use e-mail I still don't understand.

Each class has their own class teacher (who also teaches the subject) and their own fixed classroom. In my case, my Spoken Chinese teacher is my class teacher, and our classroom is 1412 on the fourth floor. The only classes that are in a different classroom are the Listening classes - probably because of equipment?

The classes are divided into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, and within those into numbered sublevels. I think the number of sublevels depends on the number of students for each level. Each level has (largely?) the same books, I think, but the class tempo may be different. The number of people per class varies quite a bit, again depending on the number of suitable students, I guess. My class is with 21 people one of the two largest. A lot are around 18 people, but some have only nine or so.

The first class is on Tuesday Sep 9, because Monday is a holiday here. It is the class teacher's lesson, and she spends it outlining the rules and procedures. At this level, it is all in Chinese; I am not sure about the beginner levels. A lot of time is spent explaining visa procedures, but because I am a Confucius Institute Scholarship student, this is all arranged for us, so it does not pertain to me.

She also explains attendance and class switching. Until recently, LNNU allowed students to find their own suitable class, allowing them to switch in the beginning if they did not like their level. However, because this was too unruly (乱), they have now introduced the placement exam. You can still switch class if the level does not suit you, but only after the first three days, and you need to submit a form to do this. Since I do not even get to experience all my classes during the first three days (Reading is not until next Monday), it is hard to make an informed decision this way, except when the level is really way off, I suppose.

Attendance is another thing they have become more strict about, since in the past a lot of foreign students just went travelling and never showed up for class. It works as follows:

• If you are less than 15 minutes, late, it does not count as a day of unexplained absence BUT
• If this happens more than three times in a month, it counts as one day of unexplained absence
• If you want to be absent for three days or less, you have to tell the teacher. You have to have a reason, I think, just going sightseeing is not acceptable.
• If you want to be absent for more than three days, you have to apply for it officially at the Overseas Education Institute (not quite sure how or where, but I'll figure that out when it's needed)
• During school holidays, you do not have to register your absence, of course.
• If you are sick for a few days, it is enough to tell the teacher.
• If you are sick for a long time, e.g. more than a week, you need a note from a hospital (and a certain type of hospital at that - 'city-level' I think?).
• Sick days and unexplained absences are tallied. If, at the end of the semester, these hours number more than 1/3 of the class hours, you are not allowed to participate in the exam. Whether you will be kicked out and not allowed to enroll for the second semester I am not sure.

All notifications should be beforehand, not after the fact.

Schedule

Classes are in the morning, 8.00-9.35 and 10.00-11.35. In the middle of each class is a short break. Optional classes can be taken in the afternoon, 13.30-15.05. There are several choices for these classes, both language-related and generally cultural. Unfortunately, a lot of them share the same time slots (of the 10 options, five are on Thursday afternoon). The two classes I want to take are both at this time, so I will have to choose :-(

My schedule, mid-level class 4 (of 5), is pretty monotonous: we have 口语 (speaking) and 综合 (general comprehension) four times a week, leaving just one Reading and one Listening class besides. The strange thing is that mid-level class 5 has the same schedule, except they have Writing instead of Reading. You would expect the subjects to increase, not switch out. I am considering switching to a higher-level class, but that also means I would lose the Reading class, so I am not too sure about that.

First classes

After two days, I have taken two Speaking and two General Comprehension classes. The Speaking teacher is very nice and easy to understand, the GC teacher is harder to follow, because he speaks less clearly and a bit quicker. But today was already better than yesterday, so you probably get used to it quickly.

The classes are not very interesting so far. In both, we just go through the vocabulary list, reading the words out loud (first all together, then one by one). Then the teacher explains the meaning of the words. Then (in GC) we read the text, also first together, then one by one. All this took so much time that after the first class (1.5 hours), we had only gotten through 1/3 of the two-page Chinese text. Then, today, we read out loud *again* the same text as yesterday, but this time, we were supposed to have practised it as homework so we should be more fluent. The rest of the lesson was spent as before, and we have now gotten to 2/3 of the text. We have not even done any exercises yet, though we were given one today as homework (not sure about how to do it, though, the exercise just says '宣布' ('declare') and then a lot of verbs. Maybe you have to make sentences with them?

I find it hard to decide whether or not I should switch classes based on these first two days. Understanding the teacher is difficult, but may get easier. The book text is not that easy. But we go through it so slowly that it is a bit boring nonetheless. Some other students in my class seem less advanced, some more advanced than me. My skills are probably lopsided, too: reading and grammar are pretty good, reading out loud and writing by hand are quite bad (because you never do that when you self-study, as I did). From my dorm-mates, I understand that the Advanced classes are a bit quicker, less reading out loud, but also put more pressure on the students. I wish they would allow for a bit more time (two weeks, for example) to decide whether or not you are in the right level. Or do 'placement' exams at regular intervals, then change classes for students who have advanced. But this is probably too complicated for their organization.

[Chris Two Times]

Base7,

 

Many thanks for taking the time to pen a detailed and informative write-up of LNNU. Such accounts are highly useful for those of us considering Chinese language study programs at Chinese universities for 2015-2016.

 

Again, much appreciated.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[Geju]

Hello everybody !!

 

Thank you very much Bas7 for these details just a question, in fact, are you happy to be in Liaoning Normal University ? Do you rate it for me, for exemple ;) ? I'm searching an university for the next summer but it's hard to choose the best and not the most expensive ^-^. So, in your class, you don't learn writing, isn't it ?? I have the feeling that is the same in the other universities.... :'(

[Geju]

oh, i forget, do you know how much is it for 4 weeks ??

thx

[Base7]

Hi Geju,

I have been meaning to post an overview for some time now, so thanks for giving me the extra incentive! :-)

First of all, to answer your questions:

For four weeks of language studies, the tuition is 3200 RMB. See http://gjy.lnnu.edu.cn/index.php/index/langs/cid/34/id/324 for more details. You can also check sicas and cucas for pictures of the accommodations and such.
Writing as a subject is taught from Intermediate 5 onwards (I am in Intermediate 4). However, you always have to learn writing characters in General Comprehension class. Writing as a subject is more about composing a text, I think - and this would not be useful for a beginner anyway, since they do not know enough characters yet.
I would recommend LNNU to other students, but with a caveat: the city of Dalian is not very 'Chinese' in a way: it is a young city, 120 years old or so, so no ancient Chinese architecture or anything like that. If, like me, you have already travelled China's tourist hotspots, then this is no problem; but if this is your first experience in China, you may be disappointed in the lack of Chinese historical artefacts. Of course, you can travel to other places!
Rating is is not something I feel comfortable doing: since this is the only university I have been to, I have no way to compare it to others. I did hear that LNNU is a bit small, and definitely not the best university in Dalian. However, this is rated on the quality of the BA/MA programs for Chinese students, not on their language teaching to foreigners, so it may have little bearing on what is relevant for us

Detailed impressions after four months of study at LNNU:

I have been studying at LNNU as a language student for close to four months now, and the end-of-term exams have just started. After some consideration, I decided to keep the daily blog of my life not here but on a wordpress blog, because there would be too much in there that was not particularly interesting for this forum. So for everyday life in LNNU class and in the city of Dalian, as well as lots of pictures, you can check http://www.dalianstudies.wordpress.com. I hope it is not against forum rules to mention this here. On this forum, I try to post things that are interesting or useful for other prospective students.

I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of the education at LNNU. I had not expected much of this part of my adventure, having heard from various sources that Chinese education can be repetitive, by rote, focusing on finishing the book instead of learning things, etcetera. But my classes here have been quite okay. I must add that I seem to have lucked out with good teachers for the two most important classes: Speaking and General Comprehension. From other students, I hear stories about some other teachers that are less than perfect. So it appears a lot depends on what kind of teacher you happen to get - but that is true everywhere, I suppose.

The books that are used (at the Intermediate level) are quite good, I think. They use Chinese Bridge Intermediate for the General Comprehension class. This book has a different topic every lesson, no ongoing story, which is refreshing after you have followed a few of the 'foreign student comes to China' story lines that many books seem to favour. The texts were okay but not too easy for me and my HSK4 level, so I guess the difficulty is about right. For Spoken Chinese, they use Peking University Press 'Hanyu Kouyu' Intermediate. This book focuses on dialogues and expressions used in everyday speech. My other two courses, Listening and Newspaper Reading, use BLCUP's Developing Chinese Intermediate Listening Course and Peking University Press's "Dubaozhi, Xuezhongwen, zhongji hanyu baokan  yuedu" respectively.

Class activities are about as I described them in the first posts, except that (fortunately) we speed up a bit in later classes; there was less repetitive reading of the new word list, and reading out loud the lesson text from the previous class was only done once per paragraph, and lately, we do not do this at all any more. New words and new texts we still repeat all together after the teacher, but I am used to that now, and do not find it as weird as when we started :-) Teachers seem to be trained somewhat to engage the class in the lesson, so they will often have a little discussion about a certain topic, e.g. asking various classmates how this is in their country. This makes it an advantage to be the only one from your country (like me for the Netherlands), because that way, you get asked every time :-D Teachers seem pretty relaxed, too, joking with the class a little, not too uptight about people coming in late or speaking impolitely (which is sometimes just because of poor grasp of language, of course). Teachers are also very willing to help you with any problems you have.

Still, how much you learn depends in part on yourself. In all classes, we go through the books, but there is little rehearsal of the things learned earlier. There are no midterms or even small tests once every while - these end-of-term exams are the first tests of any kind that I have done here. So if you do not keep up revisions for yourself, you may lose what you learned in previous lessons. Personally, I put every word we learn in any class in Anki, and revise the cards every day, so that at least my vocabulary will grow. Revising grammar is more difficult, but at least you will see the grammar points, expressions etcetera pop up again in later lessons.

A quick class-by-class analysis:

• Comprehension is spent explaining the new words, reading the text, discussing 搭配 (for some of the new words, example are given of how they can be combined with other types of words, e.g. verb + direct object, verb + complement, etcetera), and grammar. Exercises are given as homework and then discussed in class, often by having a student write their solution on the blackboard. Each day, you also get about twenty new words to learn to write, tested in the next class, until all 60 or so new words are done. Comprehension is the most time-consuming class in terms of homework, and also the most difficult (for me at least).
   
• Spoken Chinese goes through the lessons quite quickly. A lot of time is spent discussing in class, which is good for a Spoken Chinese class. Apart from general discussion with the teacher, the lesson text is read, sometimes by the teacher, sometimes by students, sometimes in pairs or groups. Sometimes a scene is acted out in front of the class. Sometimes a speaking assignment is given for next class, e.g. tell a joke or talk about your weekend. Apart from this, there are exercises, mostly focusing on the correct use of various expressions. This class is usually a lot of fun.
   
• Listening is held in a special classroom where each desk is equipped with a screen and headphones slaved to the teacher's computer. The headphones are all right in quality, and listening this way is much better than just playing the recording over speakers. Each class, we do one lesson from the book: a text, which we listened to once, then again in pieces while the teacher explained the meaning of the sentences. Then exercises are done, some involving listening to assignments, some not. The good thing is, if you want to test your comprehension after only listening once, you can work ahead in the book, doing the exercises before the teacher has explained the details of the text. The book comes with a CD and a transcripts-and-answers book.
  Also, at the end of each lesson, we practice the listening part of HSK5 exams. We usually practice about ten or twenty questions. This is usually harder than the lesson text.
   
• Newspaper Reading is the only class I found unsatisfactory this semester. This has to do with the teacher: Our teacher got sick after two lessons, and the replacement teacher was very young and inexperienced, so the quality of the class went downhill fast after that. The original teacher was very good, I think. The class is about learning to make sense of newspaper-style texts, with a lot of formal language and typical words and expressions in them. The first teacher stressed the 'skimming' type of reading you should develop to do this: you do not have to understand every character, rather, you should get a sense of the text from the title, any numbers mentioned, what each paragraph is about, etcetera. In her class, we did one lesson every week, and two students had to read a piece of news and present about it every week.
  However, the new teacher went through the material much, much slower, so that now, at the end of term, we have only done five chapters. So only three chapters since the first two weeks. She goes through the text in detail, explaining every word and expression, and this of course takes a lot of time. Also, it is not (I feel) the purpose of the class: we should focus on getting something from the text quickly, then study in detail only the two or three expressions the book highlights as learning material - not every expression and word! A shame, too, because I found the topic very useful and interesting. I suppose I will try to study the rest of the book on my own next semester...

Communication remains an issue at LNNU. The staff at the offices are friendly and helpful, but their methods of information dissemination I find curiously old-fashioned. If there is an announcement, or an activity, or something like that, it is printed out (in Chinese) and pasted at a notice board. Apart from that, the class teacher is given a copy and will read it in class and post it on the classroom notice board. And that is it. So if you happen to be absent when it is read and do not look at the notice board, you may not know that anything is going on at all. To be able to look something up later, you have to take a picture of the piece of paper :-S But it would be much handier to have an electronic version, so that you can quickly copy-past an unknown character into a dictionary (or even throw the whole darn thing in Google translate). Why they do not use e-mail or Wechat to (also) disseminate information, I have no idea. I have suggested it at the class presidents' meeting, but nothing has been done with it

Secondly, sometimes activities are announced extremely last-minute, as in: the day after tomorrow, we have an activity. Often, this comes in the form of a phone call from the office (do they call every foreign student? o_o ) A real shame, because some of the activities were fun (learning to cook Chinese food, for example), but at such short notice, I had usually already made other plans and could not attend.

 

Exams:

 

The end-of-term exams have just begun, so I cannot report on all of them yet. I can say that classes continue almost right up to the day of the exam - no cushy 'exam week' like I am used to in the Netherlands. Comprehension and Spoken Chinese take place on the last two days of the year, the others during the last scheduled class of the year. This means I had my Listening exam on December 25 - Christmas day. There is no vacation for Christmas here, only one day off on January 1st. So while my family is having winter holidays and Christmas dinners, I am studying for exams :-)

 

The last class or two for each subject are spent giving information about what will be in the exam, and revising a little. Information about the exams is quite detailed. and the exam questions are similar to the exercises done during the classes. The Listening exam was not hard, because it used texts from previous lessons, so you could listen to them beforehand :-) Hardest for me is having to be able to write all the characters you need for answering questions. Usually, you can just look up a character if you've forgotten how to write it, but during the exams, you are not allowed to use a dictionary.

Daily life:

I live in dorm #6 (as a scholarship student, you have no choice about this). This dorm has communal showers and bathrooms as well as kitchens. Buildings #2 and #5 have private bathrooms. However, I have heard from students living there that our building is much nicer than theirs, despite the lack of private facilities. They complain about the furniture being old and the bathrooms being smelly, and of course, having a private bathroom means you have to clean it yourself. At #6, the hallways and communal facilities are cleaned every morning by the staff of ayis. A bit perfunctorily sometimes, true, but at least the floors are mopped every day :-) It is never very busy in the showers, and there is usually plenty of hot water (it is a boiler, though, so it can run out). So I am quite content with the living arrangements. However, a few things are not so nice:

The higher floors sometimes have water pressure issues. Also, during a few weeks in the middle of the semester, there was often no water at all except in the mornings. May have had to do with construction activities (they are working on the subway here in Dalian), but we have never gotten a satisfactory explanation. However, for the past few weeks, it has been fine again.
The kitchen, despite being large, only has two small fridges, three hot plates and one microwave oven for the 26 people per floor. Still, it rarely leads to problems, because not many people seem to cook.
The guards and ayis seem to live in this building, too, which means you sometimes run into them using the shower or the kitchen. A bit strange to see a little old Chinese lady in your shower when you are not expecting it! The guards smoke in the hallway sometimes, which is not allowed, but what can you do? Some students also smoke in their rooms or in the kitchen, but fortunately not on my floor :-)
The heating system is not very good, radiators get lukewarm at best, even when it is -10 outside. Fortunately, you can use the air-conditioning to heat up the room, but this is very inefficient of course. And because of the whole "room electricity only works when your card is in the slot" thing, it means you can only heat your room when you are there. I mentioned the heating problem, and the building staff said they had reported it many times already, but that nothing has been done about it so far.

Finally, a note on Dalian as a city. As I mentioned, it is not an old city, so it does not provide a lot of sightseeing activities. Also, it is not a big city. Of course, it is big, it has 3 million inhabitants, but it does not have a big city atmosphere. It feels more like a place that is big because a lot of people want to live there, not because it has an especially vibrant character, a lively music or arts scene, tourist attractions, an especially academic feel, or anything like that. To give an example: I wanted to buy some silly things with 'Dalian' on them to bring home to my family, like a fridge magnet or a key chain or anything like that. But it turns out these things do not exist. I asked a Dalian friend, and she said the only souvenir-like things in Dalian are postcards, seashells (but they are not particular for Dalian), and Russian souvenirs in Russian Street :-S

 

[jobm]

@Base7 Hello! I study in DUT and I saw in your blog you attended the Dalian Speech Contest, if you remember, I was the Filipino contestant I forgot what number I was anyway. I agree with what you say about Dalian. Sometimes, I do not feel I am in China. My class has a lot of Russian and Korean students, Korean food is just everywhere, and the buildings are very European in style. Dalian is a very modern city and it does not give that "China feel" -- like the ones you would see in movies or in Beijing. Nevertheless, it is so clean and traffic jams only happen during rush hours And the wind is just too strong! My 综合 class has the most homework but the content of my reading class is just so political sometimes. We had some readings about the Cultural Revolution, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and sometimes I feel why are we reading these materials?! Fortunately, our teacher does not 跑题 and gives below the belt comments about those controversial issues revolving China

[roddy]

Base7, thanks so much for that excellent write-up

[Geju]

thank you very much for all these explanations it's very helpful !!!

[Base7]

Hi jobm,

 

Nice to hear from a fellow Dalian student. I do not recall you specifically (there were so many contestants!), but everyone spoke really well, so you must have, too :-D

 

I agree with what you say about Dalian. I do find it a very pleasant city to live in. The air quality has been quite okay here; even in winter, there are many days of around or below 100, and I have only seen the AQI go over 200 a dozen times or so, usually in periods of a few days (the past 2 days it was bad again, but now it is back to 114). Traffic jams mostly happen during rush hour, as you say, and they are busy building subways (would have been nice is they were finished this year, as was originally planned ) The people are for the most part friendly, and I very rarely get stared at as a foreigner or hailed with the ever-present 'hellooo!', as happens in more tourist places. This is true for the city center as well as the university area. Perhaps because of the large number of Russians here? Some of the architecture indeed feels quite (imitation) European, the rest is just general Chinese modern. I do miss old buildings and streets sometimes (my own hometown is 1000 years old!) However, the absence of Chinese tradition does give you a good opportunity to see the current, modern China and all its interesting characteristics. In the end it all depends on what you are looking for. If this is your first China experience, then you might do better going somewhere that has a bit more traditional Chinese architecture and evidence of history. If you know China and are looking for a pleasant, relatively healthy place to live, then you could do worse than Dalian!

 

The nice thing about studying here is that there are few western foreign students, most are Korean or Japanese. This means that Chinese really is to go-to language for communication (though I speak English with my Italian dorm-mates). This helps your spoken Chinese a lot. As for political content, our zonghe class does not have this at all, but I am only in the Intermediate level. I do not know what it is like in the Advanced level. Maybe I will find out, I hope to enter Advanced 1 next semester. If I do, I will be sure to report on the classes here!

 

Have you written about DUT on this forum? I would be interested in hearing more about the differences between the two universities; DUT is considered the best university in Dalian, if I am not mistaken. BTW, do you know a Spoken Chinese teacher called Zhang Di? She is a friend of mine :-)

[jobm]

哪里，哪里 But that contest was really long, wasn't it~ Nevertheless, it was such a wonderful experience

 

True!! I heard it would be done next year. I hope I could experience the subway before going home. I think Dalian is more open to foreigners and even local migrants compared to other second-tier cities. So far, the only ones from Dalian I know are some of my teachers. The rest I know came from different parts of China. BTW, I was also impressed by the way people dress here which proves how developed Dalian is.

 

It is really good to study Chinese here in Dalian since the use of English is really very small. They said that Japanese is more preferred since there are a lot of Japanese companies here.

 

Oh, we use all the books in the 发展汉语 series, 2nd edition. It really improved a lot compared to its first edition.

 

Uhm, not so much haha! But I would gladly write a review if anyone asks.

 

I have a classmate who studied in Liaoning Normal University and she said to me her speaking teacher was her favorite. Hahaha yeah, I heard if a Chinese is studying in DUT, they are labelled as xueba by other universities! Anyway, my zonghe teacher is a undergraduate of LNU and she is very good! Oh, Zhang Di? I do not know.. Are there a lot of foreign students studying Chinese in LNU? I think DUT does not have a large population of students attending Chinese language classes. We are just only on one floor. 15 classes I guess? But I am impressed with my teachers here ^^ They are very encouraging and we could have fun with them )

 

Anyway, thumbs up for your reviews! They are very comprehensive~

[mohamed hamza]

base7 

thank you very much i am going to study there in next September i need you to told me if exam are ok or not