Enrolling Directly in a Chinese University

[Steingletscher]

I'm an American seriously thinking about enrolling directly in a Chinese university to learn Chinese for the fall of this year. I feel like it would be much more immersive and cheaper then participating in a program based in the US. According to China Education Center and cucas.edu.cn, most universities have Chinese programs for foreigners. Any advice, such as helpful sites that can be trusted? At the moment, I almost no experience in Mandarin. Thinking specifically about Sichuan University and Shandong University.

[Matty]

The best would be to find the contact details of the university and call them up directly. Are you after a degree program or a short term program?

There are often full bachelor degree programs, semester long programs and some shorter term programs.

Also when selecting your university you should consider both cost and environmental aspects.

Costs of living in different areas can vary greatly.

For enviornmental aspects you can consider weather and language environment.

Beijing and Harbin have rather proper Mandarin whereas many other locations tend to have strong accents or not use a great deal of Mandarin, instead using their local dialects. Your out of university language environment is rather important and will influence your learning greatly. Sichuan has its own dialect and some strong accents from what I hear, however Shandong I'm not familiar with at all. I hear Sichuan is a great place to live though and I love the food.

However Beijing and Harbin can be rather cold with a lot of snow (and i think fall is autumn? - not American).

Hope some of these thoughts might help.

[ohaacke]

Steignletscher,

I made the decision to enroll directly into an undergraduate program at a Chinese University in 2009. I turned down a U.S. education because I knew I wanted to study Chinese and become proficient in it.

If you are serious about learning Chinese, definitely go to a university in China. If you major in Chinese in the U.S., you will never get to a level of speaking, listening, reading and writing that you can in a less than a year at a Chinese university. I've seen graduates who had Chinese majors from top U.S. universities come to China and not be able to order a meal or tell a taxi driver where they wanted to go because no one could understand their pronunciation.

I recommend you go to a smaller university with less foreigners that will speak English, this will help you find Chinese speaking friends.

I am currently writing a sort of guide based on personal experience on my blog: http://owenhaacke.com/going-to-college-in-china-part-i/

Going to college in China is a very different experience than in the U.S., but if you have a real desire to master Chinese there is no better way.

Best,

Owen