One Year Intensive Chinese: Taiwan or China?

[snailssnooze123]

I'm planning to spend next year studying Chinese fulltime. I've been living in Shanghai for a year and a half and I'll be taking the HSK 3 this spring. My longtime goal is to be able to read a newspaper and discuss current events (yes, I realize that this will take me longer than a year ).

I'm debating between applying to the Huayu enrichment scholarship for Taiwan and the Chinese government scholarship for Chinese language, or maybe both? I'm not sure which environment would be better for me.

Here are my concerns:

1. I don't want to be in a big lecture hall, but are all Chinese universities like that? Would I get more individual attention if I went to a university training center in Taiwan?

2. Is making the jump from simplified to traditional characters that bad? I've put in so much effort studying simplified here, and I'm worried that if I go to Taiwan I'll basically be starting from scratch.

Maybe someone else who has been in this position before can give me some advice. Thanks!

[abcdefg]

I don't want to be in a big lecture hall, but are all Chinese universities like that? Would I get more individual attention if I went to a university training center in Taiwan?

Have you considered a private school as an alternative to a university?

[snailssnooze123]

I wouldn't be eligible for those scholarships if I wento to a private language school.

[OneEye]

I was in a similar situation a while back. I applied for both the Taiwan HES and the CSC in China. I got the scholarship for Taiwan, so I came here. I spent 5 terms (15 months) at the MTC, working really hard most of the time. While I'm not great at reading newspapers, it's only because I haven't done much newspaper reading. I took a newspaper reading class over the summer though, and had I continued reading them daily I have no doubt it would be easy. As it is, I'm spending all my time preparing to do a Master's degree in Chinese here, so almost all of my reading is focused on getting ready for that.

But I can say that only a year after moving here I was able to audit graduate-level lecture courses on palaeography, do the reading for the class, and generally keep up fairly well. And I started at a relatively low level — some of my classmates in my first term had started from scratch at the MTC only 3 months prior to that. So don't think that after a year, wherever you go, that reaching a high level isn't possible. It all depends on how much work you do outside of class and how hard you push yourself. The actual school is less important, IMO, though I do agree that a smaller class size is ideal.

As far as traditional versus simplified, it isn't really as big a deal as people make it into. I started out with simplified, and switched to traditional after not too long. 95% of what I've read has been in traditional, and I look for traditional character editions of books whenever possible (though with academic books, it sometimes isn't). When I do have to read simplified, it's a little slower and I occasionally have to look up a character, but most of them I get through context or by knowing some of the ways they're simplified. But I've only recently started doing this, and I know after reading a book or two in simplified it won't be a big deal anymore. I'm sure it would be more or less the same the other way around.

So, in short I'd say it doesn't really matter which country you go to unless you have a strong preference one way or the other. Go wherever you get a better deal with the scholarship. And work hard. You'd be surprised at the progress you can make in a year if that whole year is spent pushing yourself.

[imron]

I'm sure it would be more or less the same the other way around.

I can attest that this is the case.

[snailssnooze123]

OneEye, thanks so much for your post. Sorry for the late reply. I went travelling for Chinese New Year right after this and forgot to get back on the forum. But what you wrote was really helpful and reassuring. I applied for the Huayu scholarship last month, now just waiting to hear back!

[OneEye]

No problem at all. Good luck with it!