Free Homestay in Beijing or Chengde

[zhouhaochen]

LTL joins the "offer free stuff on Chinese forums" effort http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/44912-chinese-learning-companies-give-us-freebies/.

After discussion with the admins, we decided to offer a week of free homestay for any full-time student who starts their course this December, January or February in Beijing or Chengde.

 

The fine print

- One week of free homestay accommodation, including breakfast and dinner during the course (can be at any time during the course - but I personaly would recommend doing it at the beginning). Can be part of any other accommodation arrangement.

- For anyone who starts their full-time Chinese course with LTL between Dec. 1st 2014 and Feb. 28th 2015 and signs up for it between today (9th of June) and the 1st of August 2014.

- Offer valid for Chinese-forums members only. Need to be a registered member on here as of today (9th of June) and contact us before the 1st of August with a reference to this thread.

- Should post a report on the experience on this forum afterwards

- While I would suggest to spend more time studying and living with a homestay, there is no need to stay longer than a week. If someone wants to just take one week of classes, he/she can get the week of free homestay with it.

- All full time courses for Beijing are on http://www.livethelanguage.cn/learn-chinese-beijing/ and for Chengde on http://www.livethelanguage.cn/learn-chinese-chengde/.

- For anyone who arrives in Beijing the day they are moving into the homestay, we also throw a free airport pick-up in.

- Maximum 10 weeks of free homestay on a first come, first served basis.

 

I hope the offer and terms are clear, but it is the first time I am writing something like this, so if anything is unclear, please feel free to ask one here. To sign up, leave a message here or contact me on andreas@livethelanguage.cn

[roddy]

Thanks to LTL. Anyone fancy a week of free homestaying in Beijing?

[GaoJinJie]

I am posting because I have taken up this free homestay offer.

 

Full disclosure, I have studied at LTL before. I spent a month there over Christmas last year and lived with a Chinese family. You can read my experiences here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/26383-ltl-mandarin-school-with-chinese-homestays/?p=325175

 

This time I am doing 20 hours 1-on-1 lessons per week for 2 weeks, and I am doing the homestay program again. When I am finished up at LTL (January 2015) I will write another review of the program. Of course, my past experience will have no bearing on my review and I will be wholly objective.

 

If anybody has any questions please feel free to let me know!

[GaoJinJie]

I've recently finished my program with LTL. As I mentioned in my previous post, I did 20 hours per week of 1-on-1 lessons and stayed with a homestay family.

 

I was very impressed again with the quality of the program. Last time that I was at LTL I had two different teachers that alternated days. This time I was allocated one of those teachers for my entire two weeks. The quality of the teaching was top notch, and my teacher was quite young and she was really fun and engaging. I chose to use the school's usual textbook (Short Term Spoken Chinese) but I had the option of using my own (Integrated Chinese).

 

I actually think that the homestay program was the highlight of my course. I was so happy with the homestay family that I had last year that I requested to go back to the same family. They were amazing and very accommodating. I had my own key, could come and go as I pleased, there would always be amazing food cooked for me, and they took the time to chat with me whenever I was around. 

 

I personally believe that the homestay program was better this time around. I think it's because I spoke almost no Chinese last time I visited and all the small things were difficult to communicate (e.g. how do I wash my clothes?) as they don't speak any English. Now that my Chinese has improved, it was really valuable to be speaking to them and learning how the language is actually used. I did hear that some other people weren't as happy as me with their homestay programs -- but as I said, mine was amazing.

 

I am happy to answer any questions about LTL, the course and the homestay.

 

Cheers!