Affordable Chinese Schools in Hong Kong?

[creztor]

Does anyone know of any affordable Chinese language schools in HK? Mandarin or Cantonese are fine. I am after a school that doesnt cost the earth and would help me apply for a student visa, as I would like to move from Taiwan to HK and continue my study of chinese there and live for at least more than a year. Im looking at 2 hours a day and so far everything I have found online is 3 - 4 hours and costs a lot. If anyone has any recommendations of schools/classes please let me know, many thanks.

[creztor]

No-one?

[Jive Turkey]

I think that in order for you to get a student visa, you have to:

a.) be enrolled at a university. I don't think you can get visas through the many private schools. Most of these schools aren't worth your time anyway. They are certainly cheaper than the universities, but the materials and quality of instruction are bottom of the barrel.

b.) attend at least 12 hours a week of classes. I took a couple of classes at the Chinese Language Center at CUHK and that was their requirement. It may actually be 15 hours now.

The only place in HK that would at all be worth your time for studying Mandarin would be CUHK. HKU has a program, but it is taught by part-time teachers only. CUHK has an old program, but the teachers and materials are extremely far behind developments in the world of TCFL. They write their own materials, but they are of inferior quality to the newer materials coming out of places like BLCU Press. A few of the teachers are good and the class sizes are small, so you do get a good bit of attention. One downside, and I think this is true of any program you could attend in HK, is that students are relatively lazy. A lot of kids come here because they just don't want to deal with the slightly bigger challenge of going to the mainland. If you have another reason for living in HK, then CUHK would be an ok option. However, if your main goal is to study Mandarin, then you'd be much better off staying in Taiwan or going to the mainland.