Help finding a way to learn Chinese in China for 4 months.

[cowlegend999]

I would really appreciate some help with this, through Google I've found far too many opportunities available and its difficult to identify if they would be a good fit for me or not, so I would like to hear from some people who know more about this.

some background info:

I'm a university student studying engineering

I passed hsk 3 with 260/300 through self study.

I would have a max budget of $10,000 for an ideally 4 month trip for may to august.

Ideally I would like some kind of immersion program where I only use mandarin the entire time I'm there, as well as having something to keep me busy with (as I don't want to find things to do everyday to get me to leave the house). I think this would be the fastest way for me to improve my mandarin as I could self study at home and then practice using what I'm studying all day long. Most immersion programs I saw were quite a bit overbudget unfortunately though, so I'm not sure if this is an option. I also know studying at language schools is quite popular, but I think there I would spend far too much time hearing English, I would mainly meet other foreigners rather than Chinese people and being with other Chinese learners made cause my Chinese to pick up bad habits.

I would appreciate hearing your opinions as well as if you have any potential ideas for me! If you also know of any other similar forum threads or resources discussing someone in a similar situation that would be great too, because when I search on Google I mainly find commercial advertisements and it is difficult to sort through all of the information to find stuff that pertains to me, thanks for the help!!!

[Silent]

The 10k is for study only or should it cover travel/accomodation/food etc too?

 

Controversial over here, specially for his claims, but I think fluentinthreemonths.com has some good ideas about what you could do. I guess it pretty much boils down to immersion, study and use the language in real life. And also very important see what works best for you and keep in mind that this will change over time.

 

So maybe a decent bet would be to go to a somewhat out of the way place (cheaper and less opportunity/temptation to break the immersion). Find a tutor for a couple of hours a day (preferably flexible, perhaps even different tutors) spend a couple more hours on self study/homework and find something to do the rest of the time. The latter is of course subject to personal preferences. You might play mahjong with the oldies in the park, join a sports or art club, go on some excursions with Chinese tour groups or if you're really bold and brave you could tutor some engineering subjects to Chinese students. The opportunities to keep you occupied are endless and mainly limited by your imagination but it will depend on your preferences and attitude how this will work out for your language learning. I mean long distance running will likely result in less social interaction then a literary club. And if you're shy or extravert will effect how well you keep a conversation going.

[ChTTay]

IUP program in Beijing (http://ieas.berkeley.edu/iup/). It's expensive but probably worth it. They don't have a beginner level though so you'd have to pass into intermediate or pre-intermediate.

 

5 hours a day. 3 on 1 class size as well as 1 on 1 within the program. A large alumni network useful for career (so I hear). Only Chinese spoken in school.

 

As for not hearing/speaking English outside of class, if you are only here 4 months then just don't make foreign friends. Be the guy on the program "who never comes out" as far as others are concerned. Seek out Chinese friends.

 

For the private language school option... again, if you had 1 on 1 classes, when would you be hearing all this English? Go to class, speak Chinese, leave class, speak Chinese, make Chinese friends, speak Chinese .... Also a private language school would cater the program to you so you could study as much or as little as you wanted and could focus on areas that you wanted to study.

 

If you are really organized and dedicated to study you could try independent study with a range of tutors, studying alone at home and doing other activities to help improve your Chinese. I personally would need more structure.

[James3]

I've read others saying that 1to1 Mandarin Workshop in Harbin was really helpful for their learning journey.

Good luck.

[hedwards]

Chris Lonsdale has a book called The 3rd Ear. As far as Fluent in 3 months goes, most of the controversy here is over what one considers to be the level that one considers fluent. There's a fair number of folks on here that are dedicated to methods that are stodgy and out of date. They do work, which is probably why they stick to them, but some of the suggestions are just plain masochistic in my opinion.

 

Anyways, if you read Benny's blog about his experience learning Mandarin in China, I got the feeling that being immersed probably held him back a bit. Either way, it's advisable to try virtual immersion first. I'm doing 1 on 1s over skype these days to get myself back into the habit of speaking Chinese. I met him on italki.com and it's quite affordable. There really is nothing quite like talking to somebody to get that reality check over whether or not your tones and pronunciation are good enough.

 

Once you've got a basic education in Chinese, at least enough to start a conversation, you'll find that immersion is far more useful. You can start completely from scratch, and people did that a lot historically, but I think it's more effective if you've already gotten some language ability.

[Flickserve]

 

Once you've got a basic education in Chinese, at least enough to start a conversation, you'll find that immersion is far more useful. You can start completely from scratch, and people did that a lot historically, but I think it's more effective if you've already gotten some language ability.

This is my preferred method. I don't take well to immersion straight off. I need some english translation to pick up the vocabulary. There is no use repeating a word in chinese 100 or a 1000 times unless there is some meaning to it and I can't just guess the meaning if I don't know the other words in the sentence to put it into context. You can even shout at me to try and get the meaning across but it still doesn't work.

 

  I need to know some phrases to express myself otherwise I get extremely frustrated.

 

 

I've read others saying that 1to1 Mandarin Workshop in Harbin was really helpful for their learning journey.

The number of positive experiences reported is a great testament.

[Silent]

 

I need some english translation to pick up the vocabulary. There is no use repeating a word in chinese 100 or a 1000 times unless there is some meaning to it and I can't just guess the meaning if I don't know the other words in the sentence to put it into context.

You may want translation to pick up vocabulary, but you really don't need it. Of course you can guess the meaning of words, even with absolutely no knowledge of the target language,  if they are presented in the right way. You just need comprehensible input. No translations needed.

 

Actually, without translations may be much better. Many, if not most, words have no perfect direct translation, working with translations will consequently result in a skewed perception of those words. This is specially true for many high frequency words and when the learned language is far removed from the instruction language.

 

That said, I believe language learning may be boosted through translations if used correctly, but it's easy to overuse translation and neglect the most important thing for learning, actual use, immersion.

[Flickserve]

Sure. My experience is tempered by my own teenage experience of not understanding family relatives talking to me in chinese - invariably they would repeat the same thing but louder and louder and I still wouldn't understand what was going on.

[hedwards]

@Silent I agree with you in principle here. But I think though that the shorter the period over which you're needing to learn the language the better it is to pre-load vocab and grammar prior to immersion. If you've got a number of years to learn, then doing a bit of pre-study is probably not going to make much difference, but if you've only got the summer, then where you start when you start immersion will make a huge difference.

 

As an experiment, I'm considering trying to learn some Cantonese when I'm back in Guangdong next year. I'll be starting basically from scratch and I'll see just how well that works. I'll probably practice learning the tones before I start, just because I'd rather not have that affecting things if possible.

[Silent]

 

@Silent I agree with you in principle here. But I think though that the shorter the period over which you're needing to learn the language the better it is to pre-load vocab and grammar prior to immersion. If you've got a number of years to learn, then doing a bit of pre-study is probably not going to make much difference, but if you've only got the summer, then where you start when you start immersion will make a huge difference.

To what statement of me are you reacting? I don't think I said anything about 'pre-loading' vocabulary/grammar or not.

[hedwards]

@Silent post #7, was what I was responding to, but I can see how I may have read something in there that was at best implied.