moving to china to study. need som advice from you experienced guys

[sondreberg]

hi!

My name is Sondre and this is my first post here. Im from Norway and in the end of this month i will move to Shanghai to study in Shanghai Jiao Tong University. My field of study is electrical engineering, but competence in this fild is not the main reason i decided to do my exchange year in China. my goals for this year is (besides doing good in school) to get to know the chinese culture, to travel, to get as skilled as possible in the chinese language and to have fun. any advice mould be much appriciated

i also have a few specific questions;
 

i would like to start learning chinese martial arts but i have no idea where and who. to get as much language practice as possible, a chinese speaking teacher would be great. and i would like, if possible to train in the mornings before going to school, so someplace near the university would be perfect. any suggestions, contacts etc?

i will go to china about 3 weeks before registration at school. this time i would like to use for language learning and traveling. so im thinking i should start with a week at a language school in Shanghai and get to know the city at my spare time. then i would like to do a couple of weeks of traveling. anyone have any tips for a good short term language school? and tips for where to travel? i hate turist traps, and love culture and nature.

 

aside from these questions all advice in general will be most appreciated

thank you!

 

[tysond]

Hi - you have a lot of goals, let me just talk about one.  

 

To quickly get to grips with Chinese language, the best approach (if you can afford it) is 1:1 or 1:few lessons - learning pinyin, pronunciation, basic sentence structure.  My wife did 15 days of 6 hours a day lessons (1 teacher 2 students), and she came out perfectly capable to shop, catch taxis, give directions, order at restaurants etc.    Having a few weeks of "spare time" is great for this because having good pronunciation and clear understanding of the sounds of Chinese from the start will give you a great foundation.

 

Afterwards you can adopt other approaches like self-study, podcasts, flashcards/SRS, characters etc.

[sondreberg]

thank you for responding tysond

i will definetly consider doing 1:1 lessons to get a kick start for my chinese studying. i have allready started listening to pimsleur to get the feel of how the language sounds. I find listening and repeating very helpfull. i havent got the hang of the pinyin pronounsiations yet, but i am focusing at that as well. trying to picture what kind of tone i hear with its pinyin equivalent. hahah.

[roddy]

The martial arts one - ask around at the school office. Plenty of their foreign students will have had the same question and there's a good chance they'll know someone who does lessons on campus. You'll also quite likely see people giving classes on campus, hang around and look interested.