Studying Chinese for 5 years

[Gomez]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here. Actually I want to study in Taiwan, well I am about to tell you my short story and my questions.

I learned English self-taught, and in the moment when I applied the TOEFL iBT, I got 103 points of 120 points; in few months I will travel to US to improve this language.

Well, when I return to my home country, I will apply for a scholarship to Taiwan for studying Chinese as a Second Language. I feel that my discipline is very strong, in addition I love this beautiful idiom for several reasons.

The scholarship is for 5 years, and I am thinking for the first year in enroll in MTC at NTNU (National Taiwan Normal University), after that apply in the same University; I will study Chinese other four years for getting the Bachelor Degree.

So I would like to know

•     Will I learn Mandarin excellently in five years of total immersion?
•     Will I be able to speak, listen music, watch breaking news, or read the newspaper as I native speaker? (I mean, understanding anything, since the daily things, until the most unusual stuff)
•     Is it a good option NTNU?

[ZhangKaiRong]

Hello Gomez, and welcome on chinese-forums!

 

There are no true answers for your questions, as all of these matters depend on you, your learning ability and willingness to overcome the obstacles of learning Chinese. Your approach seems decent, with the correct focus it can be achieved after 5 years of dedicated studying (you will probably not be able to read and enjoy novels in Chinese, though, but newspapers should not be a problem), and absolutely doable. But emphasizing your commitment and discipline in terms of learning Chinese is a little bit naive, as if I understand correctly you haven't started to learn the language, therefore you might assess the potential problems, demotivational things, burnouts, etc. in a wrong way. Being disciplined is good, but you might not say that you are disciplined in learning Chinese until you actually start the learning process. Most people who started to learn this language said in the early phases that they were diligent and disciplined enough, however a majority of them stopped learning after hitting the walls later. I don't want to dishearten you, but I guess you need to know this in order to see a clearer picture about how the learning process is.

[roddy]

We have quite a bit of info on MTC and NTNU, thanks to the excellent OneEye and other posters. If you have any specific questions, those would be the best topics to ask in. 

 

If you study for five years and maintain discipline and motivation - yeah, you can do all that. Welcome to the site, and I hope you'll keep us updated on your progress.