Taiwan Chinese Academy

[TCAMandarin]

Hello Mandarin language learners. I am Andy, founder of TCA. Please allow me to introduce my school, Taiwan Chinese Academy. If you want to learn Chinese in Taiwan then TCA is the school for you. We specialize in teaching Mandarin as a second language for adults who want to become fluent. Our focus is on pronunciation, speaking, listening, and reading. Writing is optional on your own time, however reading Traditional characters is important too. Many other private schools do not teach reading characters and to sell students on how easy Chinese can be with just pinyin. I believe serious students will regret not learning how to read from the beginning. We understand the usefulness of pinyin to introduce beginners, so we start with pinyin but we will transition to Traditional characters. Our group classes are 6 students maximum. This is small enough so that you will get attention from your teacher. We have five levels of Mandarin and use NTNU's "A Course in Contemporary Chinese Textbook 1 & Textbook 2" and "Practical Audio-Visual Chinese 3, 4, and 5." We will use A Course in Contemporary Chinese Textbook 3+ as NTNU releases them to the public. We are very dedicated to high quality classes for our students. TCA will never place a student in the wrong level of class. Check out www.tcamandarin.com for more info and to apply.

 

We opened in September 14, 2015 and we're trying to be the best Mandarin school in Taiwan. We will never compromise quality teaching. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here.

 

Thank you!

 

 

[Hofmann]

What is your definition of "fluent?"

How will you take advantage of your location in Taiwan in your instructional design?

What do you think of content-based instruction (CBI) and will you use it or are you considering using it?

• If so, what are some examples of content you will teach?

What do you think of or have you considered this method of teaching literacy, where students learned to type using Pinyin before handwriting?

• If you do, would you consider later introducing handwriting at a more deliberate pace, with more attention paid to form, as proposed by Allen (2008)?

Care to upload a sample syllabus?

[TCAMandarin]

Hi Hofman,

 

I am very impressed by your questions! We are currently planning activities for our students to experience Taiwan. This Thursday, I am taking students to Ningxia Night Market. We will be giving our students a few goals, which is to find and buy a specific food and describe the flavor in Chinese. We are currently using A Course in Contemporary Chinese made by NTNU and we find the book to be well designed. I do actually want to create a CBI to supplement this book. It will mostly be power points and video. Our teachers actually have made some power points to go with the course.

 

I type Chinese with pinyin as well. I am not sure how to integrate this into the course yet. I am thinking of using quizlet's Astroid Game. Select start with Chinese (pinyin) and you can type Chinese characters with Pinyin to get to the correct characters. I made a set for vocabulary here: https://quizlet.com/122459854/gravity. If you have any suggestions for what to use to learn to type using Pinyin I'd would like to hear it.

We will only introduce handwriting to students as an option. For regular courses that is Monday-Thursday, students can take an extra Friday class to practice writing. The teacher's time is used more efficiently by focusing on speaking, listening, and some reading in class while focusing on writing on their own time outside of class.

We don't have a syllabus right now typed out. It is in the book. I'll find time to share it on my website soon. Thanks for the questions! I hope I answered them fairly well.