Private schools with accommodation

[Guest realmayo]

It's easy to search these forums for universities which teach foreigners Chinese, but I've found it less easy to get a feel for the options where private schools, particularly those offering accommodation, are concerned.

 

What I'm looking for are: schools which let you start any time, offer one-on-one tuition, and which provide private room accommodation. Oh, and they're outside Beijing/Shanghai.

 

It may be simply that there aren't many. But I'd be grateful if anyone has any suggestions.

 

So far I'm aware of:

 

Keats - Kunming

Harbin Mandarin School - Harbin

Chinese Language Institute - Guilin

Konall Culture Exchange - Shijiazhuang

 

 

Part of me thinks I should just be rocking up somewhere nice, find a cheap hotel, and then find tutors independently. But I'm not sure there's much money to be saved that way, and there's the potential for far more hassle.

[onebir]

You could do a more complete list of the Kunming options fairly quickly by identifying the CFL schools here:

 

http://www.gokunming.com/en/listings/city/kunming/education/

 

& dropping them each a line.

[snowflake]

I'm somewhat interested in this topic too though private room accommodations are less important to me.  It looks like some other options are;

 

Omeida - Yangshuo near Guilin 

TLI - Dalian

 

Since the website for TLI Dalian mentions accommodations, other TLI locations in mainland China may also offer accommodations.  I don't mind studying Mandarin in Taiwan so am looking to see where TLI students in Taichung tend to stay.  

[ChTTay]

LTL from Beijing has a home stay option in Chengde. You get classes as well.

[onebir]

Oh - TLI Beijing offers (/used to) private rooms in two bed apartments, in International Youth University's dorms.

[eion_padraig]

I found an AirBnB place that was inexpensive and close to the school I wanted to take lessons at last summer. It worked pretty well for me.

 

Eion

[abcdefg]

That's a good thought, @Eion_Paidrag. What city?

[Guest realmayo]

Gosh AirBnB in China is something I hadn't thought about ... something that can be arranged in advance from another city/country. Interesting...    

[James3]

Not sure if these would meet your requirements or not, but flipkey.com and couchsurfing.com might be options kind of like AirBnB.

[zhouhaochen]

I work for LTL, so I will not comment on quality or anything like this of others or our school, but I would like to mention that we do have a school in Chengde (not Chengdu) that is outside Beijing/Shanghai, where you can start 1on1 classes every Monday and that offers private room accommodation.

 

It is a complete immersion program, so it might not be what you are looking for, but it is an option you could look at if you want to stop speaking English and only speak Mandarin.

 

http://www.livethelanguage.cn/learn-chinese-chengde/

 

There is a thread about it on Chinese Forums too (with unfortunately not that many comments though, as even though we have been running it for 6 years by now, we only have about 3 to 4 students there at any time)

 

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/44346-learning-chinese-in-chengde-ltl-chengde-reviews-discussions-and-information/

[Guest realmayo]

Thanks, I've had a look, though if I understand the website correctly, LTL weekly prices at RMB 6000 per week for 20 hrs teaching and accommodation are basically double the alternatives.

[LinZhenPu]

Yeah, why is the price so much dearer than others?

[zhouhaochen]

@realmayo @LinZhenPu

 

Sorry for the late reply, summer is peak season for us and with the new school in Shanghai I have been swamped with work recently.

 

First, the price is not as high. It depends how long you book for, but for a longer course for example it is 3231 CNY for 20 hours of 1on1 class (60 minutes/lesson) and 1888 CNY for a homestay including breakfast and dinner. It gets cheaper if you choose the shared apartment option (which will get even cheaper in the next few weeks as we found a new partner there).

 

However, you are of course right in that a complete immersion program like this is more pricey than others. I remember when I started LTL I looked at price structures of other schools internationally and they did not make sense to me. Mainly they seemed too expensive, but also the price hikes for specific times, locations and pre-bookings made no sense to me. Today they mostly do. Let me try to roughly explain where costs for serious language schools (as in the ones that are committed to provide exactly what is promised when the student wants it) come from. It is quite different to what I had thought it was back then. Three general points and one specific one to Chengde:

 

1) This first I think is relatively straightforward： Overhead costs of organizing homestays, classes, pickups, emergency services, social support etc. are significant. Here the cost comes from three factors a) how good they are (how much man power is invested into them) 2) is the service availability enoguh during peak time even if this means that some of these resources will be not or under used during the rest of the year 3) across how many students is the cost spread

 

2) Timing:

The service is just a part of the cost. Another just as important part is timing of the course/accommodation. Offering flexible time options mean that teachers will often not have a students before a student comes and/or after he/she leaves. The same goes with accommodation. A serious school that wants to have long term teachers and accommodation providers will have to pay for these empty times in one way of the other. As a student you do not just pay for the service you take, but also for the system that allows that service to be available exactly when you want (this is less of a factor for schools that work with part time teachers, families and staff who are only paid when they work - however LTL does not do that, as I very strongly believe that if you want quality you have to provide people long-term jobs, insurance, reliable income etc.)

 

3) Peak Times: A comparatively too large number of teaching and accommodation must be available to satisfy demand during peak season (summer usually for most schools) for any school that wants to be able to guarantee the same quality all year round.

 

 

All of these cost factors have one thing in common: they get smaller with size. The more students you have, the less likely that a teacher has no student to teach after someone left, the more people you can spread overhead costs across, the better deals you can negotiate with landlords etc. So size reduces costs (though often quality too).

 

 

4) A specific point for Chengde: On the one hand side, Chengde is the perfect place to learn Mandarin: they speak the best Mandarin in all of China (or so they say - it is for sure very

standard though), there are no foreigners living there, the English level of the locals is very low to non existent and it is a pretty city with mountains, two UNESCO world heritage sites and a lot of history. On the other hand side there could be no worse place to organize a program: There are no Chinese teachers (whom would they teach?) one could hire, the idea of having a foreigner live in your home when you have never even seen is very alien to people (our first student in Chengde was promptly arrested by the police because they said foreigners are not allowed to live with a Chinese family), student numbers are very small because nobody has heard of the place (or confuses it with Chengu) etc.

 

 

The program is unique and organized very differently to other language schools (including the LTL schools in Shanghai and Beijing) to achieve something that otherwise in a school environment would not be possible: complete immersion

This means that everything has to be individually organized. A homestay is just for one person and there is no other foreigner living there or close. Classes are one on one and you do not have any other English speakers around you could speak after class or during lunch. At the same time however if you need help, really struggle socialy or have an emergency, there is a 24/7 support network available for you.

Our schools in Beijing and Shanghai are designed to be very personal and therefore different to the big universities. However, the Chengde program takes it a big step further into individualization and immersion and can only work with a very small numbers of students (in our case about 3 to 4 students on average and never more than 8 in a city of 500,000 people).

 

And that means that the program is (and could not) be cheap. I understand that this is not for everyone, nor is it designed to be for everyone (we wouldn't have space for them anyways).

 

It does however get you amazingly fast Chinese progress. Students taking Gap Year programs with us who spend at least a part of their time in Chengde, achieve usually at least HSK 5 (we once had one student finish at HSK 4 three years ago, but that was a one of) and often HSK 6 from a beginner level within a year, something that I believe would not be possible without this. A little video if you want to have a look you can find on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjEAlILVA0k or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okpb63o4L5s.

 

I would be very happy if you tried it out and could write about your experiences here. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask here or email me directly on andreas@livethelanguage.cn

 

PS: nobody gets arrested for living with a Chinese family in Chengde anymore - some of our homestay families are quite high up the hierarchy in the party and helped us to solve that problem.

 

Disclaimer: in case anyone has not noticed, I obviously do work for LTL Mandarin School.

[LinZhenPu]

Thanks for that post, it was an interesting read.

our first student in Chengde was promptly arrested by the police because they said foreigners are not allowed to live with a Chinese family

Wow, this is surprising. Care to elaborate on this story?

[zhouhaochen]

@LinZhenPu

 

That was one of the more stressful days of my work life at LTL. It was our very first student going to Chengde. Our Director of Studies back then was from Chengde (she moved back there two years ago and still works for us in Chengde now - Tina 项老师 for anyone who has been to LTL Beijing or Chengde) and we organized the program together. Two days after the student arrived there, the police showed up and told them it was illegal for foreign citizens to live together with Chinese citizens. They took him to the police station to "interrogate", but later let him move into the only hotel in Chengde that was licensed to take foreigners.

As usual we knew the homestay very well (relatives of our Director of Studies) and luckily they were quite well connected. So after a few rounds of negotiations the student was allowed to move back into the family two days later. It seemed to me the police were just overwhelmed by the appearance of something they had never seen before and decided to play it safe by first forbidding everything just to make sure. They probably also wanted to talk to a foreigner...

 

Our student knew that he was the first person going to Chengde, so he was prepared for a bit of adventure and thankfully took it all with the necessary "when in China, strange things can happen" attitude (I was way more stressed out than him). We paid for his hotel nights, he continued studying and in the end all went well.

 

Never had a problem since then (we know the police guys now), but there are just no foreigners living in Chengde so the infrastructure is not very well prepared for people like us. Just earlier this year we had a student who wanted to stay in a hotel during the course and it took us ages to find one that would accept him at a reasonable price. It might change over time, but at the moment Chengde is still the "real China" that I remember from the "good old days" when I first arrived. So even while the police thing will - at least for our students - not happen again, anyone going has to be ready for a bit of an adventure. Shanghai and Beijing are certainly much easier to live in.

[Omeida Chinese Yangshuo]

As mentioned above also Omeida in Yangshuo provides Chinese language courses with accommodation and also has it' s own canteen. 

We provide quality Chinese language tuition (comprehensive, HSK preparation, intensive, private courses etc) and cultural immersion to students from all over the world at all levels and ages in Yangshuo, Guangxi province, South of China. You can start every Monday!

 

You will be taught by professional teacher as well as being a native speaker. Our teachers are graduates with degrees in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and have extensive experience in teaching Chinese. Our school is situated in one of the most beautiful regions in China surrounded by tall karsts seen on 20RMB Chinese note.

 

Please visit our websites  https://www.omeidachinese.com/ where you can find all the information you need and you can also contact us anytime with your questions.

 

Another big advantage is that Omeida has two schools: a Chinese school for foreigners and an English school for native Chinese. The two school live and study at the same campus, allowing for endless opportunities for interaction and cooperation. You can choose between a private room or you can have a Chinese roommate and practice Chinese every day together. Except for this Omeida developed language partner program which provides students with free 1-on-1 tutoring with native Chinese speaker learning English.

 

In case that you would be interested in more than just study Chinese you can check Omeida' s volunteer program. It's a combination of language course and volunteering - exchange for free food and accommodation: https://www.omeidachinese.com/chinese-language-courses/chinese-volunteer-program/

 

Good luck to everyone with choosing the best language program that fit their needs!

 

 

[LinZhenPu]

Don't the locals have a bit of a distaste for foreigners in Yangshuo?

[studychinese]

There is also the Hainan Premier Language School, in Hainan. http://www.haikouschool.com/

 

This YouTube guy is studying there and living in their accommodation.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjDsUDpOFU8

[Guest realmayo]

8 hours ago, LinZhenPu said:

Don't the locals have a bit of a distaste for foreigners in Yangshuo?

Any different to Kunming in this regard?

[LinZhenPu]

Which is why I avoid Kunming and Yangshuo in general. Unless I ever learn to speak the local dialect I'm not sure I'll venture into these places.