Choosing a private Mandarin school in China

[eliaso]

You said that you know two of the ex teachers personally, are you able to tell me why they left the school?

 

They found jobs elsewhere. Nothing dramatic about the school.

 

I really hope I can pass the HSK5 after 6 months because I hope to enter the third year of a Bachelor degree in Chinese as a second language in September 2017, which some universities allow you to do if you have an HSK5 certificate.

 

Practice hand writing. In university every single exam you take is done with paper and pen. A typical 写作 or 综合 exam for third year students has a part where you have to write an essay of around 800 hanzis. Usually after finishing other parts you'll have about an hour or less left to write your essay.

[James W.]

I've been studying at the Harbin Mandarin School for about 5 years now, and (clearly) it is my choice as the best Mandarin school in China, for a number of reasons.  

 

In terms of background, I lived in Hong Kong for 12 years, and for most of the time I was in HK, wanted to learn Mandarin.  But because of the local dialect, and the weird Mandarin pronunciation of HKers, it was impossible to find a proper school (and even bad Mandarin schools in HK are expensive).    I tried several schools after leaving HK in 2008 -- BLUC in Beijing, and talked with a number of local Beijing schools.  I also looked online at some of the schools that have been mentioned here. 

 

I started at the Harbin Mandarin School (HMS) to see how it would compare with my other experiences.  It was indeed much better, for several reasons (some that related to my personal demands):

 

1. They are very knowledgable, and quite picky about the teachers they choose.  This keeps their teaching quality high perhaps at the expense of scale
2. I am a University professor, and thus (IMO) think I know a lot about pedagogy.   The HMS pedagogy is flexible, and the teachers keep very good notes on each student's progress, allowing them to customize better than other schools.
3. I like to choose to study materials that I have come across, and HMS is more than willing to accommodate me in this regard.
4. HMS is very pleasant in the summer when I visit (I've spent every summer since 2011 in Harbin) and arranges numerous museum, sightseeing and foody trips around HeiLongJiang.  
5. The school has available to resolve even the smallest of problems (taxi arguments or directions, e.g.) for me ... I really appreciate this.
6. Harbin is a wonderful city (much better than Beijing IMO).  The air is clean (AQI for most of the past year ~10-50), the weather is cool and clear.  There are a huge number of activities in the summer, from music festival, beer festival, etc. which are huge -- bigger than anything else you will find in China.  It has a European flavor, with influences from Russia and Korea than are lacking in other cities.  Oh, and they speak standard Mandarin.

 

Anyway, look seriously at the Harbin Mandarin School both for their teaching and their location.

[LinZhenPu]

Thanks for the review James!

[eliaso]

James W.,

 

I will be very blunt: are you actually a real person or just a character who shows up in the forums when someone wants to talk about Harbin? Your every single opinion echoes that of a certain real life person and that person is not a foreign university professor. I'm sorry if I have offended you and you indeed are a real person, in that case I'm willing to buy you a coffee or a beer and apologize in person.

[James W.]

Eliaso:

 

Check out my website.  I am on the HIT faculty during summers

 

http:uic.edu/~westland

 

We apparently have met before ... see if you recognize me.