Intensive learning options in China

[flray]

Hey lordyama,

I have the wechat for the owner of the school in Yanji and one of the teachers. I can ask how much the program would be and how many hours per week.

 

How long would you like to go for? I went or 4 weeks and stayed in Yanji for another week and a half.

 

What is your level in Mandarin and Korean. at the school I had a teacher who spoke English pretty well, one that did less so and one that spoke no English. I stayed at a hotel that was owned by a friend of one of the teachers. They were nice but spoke no English. the proprietor would use a translate program or we would speak in Chinese. I would definitely recommend this for people that have a basic working knowledge of Chinese but for a complete beginner without "survival Chinese" the city and program might not be a good choice.

 

The school is basically a cram school for local students with some students from south Korea on their school breaks or being taught via computer at night.

Their is wifi at the hotel and almost every restaurant. You can start a bank account fairly easily at a local branch of Bank of China or do it before you come here in Beijing or another place. I would install the wechat app and Chinese keyboard.

 

just let me know what your possible plans are and I will try to help.

 

Cheers

  Ray

[DavyJonesLocker]

whatever school you choose, get the details clear and in writing at the start, for example

- maximum number of students per class,

- How many hours per week  (1 hour teaching can mean 45mins of actual teaching and even less given teachers 10 min breaks can actually be 15 / 20mins)

- how many students in the schools. Less students can be worse as they cram different levels into the same class.

- prices can be negotiable (like most things in china).

- what books do they use. The "Short-term spoken chinese" series is used extensively in Beijing. It is far too outdated, badly written and of very limited use to every day spoken language in my view.

 

At the start of your learning I don't recommend this Chinese only approach. It seems good in theory but in practice it fails. I have seen this too many times. After a while, yes Chinese only is the way to good

 

[YordLama]

@flray I think I have 'survival' Chinese. I live and work in China at the moment. I was thinking of around a month too, maybe 4 hours a week, like a normal intensive language course. I'm not working in January or February, so I thought it might be interesting to go to another part of the country and do something like this. My Korean is intermediate, but I don't really practise it any more so I'm pretty rusty. I imagine I'd have trouble understanding the local accent/dialect as well, but I guess it's not that important.

[flray]

The local dialect is different so something like "where are you going?" or "odi kayo？” is  “odi kani？”。 There is massive amount of south Korean influence so Seoul dialect is readily understood。 If you are a foreigner they might speak to you in that dialect as well.

 

It seems like about half the city is ethnic Korean and half ethnic Chinese. As you most likely know The word for ethnicity is Zu in Chinese and Korean is Chaoxian。You ask " Ni shi Chaoxian Zu ma?

 

I had 3 teachers and went to school 6 days a week for about an hour and a half each class or 4 and a half hours a day. At first it was going to be 5 days a week but then made it 6. I should have kept it at 5. 6 days was too much and really should have had more time for self study and to just go out and speak.

 

If you got your Russian visa you could go to a border town within a few hours or you could travel to Vladivostok.

 

There is also Bincai in Harbin that has group classes. If your budget is higher you could go to the one on one Chinese  workshop which I think they call the Harbin Mandarin school now.

cheers