Where should I go?

[ZhuJiesheng]

I know the topic title is a little vague so let me explain...

I'm in my 2nd year at uni in England and I spent my 3rd year in Mainland China. To get an idea of what life would be like I did 2 months over the summer in Beijing at BLCU. Unfortuantely it wasn't quite what I was expecting. The class sizes were bigger than my classes here (which bugged me quite a bit) and the teaching wasn't quite as interactive as I thought it might be (I was hoping for a lot more one-on-one conversations, or at least small group work).

After that I started to look up courses like the CET course in Harbin which sounded great, unfortuantely my uni won't quite allow me to go on a $9,000 a term course >.< After talking to some other chinese students who have been I've found out that classes in mainland China tend to be quite large (20-30 easily from what I've heard).

As my uni has schemes with several unis and academys in China we have to go to one of those (I think we have 80 to chose from but we havn't been given a list yet). Unfortuantely I can't go to Taiwan and as I won't be able to get permission for the more expensive intensive courses (at least the ones I've seen), I was hoping somebody could suggest decent unis with smaller class sizes or at least a decent level or interactive communication. Preferably in somewhere like Beijing, Shaghai, Qingdao etc. I thought of applying ot Harbin Institute of Technology for their normal course but I've heard the social life is a little dull there and I'm not sure if the sacrifice would be worth it ^_^

[xiaoxiajenny]

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/2200-global-village-language-institute-diqiucun-%e5%9c%b0%e7%90%83%e6%9d%91&highlight=%E5%9C%B0%E7%90%83%E6%9D%91

[笨笨德]

personally, i wouldnt worry too much about it, you learn alot more chinese in the street or in the pub than you do at university.

i came to taiwan a year ago with next to no ability in chinese, and didnt enroll at any university, instead I bought a textbook and cd, and made as many friends as possible. found some great language exchanges and spent every night in the local bar, chatting with as many people as possible, frantically scribbling down new characters on napkins. Read childrens books and comics, watched cartoons on tv etc I made just as much progress as anyone enrolled in university.

then 3 months ago i enrolled at uni, now i am bogged down learning lots of vocabulary that i only seem to use to pass a test. i learn just as much vocab/sentence structures/grammar as before but its not as easy or enjoyable because i end learning vocabulary on agriculture or something daft, which i struggle to fit into an everyday situation. before i just learned the vocab for the things i wanted to personally talk about...

well thats my 2 pennies worth anyway...

加油

ps. the worst thing i noticed about university is that you spend hours everyday speaking chinese with other learners, and you pick up their mistakes and worst of all you will end up with that stupid foreigner phrasing/accent, although this provides great amusement for the locals

[Zhang]

What were you doing when you came to Taiwan a year ago, how did you get a visa if you didn't enroll at any University?