Learning Chinese in Shanghai

[vengaya]

Hi all,

I am currently living and working in Shanghai, and am thinking of taking off half a year to devote myself to intense Chinese study... so I need some advise.

What's the best option to really learn Chinese here? Registering at a university (Jiaotong, Fudan, etc), or is there any good private school?

My main concern with universities is that they might be too theoretical and not practical, among other reasons because groups tend to be big, whereas private schools normally are smaller classrooms.

Any suggestions or useful past experiences?

Thanks.

[malinuo]

Make sure you use private teachers in addition to whatever you do as much as possible, or as much as you can afford. Then you will get tailored teaching to what you want. A good teacher will be able to tell you what you need in your circumstances, even though you didn't know it in advance.

Simply following a university course for half a year is great fun, but as they expect you to stay longer, there are some very basic things they won't tell you until the second or third term, when you are no longer there.

[jbiesnecker]

No personal experiences myself, but I have a number of friends here in Shanghai that have studied formally, and they all say good things about East China Normal University (华东师范大学) and not so nice things about Fudan

[vengaya]

Hi there...

thanks... I will try to see what's better. Going to college is tempting though, among other reasons, financial ones. It is much cheaper than taking the equivalent amount of private lessons.

We'll see...

[roddy]

That's interesting, as the situation always seems to be the exact opposite in Beijing. What's the going rate for an hour tutoring in Shanghai?

For reasons I'm not really sure of, we've never had as many people on here studying in Shanghai as we have had in Beijing - perhaps because the original site the forums sprung out of was focussed on Beijing, but that was almost three years ago now - and I'm not even sure we've got any members currently studying in Beijing. Shanghaiexpat.com might be worth a look, but if you've been in Shanghai for a while you will already know that site.

If anyone knows any foreign students in Shanghai, feel free to send them along here to tell us what they know

Roddy