Heilongjiang Institute of Technology Experiences

[conrad]

I'm in Harbin right now and am impressed with the local accent. I have only studied one semester at Beijing language culture university. I was less than impressed with my experience there. If anyone has attended gongda I would appreciate any input. I have heard the cet and iup program are very good but i have a difficult time justifying the discrepancies in cost. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

Ryan

[mrtoga]

I get the impression that Gongda is more professional and classes are more serious than at the other universities in Harbin. I remember last year during the pollution scare all the foreign departments in the universities closed except Gongda, which maintained that closing the departments was just adding to the panic and confusion at that time. They kept a regular schedule and informed the students daily what was happening (not that anyone really knew - that was a surreal week!)

[stephanhodges]

Could you post a web site link for Gongda, preferably to an English page?

Thanks

[mrtoga]

Gongda has an English web page at:

http://studyathit.hit.edu.cn/en2/index.htm

Alternatively my company has lots of information about courses and facilities at

http://www.hyccchina.com/english/araq/harbingd.htm

I believe CET also does programs at gongda, but they are substantially more expensive

Hope this is useful to you.

[lau]

Does anyone know how likely to is to get in HIT summer course by just showing up with my RMB and saying hi, i wanna study! do they really need recomendations/high school transcripts/other unrelated stuff?

[mrtoga]

Lau,

The problem with a lot of the summer courses is a lack of students. A lot of the universities don't have enough students and tend to cancel courses at short notice or they don't have a course of an appropriate level (although they will say they do). There will normally be a class for you if you are a complete beginner, however just showing up on your own in regional Chinese cities if you have no Chinese ability is not really recommended - it can be hard to find staff in these unversities during the summer break!

You are right about the universities not being so strict on certificates and stuff for the summer programs, but just turning up is probably not the best way to proceed. My company works with ten universities around the northeast of China, so if one cancels a summer class at short notice we have a few backups. Its not ideal, but better than nothing.

Personally, I would enjoy the summer travelling and study during the normal semester period if possible - its more cost effective.

[lau]

The thing is, that either i study in summer or go home. I am in Beijing now, staying here for the second semester and i think I need a break from Beijing. Since i don't like going places without a good reason, i figured out that a month in Harbin would be a good idea, the webpage listed in previous posts says accomodation is only 500 RMB/month.

but cancelling classes shortly before the start... that sounds bad.

[mrtoga]

Unfortunately it is a phenomenon not limited to one or two universities and the more advanced the student often the harder it is to find a suitable summer class outside of Beijing. The accommodation at Hagongda is indeed 500 a month and it is quite good accommodation as well.

I don't want to go accusing Hagongda specifically of cancelling summer / winter classes, I just know it is a fairly common thing - this winter I know of three univs up here that cancelled their winter classes at very short notice.

I suggest you go to Dalian in the summer if you have not been there before - the environment is much nicer that time of year. Harbin is a great winter city but it gets a bit dusty and dishevelled in the middle of summer.......

[venture160]

actually the summer is quite busy at HIT, when I was there last summer, (I am still here now) they had their peak of students, with lots of short term students from Korea and Russia (something like 100 high school students from siberia) And there are about 60 or so koreans from one university alone. Now i dont know what it will be like this summer, they are really feeling the water crisis effect here, they are low on students this semester, alot never came back. Maybe down 50 or so from 300 or so benkesheng. I really reccommend HIT, not much english at all is spoken here.

[artichoke]

大家好!

I am going back to China for 4-5 weeks in Summer (I'm flexible, with exactly when). And had planned on just going back to Beijing and BLCU for no other reason than simplicity.

However, I'm starting to think trying Harbin or Dalian would be worthwhile. Can those of you who've studied in these cities please comment more about your experiences ?(excluding the water problem in Harbin, read all about that here already!! Sounded awful).

This last minute cancelling of classes doesn't sound good for Harbin though.

What made you go where you did or not go (if it was Harbin or Dalian you decided to avoid)? How did you choose the university? (I picked BLCU because I knew one person who had been and told me it was excellent, but she was advanced, not beginner like me).

I completed the 12 week intensive A9班 in Dec 2005 (last year), so that will give you an indication of my level of Chinese. About 800-1200 characters. (Probably closer to the 800 by the time I get there!!)

I could really do with being in an environment with few English speakers, I "cheated" so much last year in Beijing!

Thanks heaps.

:-) 美丽

[venture160]

well I myself haven't heard anything about the canceled classes, I can ask my german friend enrolled in their program ( i take classes in the same building but I am seperate as I am in the CET program)

[Tobias]

i have been to gongda for two semesters from september 2004 to july 2005.

i did not really choose harbin. i was on a scholarship and would have gladly accepted any university the china scholarship council would have sent me to.

harbin is great in terms of low costs for everyday life and not much english speaking if you want to.

i did the normal language classes for foreigners and they were not too good. i never had any problems with classes being cancelled.

i think i can recommend gongda/harbin. its just up to you how much effort you put into studying. classes may suck, but the environment is good enough to improve your chinese.

hmm...coming to think about it, i would only recommend gongda if i did not have to pay for classes

harbin on a scholarship was ok.

*sing* money for nothing and the beers for almost free *sing*

will be coming back for vacation in august. you either hate harbin or love it.

i do both

[artichoke]

Hey Tobias,

What made the classes at GongDa "suck"?

:-)

[Tobias]

maybe its just me, but i really hated tingli (听力)class. old near broken taperecorders, volume up to max so your brain gets liquid. you definitely learn more about listening by just going out and listen to people speaking.

what bothered me most was the fact that one rarely did really speak in class.

best thing was the homework of remembering word by word the lessons text. then, next time you would sit in class and listen to 3-4 students having a hard time repeating the text word by word without looking at it.

this way the first hour gets spent.

got to go now but this already sums up classes.

more later maybe

[JamesGoff]

Hey even though u think gongda is poor....

does anyone have a plce to study in Harbin that is well recommended????

thanks your help will be great

[mrtoga]

For any of you that are thinking of coming to Harbin for the summer programme, I am hearing that the summer courses scheduled to start on June 20th at Harbin Gongye Daxue (Hagongda) may not go ahead (verbal info from their foreign students office - best to check directly if you have already enrolled on that course). I hear that the courses starting July 20th will go ahead. I would like to stress that this is not a phenomenon limited to a few universities - I don't want to single out Hagongda. If I hear about any other cancellations I will post them on a thread somewhere.

Concerning the comment about course content, I agree tingli classes everywhere are a bit of a waste of time for the average western student - they do not improve your listening as much as just going out and speaking to Chinese people. Unfortunately the Korean students in particular tend to consider them important as they "mirror" the kind of questions that you get asked on the HSK (the primary motivation for any Korean student is level 10 HSK which allows them to get a good job back in Korea). One thing I would say for the tingli classes - you can use them to improve your reading ability as the textbooks are all in Chinese. The comment about dodgy tape recorders is a good one though - I will be mentioning that to them. A decent CD player is not a major investment after all.

As for the Harbin water crisis - it was a surreal week, but everything is back to normal now and we are told that the water is much cleaner than before because we now have carbon filters filtering the Songhuajiang water instead of sand filters. Ho hum.

[Socks]

Does anyone have any new information about Gongda's summer program for 2006? I just contacted them, and they didn't say anything about cancelling it (now the website just lists a July 20th start, so I assume that June 20th is cancelled).

Do you know what type of materials they use? I know that there are 4 hours of lessons a day (5x/week).

I'm seriously considering it, mainly because it seems the most practical/inexpensive. If anyone else is considering, let me know, and we can compare notes!

[stephanhodges]

I'm going (knock on wood) to the summer program in Dalian, which starts July 17th. That's being arranged (coincidenty) by MrToga's company. The schedule says they offer either 4, 5, or 6 weeks (all start July 17th).

[mrtoga]

That's right Socks, it was the June 20th program that was cancelled.

The textbooks used by the universities vary depending upon your level of Mandarin ability - some universities use a combination of more than fifty books. They also change the book list every semester. I have lists of the books used by some of the universities I work with, but the universities do not allow me to publish these lists on the internet - they are worried that their programs will be "cloned" by other universities in China. This seems to override the concerns they have for informing the students which classes will use which textbooks.

The HIT program is a good one. It is still a bit cold up here in Harbin, but should be nice when you arrive in July. Hope you enjoy it.