quality of teaching at BLCU

[yonitabonita]

Hey folks

I'm enrolled at the BLCU this year but have recently heard from someone that's been here for a long time that the quality of teaching at the BLCU is lacking. MOre specifically, I heard that the teachers get their jobs by being well connected and aren't in fact experienced or interested in helping students.

What have your experiences been like? Are you satisfied with the school?

Thanks!

Y

[conrad]

my two cents:

my experience at BLCU was horrible in almost every aspect.

[yonitabonita]

Could you please elaborate on that? How was it awful? what level of Mandarin were you studying? Thanks!

[conrad]

I'll begin with the quality of teaching. I have only had experience with one school in china so I have nothing to compare it to. I will also pretext this with that I did learn alto during my time there but i dont think this was as a result of the quality of my teachers. I felt horrible for my classmates that had never studied Chinese before and as a result sank in the class. Also, i wittiness a huge drop out rate and depression in a handful of my classmates.

I had two teachers, one was an older man about to retire. I think he had the capacity to be a great teacher but just didn't care enough.

He discouraged students from speaking, for the most part. He was often very condescending. In a 4 hour class period I would generally have the opportunity to speak for 1 min. The reading classes seemed to be a way to burn class time. We were often instructed to do homework during class time. I am of the opinion that this type of activity should be reserved for after class. As there was little opportunity to speak there was not much of an attempt to work on the students accent or tones. I felt my tones declined during my time at blcu.

My first listening teacher was not bad. she was boring but her technique was effective. There were some students that hated her but I felt as if i was learning something. In mid semester they changed our teacher. Our new teacher was incapable of doing her job. Over the span of a few weeks attendance in tingli drooped from 20 students to about 4 or 5.

I even had a hard time enduring her classes so i just relocated to the back of the room.

Class size was 24 I felt this was too big.

Outside of the quality of teaching I dont think Beijing is a good place to study Chinese. The Beijing people are too accustomed to dealing with tourist and people with poor Chinese. When you cant speak you are a constant target for con men. This gets old very quick. beijingers even have a reputation as scam artist among those in broader china. BLCU is near the silicon valley of china. This area is full of Chinese people who are leading a fast paced lifestyle. They are not going to have time to listen to broken Chinese and are not going to find you interesting. I found it difficult to become part of any community in the area.

Again this is just my opinion. Some people are very happy at BLCU some are not.

Another thing to note is that is just the Chinese teaching method and what you will find at any large institution.

[Meiling]

I studied at BCLU last year and completed 1 semester of the intensive course (30 hrs per week). I had 3 teachers, one for oral Chinese (kouyu), another for comprehension (zonghe), and a third for listening class. (tingli)

I was really impressed by the level of teaching for kouyu and zonghe. The kouyu teacher was particularly good - he was very enthusiastic and charismatic, and you definitely couldn't fall asleep in class! The zonghe teacher was also excellent - very dedicated to teaching, and very experienced. She was strict (eg. frequent dictation, lots of homework every night) but that ensured we didn't slack off during semester. The tingli teacher was less experienced, and sometimes spoke too quickly, but since our learning was based mainly on listening to the tapes, this wasn't as important. Also, tingli occupied less of our course schedule compared to the other two subjects.

My class had 15 students, and I was in B level. My Chinese was fairly elementary before I left, but when I returned back to Australia my mum (who speaks fluent Chinese) was very surprised how much I'd improved just from 1 semester, both in spoken and written Chinese. My only regret is that I didn't sign on to 2 semesters at BCLU, like many of my classmates. I'm fairly confident that if I completed a year there, I'd be even more confident in my speaking.

I was in a fairly hard working class (majority Japanese students), which i think also helped - we had no option but to speak chinese to communicate with one another.

I agree that the time to speak in class is limited, but if you have language exchange partners and tutors outside of class, that is not a problem. I also conversed only in chinese with my classmates when we had lunch everyday.

If i had another opportunity to return to Beijing to study, I'd definitely return to BCLU because of the results i had from one semester. The only drawback is their fees are higher than other schools.

I did meet people who attended some smaller schools (with very small classes 3-4 students) but they said the classes were very relaxed, no homework set, no exams etc. I think the discipline at BCLU (homework, exams, HSK exam prep etc) is what helps in ensuring you make progress in your studies.

Of course, this is just my experience at BCLU - it may vary according to what level you're studying, your teachers, etc. Also, I have not attended any other schools within China as a comparison. But I have to admit i was surprised that quite a few on these forums felt BCLU was not worth attending.

[mrtoga]

I did BLCU a few years ago for a semester and fall into the disillusioned category. The teachers were fine on the whole - three out of four were good and one was bad which is above par I guess. The problem with BLCU is that it has become a victim of its own success. I was surrounded by foreigners for the entire three months - I may as well have been in Seattle! It was a real effort to get away from the Lush / Propaganda / Bla Bla Bar scene. I was looking for an immersion program but barely got my feet wet! And 20 quai per hour for a fudao - now it seems a ridiculous amount to pay

I guess it can be a good staging post if you want to experience Beijing for a semester, but not a good long term option in my opinion.

As for teachers getting their jobs due to connections - welcome to China. You will get that wherever you go I am afraid.

[got_no_jaffas]

i am at blcu now on a semester course in the A beginner level.

i have 3 teachers for comprehension, spoken & listening who are really good in my assessment. they take questions from students, they explain things & take a general interest in our learning.

i have however heard that another semester class in the A beginner level is planning a rebellion against one of their teachers for the poor teaching. that's really unfortunate but i believe if you are not happy with your teacher, you can request a class change to another teacher as i believe our class is soon to get a new student for this same reason.

also to add, i spent a month on campus & then shifted to a 1 bed place 20 mins north where i am now surrounded by mainly locals. it takes a huge effort to break away from the foreigners in the same situation as you on campus. when i now shop at the local street stalls, i have absolutely got to spout any chinese i can get a grip on or i don't get anything. when i eat at the restaurant there are no pics for me to look at so i have got to try to remember my characters or end up getting pot luck.

and just now some girl knocked on my door trying to sell me cosmetics which was a huge test of my limited chinese to get rid of her!

[shadopup]

Well, I have to say that I've personally had fairly good experiences with teachers overall.

I'm in the one year program and started in Chu ji Xia (lessons 46-70) which I think in the shorter programs (half or less) would be the equivalent of B. Either way it's the second beginner level. I've just passed this and am currently studying Zhong ji Shang which is the first intermediate level. (Well not really as I haven't been able to go to class due to illness).

Hearing from various friends, the majority of bad experiences seem to happen in Chu ji Shang or the first beginner level where many with little to no mandarin students start off. I can't speak for those.

I thought my Zong he ke or main teacher was really good. Her name was Yang. She did not give daily dictations though she would have a few surprise ones which she let us self correct. She gave us ample opportunity to speak and didn't waste time choosing students to answer questions when nobody seemed willing to volunteer. I know she had some habits which we joked about like the way she would react when we answered a question wrong. We'd read out the new words and she'd have every single student read part of the text. She'd explain the grammar and she'd assign us the exercises in the book to do which we would go over. We usually took 3 classes to finish one lesson but we went slower from lesson 61 onwards.

Ting Li (listening class) was simply brutal. It was exactly like the listening portion of the HSK test (also brutal). Opinions seemed mixed on our first teacher who was young. Besides the tapes one thing she would do was ask the students to talk about some news (this wasn't really very sucessful as barely anybody would say anything, like one or two students). Halfway through the semester we switched to a new teacher (also young) whom I thought was better as she would write down a few example sentences/grammar patterns that were to be found in the lesson of the day. Mostly what you do in this class is listen to the tape and answer multiple choice. However, the tapes are really fast and sometimes don't even give you any time to read the answers so that you can choose the right one. Despite Ting Li being thoroughly enjoyable at first, I found my listening improved drastically by the end of the semester though I felt like at least until the midterm I wasn't improving at all. Personally the fact that this class was so brutal made it kind of funny and relaxing for me at times. Some questions are somewhat unclear which makes for some lively arguments over the right answer. Questions in the lessons are reused in the exams.

Yue Du (reading class) again a young teacher but i thought she was good. However, I found this class to be super boring. The only reason this class was ever any fun was because of my classmates. In fact I really liked my classmates, literally all of them. In this class you look over the new words, read the text answer questions and that's about it. The teacher did mix it up a bit once in a while. I found this class boring though that doesn't mean it's not useful. However since your exam is comprised of all new texts, reviewing the lessons doesn't necessarily help you in the exam at all. I can't really say it helped me in everyday life either.

Added note: My class had 20 students on the dot.

All these classes are obligatory. You can take a maximum of one optional class. You can choose not to take an optional at all. In sept your options are intro to characters, pronounciation and oral speaking. In mar you have the additional choices of science note taking and science reading optional classes.

I too the oral speaking. I thought it was a waste of time. I think it would've been much better if we had kept the original male teacher who was super animated, made jokes, spoke super fast with a taxi cab driver type of accent and just seemed overall fun. It was however incredibly overwhelming to hear him at first. Unfortunately after only two classes we switches to a younger female teacher who just followed the book mostly. Read new words, read text then have partners talk to each other or read the text. Actually I forget the order. I didn't have a problem with the teacher but this class was so boring and useless in my opinion. I would've been better off not taking the class and sleeping.

As I said I am now in Zhong ji Shang (first intermediate level). From what few classes I've been to my teachers seem pretty good. The good thing about intermediate are the variety of optional courses you can take. Much better than Chu ji Xia.

You have fewer hours of obligatory classes in Zhong ji Shang. Whereas you have 18 hours per week in Chu ji Xia. You have but 10 in Zhong ji Shang. You no longer have to take Ting li or Yue Du but what you have instead is Ting he Shuo (Listening and Speaking).

For Chu ji Xia the breakdown of hours was Zong he (10 hrs/wk), Ting li (4hrs/wk), Yue Du (4hrs/wk).

For Zhong ji Shang Zong he (6 hrs/wk), Ting he Shuo (4 hrs/wk). You can take up to 10 additional hours of optional courses. The style of Zhong Ji Shang is different than Chu Ji Xia in that you do not have midterms in Zhong Ji and they expect you to do a lot of self study/prepation for the lessons (in actuality though my Chu ji Xia was pretty much like this, i don't know about other Chu ji Xia classes).

A source of frustration for some students is that while you can change/drop courses go down or up a level (going up a level requires HSK test or really good marks [above 90% overall] from the previous semester). Within the same course you cannot change teachers/classes. So even if you have a bad teacher you're stuck with him/her. You cannot move to another class of the same level. This is explicitly written in the handbooks and various materials and the office people do enforce this rule.

After one semester how do I feel about my Chinese overall? I feel that it has improved significantly. My background: I did take Chinese Level 1 and Level 2 in University (we used those green books published by BLCU with PaLanKa and GuBo) though one year had passed since I took level 2 before I came to beijing/blcu. I scored a 51 out of (140?) on my HSK when I first came also.

My listening and speaking have improved greatly though I still make elementary grammar mistakes in speech (my tones are still crappy) but I can usually get my meaning across. I don't have problems doing daily stuff though I do still encounter difficulties at the bank and sometimes I kind of just nod when I don't really understand. Reading has also improved a lot. Writing has probably improved the least but mainly because classes don't really make you write. I can say this while saying that I didn't really do much self studying of other materials (I do have a Shaum's Outlines of Chinese Vocab). However I did spend a good number of hours 6 days a week reviewing lessons and previewing lessons.

I can't say that the teaching methods used by teachers are necessarily the best but as I said my teachers have been good and whether you get these good teachers is simply luck. I have greater issues/problems with the actual books and the material. I'll leave that as another topic.

As for the topic of chinese immersion and comments on the campus environment, i'll leave that as another topic also.

[artichoke]

Here's an outline of how my A9班 classes ran:

Tingli Each class we listened to the tape of the book. The teacher would go through the exercises after each dialogue and ask students in-turn to answer questions. Occasionally we watched a film (with English subtitles). No homework.

Zonghe We would read the text book in order - the dialogue followed by the new words for the lesson. Then follow the exercises, which we would do orally. We only had two dictations (both were 'suprise') and they were towards the end of our 12 week course. Homework was never set. About two classes were held outside - one a tour of campus and the other - the visit to post office and hospital lesson was set as homework but never followedup/checked. We were not allowed to ask any questions in class, especially if the question related to translation or meaning. The teacher was more lenient if you asked about a grammatical point, but if you didn't understand after one "explanation" we were told just to memorize the dialogues. Of course, all questions had to be asked using Mandarin.

Kouyu Each lesson we would go through the new words - the teacher would write the characters on the board and we would all repeat after her, then in-turn repeat all by ourselves as she pointed to them randomly. She would also give useful phrases in common speech using the new words. When we would go through the dialogues it was done in the same way. And grammatical points were always well explained. And then we'd work through the exercises. If you were prepared and did the exercises as homework (sometimes this was set, other times she asked us to write our characters etc) you'd just sit there doing nothing or chatting to the teacher if she wasn't busy helping other students.

I got the most language understanding and learning from my kouyu class by far. I stopped going to Tingli near the end, found it too boring, but of course my tingli is my worst skill - so next time I shall persevere.

Whether you think the way of teaching is good or not perhaps depends on your learning style. I prefered the mostly structured class of kouyu but really appreciated being able to digress, ask lots of practical question and get answers to questions on grammar until it 'clicked'. Whereas the structure of zonghe and the inability for flexibility I found very frustrating.

But this was only my specific class' experience. Friends in other classes had very different teachers with very different approaches. From a zonghe laoshi who insisted on regualar tingxie and character study to others who emphasised speaking and listening and no character work at all.

However, I am still going to return because overall I was more than satisfied with the progress I made. But am also going to give a couple of private schools a go, seeing as the short classes are only offered in 'normal' 4 hours a day.