Language centers in Taiwan

[Nibble]

I am applying for a scholarship to study Mandarin in Taiwan for 6-12 months, and I am supposed to pick one of the university- or college-affiliated language centers listed here. I don't know anything about the relative merits of any of these schools, and they all seem to provide roughly the same program; so I was hoping that someone with more knowledge/experience could recommend one or two of them.

[lau]

i've studied in National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). it was OK. you get, normally, 2 hours of studies a day. I have heard that in Taiwan University they get 4 hours (rumours, kind of). You should check. I don't think chosing southern universities would be better - the more out of Taibei, the more of Taiwanese language you hear.

on the other hand, in NTNU there are many foreigners, so - a lot of english spoken.

[wix]

I suggest browsing or searching through the "Learning Chinese" forum at Forumosa. That forum is specifically focused on Taiwan and you should find quite a lot of relevant information there.

[Ah-Bin]

I don't agree about the southern universities. Cheng Kung University had one-to-one teaching when I was there, and all young people speak Mandarin anyway. Tainan is a city full of traditional culture as well, so that is an added bonus. I used to get a bit annoyed with not hearing Mdn in Taichung ten years ago, but I think those days are over. Two years ago I tried to speak to some of the young people working near Fengchia university in Hokkien (Taiwanese) and they couldn't even reply in it that they didn't understand.

I found Fengchia good because there were lots of Indonesian Chinese there, and so less temptation to speak English with classmates because many of them couldn't speak anything but English or Mdn. They did sometimes speak Indonesian in class though.