I am a working professional interested in learning only spoken Chinese, i understand from the forum that universities NTNU/NTU/MCU etc focuses on writing
and that TLI may be the most suitable.
Kindly suggest a suitable institute/program for spoken Chinese in Taipeo
Thanks
[quote=āblinkjonaā]I am a working professional interested in learning only spoken Chinese, i understand from the forum that universities NTNU/NTU/MCU etc focuses on writing
and that TLI may be the most suitable.
Kindly suggest a suitable institute/program for spoken Chinese in Taipeo
[/quote]
Basically I agree with the above. A private institute such as TLI will āletā you study what you want, and if you just want to use the pinyin versions of the textbooks, that will be fine with them.
Hi,
I wonder if someone has some updated information on this? I read a lot of more recent posts about the above-mentioned universities and the focus on writing/reading seems to remain. I have 0 knowledge in Mandarin (but I am ok in reading Japanese kanji) so I am interested in āproperā university classes where I also learn the basics of grammar, pronunciation, reading (handwriting would not be crucial in my opinionā¦).
Is there maybe one university āknownā to put more focus than others on conversation? I read for example that in many cases even when you speak, pronunciation will not be corrected, which is of course terrible for a tonal languageā¦
Thanks and regards,
Fabian
If money is no issue, ICLP is hands down the best program on the island. Small class sizes are more conducive to improving conversational ability. I did not find the emphasis at ICLP to be writing/reading. Class was mostly an exercise of engaging in ever more complex conversation with the teacher, with writing essays being the homework.
Stay away from cheaper programs with larger class sizes where the teachers are a bit old school in their methods.
Hi, thanks and āwowā - in two ways: The program looks really impressive, but so do the pricesā¦ Considering that I simply want to live in Taiwan out of interest, knowing that a local salary will be way lower than my current German salary, Iām hesitant to afford the absolute premium. It seems that a bit more than 2 months will set me back ~4700USD, so assuming that I should probably attend classes for at least a year, this would cost more than 50,000 USD Oo
How long did you attend classes there and what was your motivation? Did you have any scholarships?
I can imagine that also in Mandarin language education the rule āyou get what you pay forā applies, but how do people ālike meā usually hone their language skills? I most likely will not have any monetary gain from learning Mandarin, so above figure seems a bit too high just to satisfy my interestā¦ I was learning Japanese mainly by myself and with private language exchanges, but I think this will not work with a tonal language where it is so important to get the pronunciation right.
I work in IT security where also in TW there are hopefully positions available in English, but getting around Taiwan without being the ignorant foreigner who cannot even say āni haoā properly would be important to me. Maybe there is a slightly more affordable option that caters to people who primarily want to learn Mandarin for their daily life (i.e. conversational fluency) in Taiwan?
Thanks and regards,
Fabian
Second for ICLP. If you really want to learn the language and not sound like an obvious non-native speaker, this is the way to do it. Worth every penny.
Is the 50,000 USD just for 1 year, if so I think your math is a little wrong. Itās 4700 each quarter. Looking at their site they currently have fall, winter, and spring listed. The summer costs slightly more at 4850. So your total for 1 year would be 18,950 USD
Hi @cats_meow (the name is awesome btw 
),
Oh my, there are so many wrong details in my ācalculationā that itās really polite of you to call that āa little wrongā. Maybe I should sign up for maths instead of Mandarin (or not post anything after midnight ). Of course you are absolutely right - thank you!
I saw very mixed reviews about MTC and many other institutions. For NCCU ( https://mandarin.nccu.edu.tw/intro.php?aWQ9MjAxMjIzNzY= ) I did not find a lot of information on this forum, but what I did find was rather positive. Iām just not sure how about their focus on conversation. Of course I can reach out to them directly, but having āindependentā opinions would certainly help.
But your and @gnaijās input in every case already helped a lot! Considering that my calculation was off by magnitudes, ICLP now sounds much more realistic. Of course, if I can safe some money by choosing something similarly good outside of Taipei (maybe NCCU?), it would not hurt, either. In every case I will take to heart gnaijās recommendation to avoid larger class sizes.
If someone has some experiences regarding the fluency level (i.e. speaking) after attending ICLP for X terms, it would also be interesting to know - although of course progress might considerably differ for each alumnus.
Thanks again and best regards,
Fabian
Really depends on your background coming in, but Iād say 1 year of ICLP is probably worth 3-4 of university language.
I think it comes down to natural ability and motivation. I went to TLI. Was great. Really improved my accent. Schools donāt matter so much, anyhow. Any teacher who is positive, willing to help and a student with some natural ability and a never give up work ethic is all that is needed to succeed.
Seen many Westerners here who come over having done Chinese language degrees at Stanford or wherever, and they think they are just awesome. Or, they are at NTU and think they are aMAzing. Most of the time their Chinese is far from exceptional. They create a legend in their own mind.
Know people who havenāt done any of that with much better Chinese because of determination as enduring as Methuselah.
As an ESL teacher of over 20 years and a language (French, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish) learner myself I highly recommend using language arts such as songs and films. Autonomously watching news and current events programs etc can also truly help acquisition and internalisation.
Listening skills as input come before speaking so listening more will most definitely help the accuracy of your tones, generated by the right brain.
Likewise, reading before writing.
Natural ability and motivation are most important, but schools still matter. Iāve studied at both NTNU (MTC) and NTU (ICLP) so can only comment on these two programs. This was a bit over ten years ago but I doubt much has changed. What ICLP had that MTC did not came down to (1) smaller class sizes, (2) cramming double the hours in the same period of time, and (3) consistently better and more qualified teachers.
I was at MTC for three quarters. The first teacher I had was a 28-year old dude and the class (by happenstance instead of design) only had four students. His methods were lively and entertaining, and I made a lot of progress in those three months. The second and third teachers I had were middle-aged old timers. Their methods consisted of having the class take turns reading from the textbook. I could have done that at home more effectively without having to spend money and share the time with my classmates. Iām a heritage speaker so didnāt have issue with pronunciation, but with the class size being around 10, those that did seemingly never got corrected during class. And reading from the textbook does not encourage you to retain the sentence structures and vocabulary as you would engaging in actual conversation.
In my last quarter at MTC we actually used the ICLP textbook with a green cover. When I went over to ICLP I started over with the same exact textbook in my 1-on-1 class; the methods used were night and day. It seems that being a teacher at ICLP is a lot more stressful because they make a significant effort to do quality control, having more experienced members of the staff audit and observe less experienced members on a regular basis.
Can you find the same quality as ICLP for less money? Of course, but you need to know where to look. A teacher from another program can probably do private tutoring for less and better, but you would need to know who to look for and have sufficient motivation if doing everything without peer pressure and examinations.
Thank you everybody for the comprehensive feedback and insights! Many valuable takeaways here 
@oneofdaroughs, I tried to access TLIās website, but it seems that they have some kind of migration / issues with their infrastructure, as https://www.tli.com.tw/ is constantly redirecting me to O365. Unless you tell me that this is the wrong website, I guess I will wait a few days and try again. Taichung would certainly also be an interesting location to choose for immersion.
Iām already very happy with the feedback, but of course please feel free everybody to write more 
Thanks again, happy weekend and best regards,
Fabian
Immersion and experiential learning are the best methods to achieving proficiency and fluency of any language.
No idea about TLIās site. Their classrooms were never big though; my biggest class had 11. As you progressed, I also noticed the classes get smaller and smaller. After my beginner class to elementary had 7 and later got as small as 3.
Since Mandarin (according to an Australian language study I read) has an attrition rate of 90%, so once you get close to B1 level as classified by the Chinese Grammar Wiki, classmates start dropping like flies. You also notice that lots of your classmates end up being Japanese from pre-int onwards, which is when you finally learn pinyin and discover why zhuyin is way better. Most Japanese who learned in Japan use pinyin, so the teacher was always writing both phonetic systems. Anyhowā¦rambling. Enjoyed learning quite a bit.
I prefer pinyin.
Errā¦ 
Pinyin 4 life.
Pinyin seems to me to be a but bloated and inelegant. Native English speaking children also find it especially confusing while learning to read English.
Sure it is a bit more work learningā¦which is the only drawback I can see.
But it is much more concise and completely regular unlike pinyin. My two centsā¦
Pinyin is good for those of us who learned English first. I understand the irony in that statement, in that it was originally pitched at Russian learners. But the problem I have with zhuyin, is in order to use it you need to not only learn the symbols, you need to also learn the ordering of those symbols, that is their respective a-z, to use a dictionary. My plate is full already.