I can weigh in on part of your question too. I am currently enrolled in the MTC program’s “Intensive” program. I also have a friend who is currently studying at CLD so when I talk to her next I’ll see if I can get her to post her opinion on CLD.
A bit of background is in order. I studied at ICLP from 09/2005 to 06/2006. That’s the insanely expensive program on the 3rd and 4th floor of the NTU language building that’s geared towards graduate students and higher. I basically started at the very beginning again despite two years of Chinese class in college. It got me to a level where I could converse with other people and understand them, however it wasn’t every day vocabulary.
That being said, I’m back studying Chinese again this time at MTC. From the new student orientation two weeks ago, the requirements for studying Chinese have changed. It is now 15 hours a week of “class” to qualify for a Resident visa for studying Chinese. I put class in quotation marks because the regular level classes at MTC meet 5 days a week for 2 hours a day. To overcome the 5 hour deficit, they require you to do 5 hours of “supplemental instruction”, have a time card stamped and turn it in to your teacher at the end of every month. According to the orientation, culture classes count, as does studying in the library, listening to Chinese materials, working in the computer lab, etc etc. They stressed that if you don’t attend enough hours of supplemental instruction, you’ll be denied an extension on your visa.
Admin:
Can’t speak to that as I haven’t had any problems with them. My registration was rather painless too since I got there early on the second day. They responded to my questions via email quickly.
Class size:
As for the class size, right now I am in starting in the middle of book 4 of Practical Audio Visual Chinese. My class has 1 guy from Indonesia, 3 Japanese (1 guy and two girls), a girl from Mongolia, and 3 Americans (including myself). Its a full class of 8 people. Two people added the class after two didn’t show up for the first week of class. When we had 5 people it was obviously more practice time for each person, and 8 is pushing the limits of getting to talk much at all. The regular classes I have seen have the same number of students or more in each. As you move up to the higher levels the number of students decreases accordingly.
Teacher:
Our teacher is Cheng (程) laoshi. She has lots of experience teaching with over 17 years at TLI, but this is her first semester at MTC. As a result it’s a mixed bag with her. She is a good teacher in the class room but is assigning a bit too much homework each night. The continuing students don’t have a problem with that, but since I haven’t really practiced writing characters I have been having trouble finishing the homework. It’s also hard to compare with the Japanese students when it comes to writing characters.
Difficulty:
As I have already studied this level when I was here three years ago, I don’t have the same problem that Ed en Vadrouille does. I did the first time though. If you aren’t ready for Intensive classes, you can be quickly left behind. Its even worse when you are competing in a class against students who come from Japan or Korea. It really depends on the teacher whether that can be a good thing or a bad thing. With the right teacher, they can help you improve faster. A bad teacher will point out how you aren’t studying enough and how your classmates are doing better than you. I’ve had both. The second scenario really sucks and you shouldn’t put up with it any longer than necessary.
Conclusion:
My personal war is with my teacher on homework. It seems to be a common problem among my friends and I in different classes and different universities that Taiwanese teachers like to assign a lot of homework. For example, this weekend we are supposed to write: 1 sentence examples for 10 characters, 2 sentences for each of 4 grammar patterns, correct any mistakes on our latest “ting xie” (聽寫) 5 times for each character written wrong, write a 250 character minimum letter to a friend about 1 of 4 prompts (you get to choose which one) and prepare to talk on Monday a list of discussion topics given on Friday. This list of 8 discussion topics is about equality of the sexes in your country.
Given that in the intensive program we have 3 hours a day, and cover a chapter every 3 days, there are approximately four listening tests (聽寫) and 1 test a week. It alternates, but there will be a minimum of 3 listening tests a week and a max of two tests in one week. The average weeknight’s homework is what was listened above, minus the letter and discussion topic.
The literature from MTC says that you need a minimum of three hours a night preparing for the next day. I find it closer to 5 or 6 when homework is included. This is primarily because I can’t write well, or quickly, and have to make a lot of corrections from the previous day’s homework and listening tests. Then you have the current nights homework and preparing for the next days lesson. As time goes on, you get accustomed to the pace and workload. For my friend in a different level than I, since it’s his first time doing Intensive Chinese, he is studying between 6-8 hours a night currently.
The only other comment I have is about NTNU being preferred by English teachers. I don’t know how long the restriction has been in effect, but they won’t let you change classes because of conflicts with work. That was made explicitly clear and in large bold letters on the materials given to us.
