Hi,
If this topic has been adequately covered in some other thread, please let me know.
I have some questions about taking formal Chinese language classes in Taipei.
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What types of places (agencies, institutions, etc) offer classes? Without getting into exact company or school names yet, I’m trying to understand, in general, what a student’s choices are.
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Of those choices above, is any one type of training source better than another? Why?
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Are classes generally offered in all three time slots; morning, afternoon, and evening?
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How long do beginner classes last, on one day, and for the duration of the whole course? For example, an answer to this might be “1-1/2 hours a day for 8 weeks.”
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What is the general fee associated with classes like this?
That’s enough for now. Thanks in advance.
Seeker4
Please search the archives before posting this sort of general question.
Another fruitful avenue of exploration would be to call the language centers directly. Most of them have somebody who speaks at least (broken!) English in their office. You can get the numbers easily from the English language papers.
Ironlady,
[quote=“ironlady”]Please search the archives before posting this sort of general question.
[/quote]
As a rule, I do search the archives before posting general questions. That is just part of being thoughtful and trying to help prevent tedium on the part of long-time posters. However, it doesn’t always produce results. If you notice below, in my original post, I showed awareness of this:
Clearly, anyone can go out into the streets of Taipei or get on the phone and research any topic for themselves, with varying degrees of success (usually low for newcomers). However, that sort of defeats the purpose of this type of forum. So, rather that suggesting that I do my own research, if you pointed me to a specific past thread, that would help me more.
Overall, people on this forum have been kind, helpful, and willing to put some effort into their replies. I appreciate that.
Seeker4
4 types of ‘school’:
Universities
Private schools that compete with the universities
Visa schools
Others-community centres etc
The universities are the most expensive of these at an average of 18k for 12 weeks tuition at 10 hours per week. The visa schools are the cheapest as they are fronts for illegal workers who wish to to get visas to enable them to stay here.
I dare say that the prices are directly proportional to the quality of the course and the level of seriousness of your class mates. Ironlady will condemn pretty much every school in the Taipei area-and there are lots of threads on this topic. She is right that the overall standards of teaching are pretty low- but Have only ever studied at The MTC at Shi Da Univertsity and that was only for a period of 3 months. My Mandarin took off from that point on. My friend took the visa school route at CLD, he wasn’t that serious a student but at first he went to the classes everyday but later gave up because the other students would just pop in once or twice a week so as not to lose their visas. This resulted in the pace of the class being ridiculously slow and therefore pointless.
The second option is worthy of consideration-2 school spring to mind…TLI and Pioneer. Again my info comes from others who have experienced these places and it seems that they offer programmes which can compete with the universities at a slightly cheaper cost but still expensive enough to keep the visa crew away.
The final option is look around at community centres and district administration offices-some (shilin area government admin building for example) offer weekly classes aimed towards foreign wives and domestic workers but anyone is welcome. There’s also the guo yu ri bao- a kids newspaper. I hear that they offere classes at quite low prices but I’m not sure about their frequency.
Shi Da is the most popular option for the serious student of Mandarin and many of the other schools use the Shi Da textbooks.In my experience Shi Da is OK if you have a good teacher. There are some decent teachers there but there are also some fossils. When I went there I deliberately requested a class with no other native speakers of English so as to maximise the immersion aspect…but later an ABC rolled in and refused to speak to ME, and only me in Mandarin until I quite assertively discouraged it. I had a great teacher named Huang for the first 2 months and she left to work in Germany for a year-She was replaced by Gao, an old dragon who despite her 20+ years at Shi Da had absolutely no idea how to teach.
Getting to the point, If I were you- I would opt for a course that had as few a number of native speakers of English as possible-i.e. a university course.
The university courses offer 2 hours per day, usully at hours like 10-12, 12-2, and so on up until the last one at 6-8. The other schools offer classes later in the evening for workers.
Southpaw,
Incredibly informative reply. I was really trying to get a general sense of the situation in short order and your post did the trick. Thanks a ton! 
A few follow-up questions please:
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You recommended taking a class with as few native-English speakers as possible. I’m trying to figure out what that would mean. I’m assuming that Taiwanese people don’t take these classes, so are you recommending taking a class with other foreigners from non-English-speaking regions (South America, most of Africa, Asia, UK, etc)?
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At universities such as Shi-Da can a student request or schedule a class by a specific teacher?
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You said that university classes are two hours in length. How many times a week normally?
Thanks again. I learned a lot.
Seeker4
[quote=“seeker4”]Southpaw,
Incredibly informative reply. I was really trying to get a general sense of the situation in short order and your post did the trick. Thanks a ton!
A few follow-up questions please:
-
You recommended taking a class with as few native-English speakers as possible. I’m trying to figure out what that would mean. I’m assuming that Taiwanese people don’t take these classes, so are you recommending taking a class with other foreigners from non-English-speaking regions (South America, most of Africa, Asia, UK, etc)?
-
At universities such as Shi-Da can a student request or schedule a class by a specific teacher?
-
You said that university classes are two hours in length. How many times a week normally?
Thanks again. I learned a lot.
Seeker4[/quote]
Of course they won’t be Taiwanese(except for the few monks that go there). My class had people from Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India.
2 hours per day mon to fri=10 hours
About choosing a specific teacher, only if that teacher is teaching at your leve during the times at which you choose to take your classes.
Any recommendations for specific teachers at Shi-Da at the beginner level?
[quote=“seeker4”]If this topic has been adequately covered in some other thread, please let me know.
[/quote]
Silly me, but this statement gave me the definite impression that you had NOT searched the archives, but rather wanted others to search for you.
I’m really not trying to be unhelpful, but these issues have been gone over and over ad infinitum, and you won’t get specifics of any school without contacting the school. Everyone’s mileage varies, too. You haven’t said what your purpose or goal in studying is, so no one can really give you anything more than a generic answer – which is what you could easily get by picking up the phone.
The follow-up questions, perhaps, are more geared toward forumosa, but stuff like how much does it cost? what days of the week – those are school questions.