Free Chinese Class Nightly in Local Public Schools?

I’ve been told that there are free Chinese classes nightly in many or most public schools around Taipei and they provide a book. Not universities, just using the space in the public schools and that it’s provided by the government.

This came up recently in a discussion with other Chinese learners and I was the only one that did not know about this. Has anyone else heard about it?

I’m thinking it might just be a good supplement to regular Chinese classes.

I tried it the first year I was here. I was living in a small town between Dayuan and Guanyin. A coworker is married to a Vietnamese lady and she said she had done that before. It was at the local elementary school and they offered 1st through 3rd grade classes taught by the school’s actual teachers. Since this is an industrial area, it was mostly Vietnamese wives and a few Vietnamese factory workers.

They taught the class just like they would to their respective 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade students… ie. No English. Now, 6, 7, and 8 year old kids already have a grasp of their mother language and can communicate with the teacher. Those Vietnamese wives had already been in Taiwan 8 or 10 years or more. I was basically a fob.

So the only thing I could really participate in was the “repeat after me” lessons. But then the teacher would go off on a tangent and tell a story about the word we were learning and I was clueless about what was going on.

So I tried this for about a month and finally realized I wasn’t really learning anything except how to repeat what I heard. Decided to stop going and just try to learn on my own.

Might be interesting to go back now that I can speak some Chinese. Free lessons in reading and writing.

For the class, I believe I needed to show my passport, ARC, and a note from work verifying my employment as I think the free classes were only offered to foreign workers. Don’t really no the details about the logistics, coworker’s wife set it up. We had just hired a couple of fresh graduates from Vietnam so she was helping the three of us.

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I suppose this is related to http://nite.taipei/ct.asp?xItem=48183836&ctNode=65849&mp=102162

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I think, in taipei, the main target of the class are foreign spouses, mostly wives.

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That was exactly the case at the one I went to in 草漯 (Taoyuan).

Yes, it was for spouses and to people like me who doesn’t know the basics, did try it twice and did learn something and every time wanted to finish it my work always blocked it either got lots of work to do and so on. It is been twice I’m on 1st grade and my classmates says I will never graduate and will always stuck in 1st grade :crazy_face:

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