I’ve read quite a bit now on studying Chinese (Mandarin) in Taibei (No, I don’t live there… yet). So far, the more attractive options, for me, are:
CLI (Chinese Lang. Institute)
TKU (Tamkang U, Chinese language center)
and
MLC (Mandarin Learning Center, Chinese Culture U.)
“Why”, you may ask? Well, as far as I can tell
all these places accept students at the beginning of every month and the terms are 2-3 months long
with the standard 2 hrs a day 5 days (10/wk) schedule which meets the visa requirements.
CLI is the cheapest… only 4500 for 2 months, and the others are cheaper than TLI, Shi da, MDN or MTC.
One other question, do any of the Mandarin schools teach with Hanyu Pinyin instead of Bo-Po-Mo-Fo?
Please rate these schools for me, if you’ve gone
to any of them or have heard anything about them.
As for your three options. Tam Kang, I don’t know. Wen Hua is probably a good option. CLI is definitely not. It’s a scam school designed for giving student visa to people working illegally. You can’t really learn here.
CLD and Pioneer are the cheaper options, and TLi is a little bit mroe expensive. Read what people say.
As for Pinyin, TLI si the only school that uses piyin, but I think most students find that if they make the (not very difficult) effort to learn bopomofo, the like it better. It’s also useful because you can get Taiwanese friends who don’t know pinyin to write the bopomofo for you. Basically in Taiwan it’s a lot more useful than pinyin and there’s no harm and no loss in learning both systems. I taught myself bopomofo in a weekend.
Flag was known as a scam school – i.e. it was more about providing visas than education. (I have no personal experience with Flag; I’m just repeating what I’ve heard.) That’s probably true for most – but perhaps not all – of the schools in the buxiban zone around Yenping St. (south of the train station).
Yeah the scam CLI was formerly Flag. Why did they change their name? Because the Hong Kong Visa office stopped giving visas to students with papers from Flag.