Homework at Shida

I’m wondering what kind of homework is given to students studying Mandarin at ShiDa… maybe those of you who are currently there could share…

Are you expected to make a sentence with all the new vocab? after doing the grammar patterns in the book, are you expected to write your own sentences using the grammar pattern just learned?

Could someone give me the lowdown on how PAV 2xia books are taught… thanks a lot!

[quote=“bushibanned”]I’m wondering what kind of homework is given to students studying Mandarin at Shi-Da… maybe those of you who are currently there could share…

Are you expected to make a sentence with all the new vocab? after doing the grammar patterns in the book, are you expected to write your own sentences using the grammar pattern just learned?

Could someone give me the lowdown on how PAV 2xia books are taught… thanks a lot![/quote]

Depends on the teacher. Some give it and some don’t. As for the PAV books-they are taught very dryly. Learn vocab first, then sentence pattern, then learn the dialogue. :sleepy:

bushibanned wrote:

[quote]I’m wondering what kind of homework is given to students studying Mandarin at Shi-Da… maybe those of you who are currently there could share…

Are you expected to make a sentence with all the new vocab? after doing the grammar patterns in the book, are you expected to write your own sentences using the grammar pattern just learned?

Could someone give me the lowdown on how PAV 2xia books are taught… thanks a lot!
[/quote]

Yep, homework consists mostly of everybody’s favorite night time activity, “zao ju!”

Here are some favorites:

Write one sentence by hand using each of the new vocabulary words

Write three sentences by hand using each of the new grammar…thingies.

Write 50 questions for other students based on the material in the “kewen” then read them in class.

Write each of the new characters out 6 times by hand in a little goddam green notebook they make you use.

Write the new vocabulary all over your girlfriend’s body with glitter paint then put on a blindfold and try to recognize them by touch.
Oh wait that’s just me.

Crude yet effective (don’t listen to Ironlady)

What a great Idea! I’ll be heading over to the “where can I find” forum to see aboutthat glitter paint! Thanks! :smiley: :wink:

[quote=“bushibanned”]I’m wondering what kind of homework is given to students studying Mandarin at Shi-Da… maybe those of you who are currently there could share…

Are you expected to make a sentence with all the new vocab? after doing the grammar patterns in the book, are you expected to write your own sentences using the grammar pattern just learned?

Could someone give me the lowdown on how PAV 2xia books are taught… thanks a lot![/quote]

:roflmao: They give homework!

[quote=“beautifulspam”]bushibanned wrote:

[quote]I’m wondering what kind of homework is given to students studying Mandarin at Shi-Da… maybe those of you who are currently there could share…

Are you expected to make a sentence with all the new vocab? after doing the grammar patterns in the book, are you expected to write your own sentences using the grammar pattern just learned?

Could someone give me the lowdown on how PAV 2xia books are taught… thanks a lot!
[/quote]

Yep, homework consists mostly of everybody’s favorite night time activity, “zao ju!”

Here are some favorites:

Write one sentence by hand using each of the new vocabulary words

Write three sentences by hand using each of the new grammar…thingies.

Write 50 questions for other students based on the material in the “kewen” then read them in class.

Write each of the new characters out 6 times by hand in a little goddam green notebook they make you use.

Write the new vocabulary all over your girlfriend’s body with glitter paint then put on a blindfold and try to recognize them by touch.
Oh wait that’s just me.

Crude yet effective (don’t listen to Ironlady)[/quote]

cheers! is this all expected to be done within a week? I’ve heard shi-da spends a week on a chapter. Are you serious about writing 50 questions for other students based on the material? :noway:

Intensive classes spend three days on a chapter.

Regular classes spend a week.

Yes, the amount of homework is pretty representative for a normal weekly class by book 2, not counting projects and essays, but once you get to book 2, 50 sentences will be pretty easy to write out in an hour or so. But you’ll spend 6 months on book one, so don’t worry.

As for the kewen, maybe i exxagerated a bit. 50 sentences was the amount some of the japanese students came up with. I’m sure you can get away with 20 or 30?

Every teacher is different, so if you’re getting more homework than you want, switch classes.

Often an unpopular teacher will claim that she is just following “the rules,” has no freedom to design her own classes, and all classes more or less follow the same formula.

This is a lie.

Keep switching teachers until you find one you like.

Yeah, more of the same.

Based on what I’ve heard, the classes vary quite a bit. Some have homework, some don’t; some test every day, some only once in a while.

Take my class, for example. We cover a chapter every 3-4 days; homework is optional, and we have an extremely easy test once a week. But most of my classmates are hua qiao/hua yi (foreign-born Taiwanese), so the pace and learning environment is different. It’s basically a vocabulary building class - we spend a lot of time chatting about everyday stuff. When actual situations come up, like someone’s visa or work permit problems, or travel planning, we’ll stop and talk about how to handle it or what his/her choices are.

As for myself, I’ve kept up with the homework, which is enough for me (for now, at least).

I know people in other classes who have a shitload of tests/homework. If you really want to learn the language well, that’s probably ideal.

Effective? :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

Except the part about the glitter paint, that is.

I realize there is a stigma about quoting experiences more than, say, 20 years old, but when I was back at the good old MTC (when it was still called that, and before all the accusations about foreigners and excessive toilet paper consumption and Internet porn), the homework situation was EXACTLY as described above.

Even being a college student and used to doing things for no particular reason, it was onerous. I still recall panicking completely and making a very expensive phone call home to the folks the first week, thinking I was going to fail out because by the time I finished all the busywork, I had no time left to learn the material.

Solution? Change classes. I changed teachers, and the remainder of my stay at Shita was much better.

I’ve been experiencing tests almost every day, homework from the books and also various handouts every day and unbelievable stress. I started out prepared to do 3-4 hours a day of home work in order to succeed, but it quickly became 5-6 hours. Now I have eyestrain, I’m stressed, my hand hurts from trying to write those fucking characters and phrases over and over again, and I’m failing.

Hopefully when I take level one again, at a hopefully slower pace with a teacher more suited to my learning style (and vice versa), armed with knowledge of what I don’t want in a class, I’ll do better. If not, I’m going to pay for a private teacher. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to quit completely and leave or accept the fact that I’m going to live here unable to speak to people or read to any level of competent communication.

I have my final exam tomorrow. The teacher gave us a preview exam. I don’t even know 5% of it. It covers exactly all of the crazy grammar that I don’t understand one bit. Almost nothing from the chapters I do understand.I’m not taking the f-ing exam. I’m sick of tests all the time.

I honestly don’t understand how somebody can learn 30 + characters and the confusing nonsensical grammar in 3 days. That’s just crazy. 10 class days per chapter would be ideal for me. It would give me time to thouroughly understand what I’m doing and to apply my knowledge in the direction I want to go, as well as do what they want and get the feedback I desperately need in order to feel that I’m doing something right.

Honestly, I learned more German in one year of high school and more Spanish in a few months of backpacking in South America than I have learned Chinese in 3 years of living here and thousands of dollars worth of lessons.

It’s time for the MRI.

But i’m not bitter. Really.

Study long, study wrong. You’re just beating your brain to a pulp. Cut back to 1 hour per day and see how it goes. You might also want to switch teachers or drop back to 2-hour classes until start to get used to the language.

BTW, if that’s 6 years of writing the same character out over and over, DON’T DO THAT. Waste of time. Write essays or sentences instead. You can save time by using NJStar or DoctorEye to type your practice sentences, then transcribe them by hand later.

[quote]
I honestly don’t understand how somebody can learn 30 + characters and the confusing nonsensical grammar in 3 days[/quote]

Once you learn to “see” the characters it gets much easier. I can now memorize 40 characters in a few hours well enough to pass a test on them. Not bragging, anyone can do this after a few months of study.

Ironlady wrote:

[quote]
Effective? [/quote]

Say what you will about shida, they get results. :smiley:

Well, as I said in another thread, I probably did everything wrong. I’m at the point where just doing my homework takes hours and hours. The words and phrases swirls around on the paper and i literally can’t focus anymore. And I’m not in an intensive course. It’s the regular course and it’s too damn fast. There’s actually no point for me to even show up and sit there like an idiot anymore.

I tried different methods of memorizing the characters after chapter 4 and nothing worked. Too little, too late. I went for extra help simply to ask for study tips and she confused me even more by bringing up radicals and other things. I got more advice from this website than any teacher at Shida.

I’m going to try a different school and change teachers immediately if the class seems as wonky as this one did. I’m taking it all over again. Yup. I’m working on an increased budget for a part time one on one teacher as well. Hope that comes through.

[quote=“beautifulspam”]Ironlady wrote:

[quote]
Effective? [/quote]

Say what you will about Shi-Da, they get results. :smiley:[/quote]

So did 18th century dentistry, so far as they were concerned. But we do things a bit differently today, and I daresay the results are better.

To say the place gets results, you really need something else to compare it to, and comparing it to the other language programs in Taiwan, all of which are clones of the Shita program to a greater or lesser extent, isn’t a real comparison.

I want to see someone open up a language center that caters to Western educational psychology and is student-centered, in an immersion environment like Taiwan. Huh. Bet they won’t give an ARC to do THAT anytime soon.

Western what? we don’t do things that way here…:wink: I sometimes wonder if they teach it that way to drive home the point of racial superiority or something…i’m kidding, but, ya know…

[quote=“canucktyuktuk”]I’ve been experiencing tests almost every day, homework from the books and also various handouts every day and unbelievable stress. I started out prepared to do 3-4 hours a day of home work in order to succeed, but it quickly became 5-6 hours. Now I have eyestrain, I’m stressed, my hand hurts from trying to write those fucking characters and phrases over and over again, and I’m failing.

Hopefully when I take level one again, at a hopefully slower pace with a teacher more suited to my learning style (and vice versa), armed with knowledge of what I don’t want in a class, I’ll do better. If not, I’m going to pay for a private teacher. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to quit completely and leave or accept the fact that I’m going to live here unable to speak to people or read to any level of competent communication.

I have my final exam tomorrow. The teacher gave us a preview exam. I don’t even know 5% of it. It covers exactly all of the crazy grammar that I don’t understand one bit. Almost nothing from the chapters I do understand.I’m not taking the f-ing exam. I’m sick of tests all the time.

I honestly don’t understand how somebody can learn 30 + characters and the confusing nonsensical grammar in 3 days. That’s just crazy. 10 class days per chapter would be ideal for me. It would give me time to thouroughly understand what I’m doing and to apply my knowledge in the direction I want to go, as well as do what they want and get the feedback I desperately need in order to feel that I’m doing something right.

Honestly, I learned more German in one year of high school and more Spanish in a few months of backpacking in South America than I have learned Chinese in 3 years of living here and thousands of dollars worth of lessons.

It’s time for the MRI.

But i’m not bitter. Really.[/quote]
I have a lot of experience studying languages, and your post concerned me. It sounds like you are studying too much - if the way you are studying isn’t working, studying even more won’t help. I suggest you go to a different school and take a class where they 1. go slower, and 2. concentrate on the spoken language. You don’t need to know the characters for everything you say, especially a student like you who seems to have a hard time memorizing the characters. Spoken Chinese, while more difficult for us than Spanish, is not that hard - and remember, the nouns and verbs don’t change, so in some ways it is easier than European languages.
At TLI, for example, we didn’t have to learn the characters - though I did - and in my class at least there were no tests. We used a textbook, and the teacher explained the grammar, but we mostly just talked.
Once you get to a good level in the spoken language, you could start learning the characters - go at a slow pace, though.

IronLady wrote:

[quote]
So did 18th century dentistry, so far as they were concerned. But we do things a bit differently today, and I daresay the results are better.

To say the place gets results, you really need something else to compare it to, and comparing it to the other language programs in Taiwan, all of which are clones of the Shi-Da program to a greater or lesser extent, isn’t a real comparison.

I want to see someone open up a language center that caters to Western educational psychology and is student-centered, in an immersion environment like Taiwan. Huh. Bet they won’t give an ARC to do THAT anytime soon.[/quote]

You may be right. In any case, it’s hard to argue with your highly succesful, hypothetical imaginary buxiban.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things I don’t like about ShiDa’s method, but over the past year i’ve seen just amazing progress from people who come here as raw beginners, and attain intermediate proficiency within a year. From ni hao ma to somewhat complex conversations about electoral politics- that’s pretty fast progress in my opinion- but maybe there’s soemthing faster? I wouldn’t know, the only thing i have to compare to is high school spanish.

Also, I think western schools could do with a lot more rote learning and a lot less of games and “self expression,” but maybe that’s just me getting old and grouchy :laughing:

Definitely less self-expresion would be good. You don’t learn language making it up (usually wrong) on your own. You acquire it by listening to (and later reading) correct examples of the language that you can understand. Your brain is set up to acquire languages. It’s usually just schools that prevent you from doing that. :slight_smile: School teaches you ABOUT language. You need to acquire it, not learn about it, unless your only goal is to pass tests.

Shita does okay, but they’re not teaching math or chemistry after all. They’re supposedly teaching a skill that EVERY HUMAN BEING is wired for from birth. You’re proven you can acquire at least one language already! Same goes for high school language classes. There should be only a very minimal drop-out or “failure” rate for language learning. If the frustration level is higher than that, there’s something wrong – and it’s rarely with the students, assuming they want to acquire the language. (So, you see, these comments don’t always hold for English students in Taiwan!!)

Does the Chinese writing system complicate things? Sure it does. But the problem IMHO is Shida’s insistence on teaching “the way we always have”. Four skills totally in parallel. Hear the word for the first time today, learn to write it today, be expected to recognize it in writing and aurally today. That just isn’t realistic, but the common view seems to be “well, the Asian students can do it, those Westerners must just not be studying enough or something.”

There’s “holding an intermediate conversation” and there’s “fluency within a limited set of vocabulary”. I know which one I’d prefer, and it’s not a halting, wrong-tones, needs-a-sympathetic-listener-to-understand product. But given the constraints – we need constant testing, we need a bunch of marks, we need (quite often) to send something back to the originating institution abroad with a number on it – it’s a problem. The other problem is folks who expect to be able to master everything in Chinese in a year in Taiwan (and if you don’t believe they exist, just stop by the Shida lounge in September of any given year and ask around! :wink: )

My ShiDa experience has been garbage. My teachers don’t seem to prep (at least not the way I do for my job).

Instead of writing homework which reviews old vocabulary and sentence patterns, my teachers, with one minute left in class, have just said something like “oh, um…well…circle these 10 words, go home, and make some sentences.”

I’m surprised to hear people say that they think their homework has been hard at ShiDa…I guess it varies by teacher, but I’ve had more than one teacher, and my homework typically takes between 10-20 minutes.

I learn more in a few hours having tea with local friends then I do in a couple weeks at ShiDa.

I’m saving to go to ICLP. I’m expecting it will be better.

It all depends on the teacher, one of my classmates had a teacher who covered 17 lessons of book 1 in one term, and no he wasn’t in an intensive class, he was just the only non-japanese student.

My current teacher actually goes too slow, we take about a week and a half to cover a lesson in book 2, I wouldn’t mind if we were studying the material but most of the classtime seems to be spent the dating of life of foreigners (me and my friend) in Taiwan. Our homework is minimal but then again I don’t work and I am at the library every day from 9 to 2.

It’s really hard to make any sort of general comment about Shi-Da since things are so radically different from one teacher to the next, overall here’s my opinion, Shi-Da sucks, after a year I can hold basic conversation with a taxi driver, figure out a menu and buy things, that’s it. Had I spent the same amount of time and effort on Spanish I would have been much furthur along.

It just amazes me that people say this (but then again this is the basic measuring stick among faculty and administration as well): we “covered” so many lessons in such-and-such a time.

How much of the content of those lessons can you use automatically and correctly, and understand immediately?

THAT is the measure of whether you’ve learned something in terms of language. A few bumps with characters you don’t often see, sure. But there should be no hesitation in producing or understanding words that have been acquired. There will be with words that were only “covered”.