You’ve gotta self reflect on yourself and your past and you’ll find the answer, others can’t tell you that. You were here before and younger, why didn’t you put in the hours to grind it then? Why didn’t you keep building on that foundation you had? Is this really something you’re passionate about or is it something you’re half-hearted in?
You’ve mentioned now if you have a financial pressure that will be a source of motivation. That’s good and you are self-aware. But you gotta be realistic, one year is not going to get the average person very far. More so when you’ve got an older brain, you need a solid routine and rock solid motivation to keep up with the 19,20 something classmates that will memorize the language a lot more efficiently.
If it was me I would do 6 months, that will be enough to get solid foundations which is the most important part of the process. Then go back to work and add an hour of self study every day, get a gf and friends that only speak Chinese, read daily, do all your hobbies but in chinese or with taiwanese people (could be anything from videogames to music). Make Chinese a part of your everyday life and you’ll make steady progress even at an older age.
It is hard work but can be fun. imo language learning is comparable to something like fitness in that respect.
Just like fitness consistency and daily grinding is key, but it doesn’t have to be painful. Just find a method to work out (or study) that suits yourself and it’s easy to find enjoyment in the grind.
I lived in Taiwan for four years when I was in my early to mid-20s. In the first two years, out of laziness and because I never expected to stay in Taiwan for as long as I did, I didn’t bother to learn a word of Chinese. In my final two years, I actually put in some effort, though just on a part-time and mostly self-taught basis, and it dramatically improved my experience in Taiwan. I doubt I’d gone back to visit or tried to move back if I hadn’t learnt what little Chinese I did.
Why didn’t I keep it up when I moved back to the UK? Life just got in the way and I never realised I’d forget it all so quickly…
Am I very passionate about it? I can’t say I love learning languages, but I’m motivated to do something fulfilling and challenging for a year out and I’d love to have one final stint in Taiwan. That said, in my line of work, a master’s degree in a STEM field would help me a lot more to get a good job in Taiwan (or London for that matter) than getting to whatever level I could realistically get to after one year of Chinese studying, so I don’t know if it would ultimately be the wisest decision. After all, I don’t want to live in Taiwan for the rest of my life.
I’ve seen some very beautiful campuses and language centres out in the mountains near Hualien. I would want to be somewhere where I feel awe whenever I open the curtains in the morning and where the cost of living would be a lot cheaper than in Taipei. I know there are places to study in such places in Taiwan, but would need to do more research.
In august I completed a year of full time Chinese study at wen hua da xue (Chinese culture university) next to da an park, not the one up on yang ming mountain. And I’m in my late 30s, so I’m qualified to give you a run down.
I will finish altogether in Oct. I think a year is enough, not to study chinese, far from it. But its long enough in the full time system, which comes with its own ballaches.
The course fee is around 25,000 NTD per semester. This is one of the cheaper schools, the other benefits are the other students are 99% asian (so you gotta speak chinese right from day 1) and the course moves a bit slower than other schools so i’ve heard. I’ve done normal and intensive. Intensive moves through the book faster. Thats it, doesn’t mean you learn faster though.
As for being in a remote location, I see no benefit to it. If you are down south half the time people are going to be speaking Taiwanese anyway. Its really down to you if you want to ‘force’ yourself to speak Chinese or not. I never speak English to anyone in Taipei (i’m talking if goin to shops or restaurants or something, not my personal life), never had a problem. The whole ‘if you are in taipei its harder to learn chinese’ thing is a myth.
And of course there is the environment you create. If you chose a gf or friends who speak English with you then don’t be surprised if you don’t learn much Chinese. It’s really up to you. If I could do it over I would only date girls that didn’t speak English. But when i rocked up to taiwan my dumb ass did the complete opposite.
The school itself will be hard if you are a noob. The hard part is absorbing it. It just takes time, no 2 ways around it. Especially if English is your mother tongue. I’d say you need to do your school hours and whatever crap homework they give you, but besides that you really need to spend a decent amount of time doing spoken practice (parroting) and doing language exchange (preferably one way) to actually learn what people actually speak like in taiwan, cus the text book ain’t exactly it. Bottom line: the school ain’t gonna get you there alone.
The ballache part comes with the visa requirements. Dumb ass tests and other needlessly stressful hassles. A year of that is more than enough. But ultimately, a year of chinese study is a great investment if you are planning to live in Taiwan. I only wish I did it sooner.
I teach CI/TPRS Chinese online, in groups, though I do one-on-ones (those are quite expensive, though).
After two years of study in a once-a-week, one-hour-per-lesson group, my students can understand all the major structure (grammar) of Chinese. They read both simplified and traditional characters. They don’t do homework – at the most, they might watch the video of the class afterwards to kind of refresh their memory or whatever. But language acquisition (versus memorization/“learning”) sticks and should not require review.
(BTW, the description of TPRS above is quite rigid and very highly influenced by one company, who is trying their damndest to rebrand and make it “fresh”.) We don’t do exclusively stories in my courses, though we do quite a few. We do free conversations, guided (by topic) conversations, talk about the news, small talk about the weather and what’s going on in everyone’s life. (Last week we had an escaped convict in one student’s neighborhood…he’s still at large, actually. I wonder if they’ll get him before this Saturday morning’s class.)
I start classes in a particular time slot (I’m on the East Coast of the United States). If you can get together a group (min. 4 people) we can be more flexible in trying to find a time slot that works specifically for your group. The description of the course is available on Squid For Brains.com
If it were me, I would probably choose the one at National Dong Hwa University in Hualien County. It is in Shoufeng, which is a rural township 15km south of Hualien City. I might also consider the one at National Taitung University, which is about 10km south of Taitung ‘City’ proper.
Most people need about two years of classroom study in Taiwan to reach a solid intermediate level that is enough for you to continue to learn on your own.
Over the years, I have met a few highly disciplined people who have learned Chinese well without classroom learning. These rare exceptions fall into two categories: language geniuses who have mastered multiple languages and people with a long track record of succesfully learning complex new skills or mastering fields of knowledge on their own.
For us mere mortals, classroom study is essential even though the programs are pretty lackluster.
Even just one year of Mandarin will change your life in Taiwan. It seems to me that you can get a MA in STEM anytime.
The thing to avoid like the plague is getting into a relationship with a Taiwanese person who speaks English. That will set your language learning back years, if not forever.
It took me 2.5 years of full-time study to get to a point where I could have unimpeded conversations in most situations. Then another few years of exclusively using it in daily life absorbing vocabulary that way to get to the point I am at now where I can confidently call myself fluent.
After one year I had a lot of vocabulary and could have basic conversations but still felt lost in a lot of conversations. Definitely not at the point where I could work in a professional capacity in Mandarin.
What do you mean by this? Maybe it’s because I studied in Kaohsiung but I never had a problem getting people to speak Mandarin with me. Sometimes I would pretend not to understand English if I did have a run-in with someone who just insisted on speaking English with me.
As my first foreign language it took about two years of part-time undergrad coursework to develop a framework for learning Chinese, especially the writing system. Once that was in place written/spoken fluency came relatively easily after a couple of semesters of intensive study at ICLP. Without that background I don’t think the full-time program would have been worth the cost either in terms of time or money.
That said, this is based purely on personal experience, and I certainly wouldn’t discourage you from putting in the groundwork to get to a point where you are getting a good ROI on study, even if it takes more than one year. Learning Chinese is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done, and I can’t imagine living in Taiwan long-term without the ability to read and speak the local language.
Sorry, but not exactly. You are correct that people can become “rusty” with time, but properly acquired language is deep in there. @tempogain was recently saying on another thread how tenacious music memory is, and in fact music and language are processed by a lot of the same brain systems. I could dig up references but an anecdote is easier and more fun.
I lived in China two years, in a place where nobody spoke English, and my second year I had a GF who didn’t speak English. My Chinese improved quickly. Then I left and aside from the odd short conversation or movie with subtitles, barely used the language for almost 20 years.
Then I moved to Taiwan, and the basic things were ready for me in my brain. Some words like “movie” I did need to look at once to “review” but now I remember it. One day in my first few months here I saw a guy with a hat just like mine, so I said “Wo xihuan nide maozi” with a little wink and kept walking. Then it hit me that despite no review and probably not speaking or hearing that word for so long, it was still there.
There is deep and surface learning. Ever hear a song you haven’t heard for decades but you can still sing along?
I only had a teacher for a few months, never really studied let alone reviewed. Would have liked a Taiwanese GF that didn’t speak English but it never worked out that way
I suppose it must be possible for children who are isolated from their native language for a long time to forget it so much that it is basically gone. But for an adult who is (re)immersed in the native language there will be a lot that comes back even after decades of no use.
What’s “properly acquired”? I know multiple people who moved to the US speaking ZERO English who don’t remember their first language. Not just little kids either - up to preteen age.
How many do you know who moved to the US after pre-teen age, forgot their natuve language, and then moved to a place where they were immersed in the native language but nothing came back?
If they were too young, and never really hear or need to speak it, not surprising that it isn’t always on the tip of their tongue.
So… you can lose a properly acquired language is what I’m hearing? I don’t know any that moved here after pre teen age and lost their native language and moved back, so can’t answer that question, but I do know a Mexican dude who moved to freaking Los Angeles (when he was around 8) and managed to lose most of his Spanish.
I don’t know any that moved here after pre teen age and lost their native language and moved back, so can’t answer that question, but I do know a Mexican dude who moved to freaking Los Angeles (when he was around 8) and managed to lose most of his Spanish. 
