I’ve got more than a month off for lunar new year and I’d like to work on my language skills during that time. Any chance there’s a course being offered at that time at a university/language center/etc? Ideally it would be with other students, and in person, several hours a day. It could be anywhere in Taiwan since I can travel. Thanks!
Watch out! Difference between regular and intensive mandarin course in Taiwan university is that in intensive course teacher will go 50% faster trough studying materials. So after you spend 2 and half hours at class that day it’s expected you study at least 4 hours on your own. If you don’t after week you will get in class and stare in disbelief ![]()
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Oh that does sound tough! But maybe doable if it’s all I’m doing?
I would recommend a regular class and then you spend time outside talking to people. I did an insanely intensive language program in China when I was in college. I’ve lived in Taiwan for over a decade now and I don’t remember probably 90% of the vocabulary I was expected to memorize in that program, despite using Chinese in my daily life everyday for the past 10+ years. That’s a combination of Chinese programs do not focus on high frequency language (so much of what I had to memorize I never encountered again) and your brain literally cannot retain that much information. Your brain is a muscle. You don’t train for a marathon by sprinting 10Ks every day for two weeks. You can’t learn a language by spending 4 hours a day in class and 10 hours memorizing vocabulary either.
Yea. Hang out with Taiwanese people. A lot of every day stuff is missing from chinese class unfortunately.
And some will even teach you bollocks (such as ignoring Taiwanese words that are used in the everyday lexicon)