I am starting this new topic because I am getting a little overwhelmed with all the information that I have read on the forum and on the web generally thus far - concerning getting a master’s degree and a selecting a Chinese course. First of all I suppose I should mention that my parents have lived in Taipei for about two years while I was in college so I am familiar with the place and I just love it. Having lived in many countries throughout my life I have come to the decision that I felt very at ease there and that I would like to go back. I got my BA in the States and after a break I want to go back to school to get a degree and I also want to improve my Chinese (I took an intense Chinese course in college, but who knows how much of the info actually stuck with me :S)
Anyhow… The master plan (muahahaha) is to go to Taiwan in the fall, take a 3-4 month long intensive Chinese crash course and enroll with a uni for the Spring semester. I have gathered that the most ‘popular’ (for a lack of a better term) Chinese courses are offered at NTU, NTNU and NCCU <— Thoughts? Comments? Anyone? Personally I am familiar with NTU and NTNU (I lived right next to NTNU on Dunnan Jie and biked through the NTU campus frequently). I even found a Hospitality Management course at NTNU that I would be quite interested in, but on this one ‘english courses taught in Taiwan’ website (can’t recall the exact name) it stated that the course was only 50-74% english-taught. Now what does that mean exactly? Does anyone here have any experiences with courses only partially taught in English? I realize that it may be quite a silly question “duh, if it’s taught in Chinese as well you will need to KNOW Chinese” but from reading various comments on the forum I got the impression that the level of rigorousness was somewhat less than what I was used to and everything on the requirements website indicated that I can either submit my essays in English or in Chinese… wait, what? lol… Sorry, just a bit of a brain-fart after a long day of trying to crack the Taiwanese educational system Bottom line is… Do you have any ‘up-to date’ advice (I have been reading comments as far back as 2004…) on selecting the ‘right’ Chinese course and a master’s program? I really appreciate any advice and input that you may have for me! Thank you very much!
It’s very simple. All of the Chinese-language programs in Taiwan are about the same. They have the same teachers, the same books, and the same (bad) methods.
In Taipei, go with NTNU. Thousands of people have successfully learned Mandarin at the NTNU MTC. You will too if you put in the required time and effort.
Just pick one and go to it. It will take you about two years of continuous study to get a good foundation. Your intensive course will hopefully have taught you that tones are important, that there is a correct way to write characters. Other than that, you can safely assume that you know almost nothing to be useful. Start over near the beginning.
I can’t help you with grad programs taught in English. We hear all kinds of stories from people on these boards, most of which seem to indicate that the English-language programs are pretty Mickey Mouse and only partly in English. YMMV.
Personally, I would choose my Mandarin Training Center based on where I would like to live. I’d probably choose Hualien or maybe Kaohsiung/Tainan/Chiayi.
By no means was I trying to suggest that after that course I would be able to speak Chinese… I just want to get a head start before enrolling at a university for my masters degree. I am not an English native speaker either and I know what it took to be able to speak it etc. And that was English, not Chinese…
Thank you for the other information. I guess I will choose MTC… I know I want to live in Taipei so at least I dont have to worry about choosing a city… School and program are enough … Thanks again for the response I really appreciate it!
OK, help me out here. How do you expect to survive and thrive at a Chinese-medium university (because even if your textbooks are in English, everything is going to happen in Chinese) if you don’t have a really good command of Chinese?
Don’t be fooled by all the pretty brochures and Web pages they put out saying how everything is in English and there are smiling, competent people working in the Foreign Student office just waiting to help you in English. The basic system is still set up the same way, and things still function in Chinese underneath it all. Believe me, if there is any discrepancy, the Chinese version will govern, as they say in contracts.
I mean, while I ‘lived’ in Taipei I was in touch with a bunch of Slovak students who were getting their master degrees there. The degrees were English taught so that’s what I am aiming for when it comes to choosing the right degree. I was asking about the hospitality management one, because it sounded interesting and I wanted to see if anyone had any experience with such a program… I want to improve my Chinese as well as get a degree, many have done it before (I have hung out with them in Taipei) and I think many will do it in the future as well. I am slightly confused as to why my plan seems so unrealistic to you. Perhaps we are not completely understanding each others points…?
Mostly because you said “improve my Chinese in 3 months” and then followed with “then do an MA degree.”
If those two are separate, the picture becomes more positive for success. Though it’s sort of like the idea of a Chinese student doing an MA in the US in a program taught all in Chinese. What’s the point, really? I mean, you can get a degree, but what you actually take away won’t be nearly as much as it should be for having experienced what goes along with an MA program.
Yes, it would be ideal to complete the degree in Chinese, I am just being realistic about it… There is no way that I could master the language enough (even in a couple of years) to obtain a masters degree with it. Instead I want to focus on working on it as much as possible in language classes and in day-to-day life, if that makes any sense. So the ‘3-4 month head start’ was meant as a bare minimum to try to acquire as much Chinese as possible before the masters program begins. The objective is to improve my Chinese as much as I can while in Taiwan while getting a degree…
You might be able to learn German in 3 intensive months if you’re really gifted with language, but not Chinese. The spoken mandarin is hard enough as it is with tones and stuff, and they do matter.
Written chinese is even harder to learn. Not only learning characters but reading and writing is pretty much a separate skill. Reading is being able to recognize characters but writing means being able to draw them correctly because many characters will look wrong unless written in one specific way.
Yes. I know. And I feel like this topic is getting a bit… well… off topic. So just to quickly reiterate:
I am not under the impression that I will be able to learn Chinese in 3 months
I have taken Chinese in the past so I know what I am getting myself into
I just want to arrive in advance prior to the beginning of my uni program to kind of ease myself into living in Taipei again (language, weather, etc.)
I really just wanted to ask about your experiences or thoughts about the 3-4 month long Chinese intensive courses that are offered via NTU, NTNU and NCCU (which one would you recommend)
I was hoping to hear some input regarding graduate courses offered in Taipei
I hope this will make better sense now
[quote=“Taiwan Luthiers”]You might be able to learn German in 3 intensive months if you’re really gifted with language, but not Chinese. The spoken Mandarin is hard enough as it is with tones and stuff, and they do matter.
Written chinese is even harder to learn. Not only learning characters but reading and writing is pretty much a separate skill. Reading is being able to recognize characters but writing means being able to draw them correctly because many characters will look wrong unless written in one specific way.[/quote]
If you had an input-based intensive speaking course for 3 months x 2 hours a day, you would be very functional in Chinese. No giftedness needed.
And no one really needs to learn to draw characters, as you put it. Even native speakers write virtually everything on computers or using cell phones for lookup. The only time most foreigners need to write characters by hand is to take tests testing their ability to write characters by hand, in language school.
The master plan (muahahaha) is to go to Taiwan in the fall, take a 3-4 month long intensive Chinese crash course and enroll with a uni for the Spring semester. I have gathered that the most ‘popular’ (for a lack of a better term) Chinese courses are offered at NTU, NTNU and NCCU <— Thoughts? Comments? Anyone? 
Let us know how that goes.
I guess I will choose MTC… I know I want to live in Taipei so at least I dont have to worry about choosing a city… School and program are enough … Thanks again for the response I really appreciate it!