If you are planning to come to Taiwan to study Chinese, think twice before signing up to Shi-Da MTC (國立台灣師範大學).
Here is a long post about this school.
Last week a friend told me she’s coming to Taiwan to study Chinese. I asked her which school, “NTNU, I read it is the best in Taiwan” she said.
Too late…
To be fair, in terms of quality NTNU certainly isn’t the worst mandarin training center in Taiwan, but if you consider price vs value, I’m pretty sure it is the worst.
I studied in NTNU myself, and also know tons of people that study/studied there. I will spend some time here bashing NTNU, so that people can avoid my mistake and my friend’s mistake.
My Story
I’m the archetype of a long term Chinese student. I started studying Chinese from zero 5 years ago, I’ve been in different schools in Taiwan and China, I’ve been to classes while on vacations, I’ve had a private tutor while employed, I’ve attended to classes when changing jobs, anyway, I’ve been to lots of classes. Now I can read books, news and I’m fluent to the point people think I’m Taiwanese when talking in the phone (people are often baffled when they meet me in person and see a white guy).
I think from experience I can tell what’s good and what’s bad about a Chinese language school. So here’s my take on NTNU.
The Bad
[ul]
[li]It is expensive. Studying Chinese in NTNU is more expensive than studying masters in Taiwan, and in NTNU mandarin students don’t even get a dorm! (tip: except for NTNU, most universities offer dorms for mandarin students). Renting near NTNU is expensive. If you want cheap, expect to live far from school. (There are a few cheap-ish places in Shida Nightmarket, if you can accept noise, smell and cockroaches)[/li]
[li]Classes are too short. The two options you have are Standard Course and Intensive Course. The Standard Course has 2hr classes per day, which is nothing. The intensive course has the impressive amount 3hr of classes per day. Sadly, in Taiwan short classes are becoming the norm, schools make more money this way I guess. In China you can still find 5~8 hour/day classes. I’ve been to a intensive 7hr/day for 5 weeks in Beijing, pure insanity but super recommended.[/li]
[li]The Standard Course sucks. The pace is sluggish, seriously, it’s a waste of time even for beginners.[/li]
[li]The Intensive Course sucks. It is much more expensive than the Standard and the pace isn’t really intensive. The “intensity” comes from the fact that they quiz you everyday with a long vocabulary list, so that you have to spend a lot of time the day before memorizing those words (needless to say how effective memorizing vocabulary lists is for learning a language)[/li]
[li]The teaches suck. I studied in NTNU for 3 terms: 1 teacher was descent, 1 was horrible, 1 was great. From other friends, I heard good teachers in NTNU are really rare now, and most of those are old and retiring. It seems NTNU had a golden age decades ago when it was the best place to teach Chinese in Taiwan. Now they have lots of underpaid teachers with crazy class schedules, and unpaid overtime for checking homework and tests. (tip: if you are starting NTNU right now, check with your friends who is a good teacher, if you want to change to that teacher’s class you have to do it on the first day of class, the good teachers get their classes full very quick)[/li]
[li]The books suck. And what is worst is that if you go to a bookstore in Taiwan, pretty much every book for studying chinese is made by NTNU. When I studied Chinese in Beijing I thought those books were not very good so I threw them away… big regret, I had no idea. Luckily I kept one grammar book, it is my treasure now.[/li]
[li]Service is horrible. The office staff is impolite, unhelpful and treat students like crap. To be fair, service is not the strong point of Taiwanese public universities.[/li]
[li]You can’t quit. In Taiwan, if you want to change to another language school, you need to leave the country and come back again. Also, after 2 periods, you get an ARC which is super useful in Taiwan, and of course you lose it if you change schools. You can still quit after you started, but for most people it’s just too much trouble.[/li]
[li]You have to take it seriously. You can’t just say “screw this crap, I’m going to learn Chinese on the street”. There is a constant reminder that they will cancel your visa if you skip classes, don’t do well in the quizzes, or don’t complete the mandatory self-study hours in the study room.[/li]
[li]Some teachers are racist. In Taiwan it is considered socially acceptable to be racist towards folks from less fortunate South East Asia countries, but in a school like Shi-Da this kind of thing shouldn’t be tolerated. Teachers should leave racism at home, and staff should at least pretend to take complaints seriously. Sucks for those being bullied by the teacher and it also sours the environment for the other students.[/li][/ul]
The Good
[ul]
[li]It is famous in Taiwan. Taiwanese people know about it.[/li]
[li]NTNU makes the Taiwan Chinese proficiency test. Don’t be surprised if in the proficiency test you see the exact same crap you saw in class.[/li]
[li]There are many students. There is a good mix of people from all around the world, so you can meet lots of interesting people. Although, from intermediate level and up, most students are either Japanese or Korean, and in advanced levels pretty much everyone is overseas Chinese (tip: if you are not an overseas Chinese student, do not join a class with mostly overseas Chinese students, it will suck).[/li]
[li]It is near YongKangJie. Very good food[/li][/ul]
I think the decadence of NTNU comes from it’s per-established fame from the days when it was the best and only Mandarin training center in Taiwan. And now it doesn’t need to do a lot of effort to attract new students.
Edit: forgot about racist element.
