I’m thinking a lot. If you don’t mind, I’ll write out my situation and anyone can chime in with advices. This kind of thing helps me plan even with no reply.
I’m a 30 year old man from San Diego, California, USA. Right now I am in Taipei on the 90 day visa-less passport stamp, staying with friends. I like Taiwan a lot so far, about 2 weeks in. I don’t know how culture shock will appear yet. I have some friends here through a big international church (of Christ). I have a bundle of money saved up. I’ve never tried to learn Chinese before.
I was working as an engineer for 5 years, want to try something radical new. In performance reviews they always said I should have more personal skills. Sometime I think I’ll want more money and want to be an engineer again. I wonder if staying in Asia would be possible.
I’ll need to go to Hong Kong to get a real visa. ARC is also on my mind. Looking up these things is slow.
I like teaching teenagers in day-long volunteer activities, maybe I’ll like the 3-6 year old range. I wish there were more of a way to test it out before signing a year contract with some big chain. HESS and Saxon seem to like me, they both have training times coming up. I thought I’d go for a cheap online 120 hour TEFL just to get confident.
The other thing is I could try to study Chinese full time. NTNU accepted me. I hear it’s only good for beginners. They have the study visa. I have enough savings, although it would get uncomfortable. I can afford to study for a year before they would let me work part-time. Scholarship might be cool, but would be annoying to go back to the USA for it. I wonder if they’d even consider a 30 year old dude. I have a MS in ECE though, my GPA was 3.27 from UCSD (not the most excellent).
Local people say that school isn’t the way to go. Curious! They say I’ll save up money by teaching English and I can learn enough Chinese at the same time. I wonder if it is actually better to go for ARC or APRC by working. It would be more awesome to learn Chinese, but so far it might be tolerable without it.
I don’t have a 5 or 10 year plan yet. People suggest to me to experiment to see if I want to stay or not.
Do you really want to teach or had an experience teaching?
Also, what is your real motivation for learning Chinese language? I have not seen anything as to why you want to - other than the obvious being in a country where mostly speak Chinese (although honestly, I felt like schooling is not the right way - you want to learn conversational Chinese - unless you intend to actually read and write Chinese for a job).
More basic thing - what makes you happy? Why Asia? Two weeks in is a vacation. I get to any city or place outside of my normal routine life - I will fall in love - since you are NOT working and in a routine.
looks like engineering tired you out or is not interesting at this point in your life.
Study Chinese at NTNU. I did, and I did it from the bo po mo fo level. Target both reading and writing. Come back after a year and discuss more options.
Exactly, especially with my job which usually end late night then I have to go to work at times on weekends and have to deal with personal stuff and errands.
What I actually need is a conversational language. I studied Chinese for 10 years when I was a kid (yes starting bo po mo fo to even able to write essays) - but it’s pretty useless now especially past 10-20 years, I am specializing writing scientific journal articles and conversing in non-Chinese.
So yea, it all depends on what OP wants. You have to know your motivation and why you want to do such thing.
Would learning Chinese help me get an engineering job in Asia? I hear from another friend that it isn’t too unrealistic. I hear locals work many, many hours. They say I could find a nicer, western-like place to work. I don’t see a solid example of someone doing it before.
I like a few women here but I’m not asking for advice with that.
I don’t mind having a “stay a while, see what happens” attitude. Going back home is an option, not a worst-case. If I’m very motivated to learn Chinese for future work, then I’d focus on it more. If I’m trying to gain personal skills and try something new, then I’d teach English for a year and save more money.
Electrical, electronic. I also wrote firmware for microcontrollers. I usually put together prototype circuit boards for random digital/analog functions. All rapid pace, not much invention. My school specialty was wireless communication but work didn’t explore that too much.
They say Taiwan has lots of hardware jobs. I hear big things about semiconductors, like the 7nm processes are in the works here. That isn’t really my specialty though.
I’ve been introduced to some people who do RF IC design. Also not quite my experience.
not sure if it is just me or unique in my workplace but I have seen international folks work more and harder than locals. We are required to check in and check out and basically need to work for 45 hours per week, Monday to Friday. I am also not sure why they say to work ‘many many hours’, which actually is not true - because you are protected by labor law - at least based on how it was explained to me. Depends really want you are after. If you hate your job, you definitely going to nitpicky on how much time you spend at work. At the end of the day, it is up to you to balance everything.
I think best case scenario for you is to see what options are out there with your current skill set and what you are passionate about. Don’t limit yourselves on a couple of things. In fact, it’s probably a good time for you to go around companies and see what they do. You seem to be involved in a church so pretty sure there are churchgoers out there who share similar passion and skill set as you; you might want to inquire how the companies operate, introduce you to a few people and see if there’s an opening.
Unless you are passionate with teaching English… then I suggest make that your full time priority job. If not, I don’t think you will be happy to do it (unless you are short in cash).
I don’t know why you would replace San Diego for Taiwan. SD is sunny and beautiful. I had an offer before in Sanford Burnham, but I turned it down and took the one in UCLA.
If you want to stay longer-term in Taiwan, without teaching English, being comfortable in Mandarin (listening, speaking, reading, writing) is absolutely crucial. There are people who stay long term without the language skills and who don’t teach English, but having the language makes things infinitely easier.
Definitely possible to get a decent tech/engineering job if you have the requisite skill set - IMO this includes Mandarin.
It would help if you are some kind of product industrual or design engineer and you were doing freelance work for companies. But I don’t think it would make a big difference if you spoke Chinese or not if you just want a job. They would hire you because of your English ability too I’m sure.
Learning Chinese is a fairly long process.
So many foreigners I’ve met say they can speak Chinese but hey…A liar is born every minute.
So, I think I would spend some time at NTNU learning Chinese. All my local friends (grew up in Taiwan) like the prestige. My one American friend who has learned Chinese some years ago went through there. I hear some bad reviews (especially at these forums) but at least I get an expensive visa and I can stay and language exchange. I am basically a beginner. If it doesn’t go well I will change to teaching English for a visa or an engineer job if I can find it.
Any thoughts on searching for a scholarship? If I flew back home to try to chase that money pot, it might end up costing more. I get a bone-feeling that I’m unlikely to win money.
I hear NTU’s program is basically the best but you can get lucky with NTNU’s Mandarin Training Center. There’s some really excellent teachers there, it’s just a matter of whether you happen to get one of the good ones. I did two semesters of intensive courses to become functionally literate a few years ago and my first teacher was so-so, but my second one was fantastic. I would hire her out for private lessons but I think her workload is heavy enough as it is…
That teacher told me that learning Chinese as a second language is kind of opposite to learning English as a second language. She said to think of it as building a pyramid. Laying the groundwork is hard; expect to put in the most work in the beginning, just trying to grasp the basics. But the good news is once you got the foundation down it’s not as hard to build up and get better.
Learning English, on the other hand, is more like an inverse pyramid. Anyone can pick up the basics in a jiffy, but building up on it is a lot tougher. Be glad you natively acquired one of the hardest languages to learn as a second language!
Certainly true the way they still teach at NTNU…and NTU…and everywhere else in Taiwan.
We do have some better ways going. But they have still to so much as try them out.
It is not at all difficult to grasp the basics of Chinese. It’s only difficult if you do it by stuffing students full of rules and vocabulary lists and characters to write twenty times each.
Adults really serious about learning Chinese (or any other language) can learn much more efficiently by formulating their own study plan and studying independently with judiciously selected online and other resources. Once they’ve acquired a good grounding in the target language on their own, they can then practice by hiring an online tutor or by just using the language in everyday life.
I don’t think Chinese is the same as other languages. The script is really an added challenge and it’s estimated it can take FIVE times the amount of time due to the added difficulty compared to western languages.
It’s not like you can just absorb Chinese from looking around you
Personally I learned myself for a few years but I made very slow progress until I went to uni classes for years in the morning. I was making basic errors in my pronunciation due to my lack of formal classes and I still couldn’t read the script until I took formal classes.