I was reading another post recently here (forget which one) and it made me think of my experience at a Taiwanese CLC.
I went to one school in Kaohsiung, and they insisted that no English be used in the class. In fact, if the teacher uses English, which the teacher does understand, they can get in trouble with administration. It was as if they felt that by just only hearing Mandarin in the course, we would pick it up. They also insisted on finishing the units, even if not everyone was on the same page.
For me, I am a very visual person, and need to see the connection between what Im saying in Chinese and its English meaning. The words have to have a specific use for me…
For example, I was looking for the word yesterday for can you help me for a minute 你可以幫我一個忙嗎. Since I needed this word, I also remember it. But just being told to read from a book and memorize grammar doesn’t work well for me.
Therefore, I didnt find this method very useful. But I guess it works for some people?
I changed schools to one that wasnt stuck up about this fact, but they also had some issues too. I find that there is always 1 or 2 people in the class that don’t want to learn, but they have time to kill and so like to disrupt or monopolize the teachers time. But that’s a rant for another time.
I want to go back to Taiwan next year to study again and work part time hopefully, but I don’t know if there are any other schools out there that use a different method.