[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Sorry, after I posted I realised that all that’s wrong with the world was represented right there in what I’d said. Tears are good. Shedding your own is a whole lot better than trying to force them out of someone else.
HG[/quote]
Not a problem… 
[quote=“TomHill”]Germany. Me: War. Her: No, White wine.
Holland. Me: Whores. Her: No, flowers.
France: Me: Mona lisa. Her: No, red wine.
[/quote]
I’ll give you two out of three for that mate, although my great grand father would be mortified and give you one (being of Dutch extract in the 1800’s). Reason being, that although the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre in Paris, it was painted by Da Vinci who was Italian. Shouldn’t Italy get the credit for that?
And are the Frogs really known for anything other than wine and cooking? Can’t fault her there…
(In the knowledge of the above just being a good natured rib), I totally see your point.
This thread makes me so grateful for CLD. I only had one teacher I didn’t love and she was there very shortly. We change teachers every couple months so that we have to get accustomed to the way many teachers speak. I don’t think any of my teachers have ever done any of this shit.
CLD can’t get your visa. But if you just want to learn Chinese, I LOVE the place.
SuchAFob - Do you mean NTU CLD or just CLD? I just got my acceptance letter from NTU CLD and they said I can take it to my local “Chinese Taipei Not An Embassy No Really” and get a visa. Am I missing something? Sorry to be off topic.
Not sure what NTU CLD is… so I assume not the same.
Search the forums. Somewhere there is a list of schools than can provide you a visa.
I’ve just read this thread and realised how lucky I’ve been at Chiao Tung in Hsinchu (NCTU).
3 lovely lecturers who just got on with the job each day and did indeed deviate regularly and just enough to expand our vocabulary.
Only downside came from outside lecturers coming in for the culture lectures. There was a very clear “We Chinese are better than outside cultures” Worst of which was the theory that Utzon designed the opera house based on Chinese architecture. I’ve read a few biographies on this dude including the fact that he sat with a beachball and drew wet lines on it with his finger to work out the shapes of the opera house sails. So, if it was a Chinese beach ball this theory could slightly stand up before looking sad.
I had this lovely woman for a teacher. She would hold up my test and announce to the class that I should look at blah blah’s test as he did better than me. I got 99, he got 100. :loco: She threatened all semester to have this polish guy’s scholarship revoked because he couldn’t keep up. Dude, he’s only here for a year, as if he’s gonna somehow achieve fluency in that time! :loco:
That woman really pissed me off. :fume:
As for Such a Fob’s comment, I agree CLD has nice teachers AND nice, helpful staff.
[ul][li]teaching students that it wouldn’t be possible to write Mandarin or any other Sinitic language without Chinese characters[/li]
[li]teaching students that there is just one Chinese language but many “dialects”[/li]
[li]getting students to believe this bullshit[/li][/ul]
[quote=“beautifulspam”]more…
-Speaking and writing are the same thing. Force your students to learn spoken and written Chinese at the same pace. Force foreigners who’ve been speaking Chinese for years to start over again at “ni hao ma” because they can’t write it.[/quote]
I had the opposite problem when I was learing Chinese in Singapore. As Westerners were the majority of the class, I had to practice chinese characters that I could write since I was seven yrs old, over and over…sigh
[quote=“beautifulspam”]more…
-Pace reading and writing instruction to the comfort level of any Japanese students you may have in your class. Spend hours of class time giving Japanese students extra help with their pronunciation, but do not offer foreigners additional help with learning to write characters. That has to be done at home.[/quote]
Maybe Westerners’ pronunciation is better than Japanese’s, don’t you think?
Some of my Taiwanese friends told me so.
As for writing and reading Chinese Characters, we, Japanese, spend almost 9 yrs(from primary school to secondary school) to master about 2000 Chinese Characters.
I do feel sorry for westerners if you really need to learn so many characters in short period of time.
By the way, what annoys me with learning Chinese here in Taiwan, is that my Taiwanese teacher tends to practice her Japanese instead of giving me a Chinese conversation practice.
[quote=“nihonjin”]By the way, what annoys me with learning Chinese here in Taiwan, is that my Taiwanese teacher tends to practice her Japanese instead of giving me a Chinese conversation practice.[/quote]My bo po mo fo teacher decided that my time was better used used tranlating her pictures into english than teaching me Chinese.
I stopped going.
The rest of the class, all Viet women, called my house wanting me back. I told them it was better for them if I took private lessons.
It was not true. They knew the truth, but the ‘teacher’ saved face.
I think like English teachers here most Chinese teachers are not qualified or just flat out bad at teaching. It took me a while to find my teacher and she is expensive but I’ve been with her for over two years and feel she is worth every penny. If you’re serious do your research check at the reputable schools and be prepared to fork out some dough because these teachers know there good too.
Can we add espousing insane political theories to the list?
Teacher just got finished explaining that 228/ the white terror period was a “misunderstanding” caused by the confusing diversity of languages that obtained in Taiwan prior to mandarin standardization.
Oh, and after 228 chang kai shek’s government forbade the speaking of taiwanese and native languages in public schools-- in order to avoid future misunderstandings.
Imperiousness and nosiness are at the top.
I had a good teacher, Wang Mama at TLI, who felt it her right from time to time to tell me to lose weight and how to do it. She also told me i was a bad student because i didn’t eat at the night market everyday. And she neverendingly asked me the personal details of my life, saying this was necessary for teaching chinese. When she did stick to doing what i paid her for, she was very good.
While i was at Shi-Da, i once went to the bathroom without asking the teacher first(Jiang1 Li4 laoshi).
Upon my return she indignantly exploded and yelled at me with fury for a full 5 minutes nonstop for causing her to lose her face(by not asking permission to visit the restroom).
Because I’d studied to the point where i was the only non-Asian, the other students said nothing and thought her behaviour was within the unlimited rights of the teacher in Confucian society. I discussed this with the Shi-Da administration and they all said, ‘You’re the student so the teacher must be right and you must be wrong. How could it be otherwise?’ The teacher gave me a 60 to prevent me from getting the chance to get take the scholarship test. The class had previously had another Westerner but he was shy, so Jiang1Li laoshi needled him incessantly for not speaking up until he quit the class (and therefore could not get take the scholarship test).
Another Shi-Da teacher(chen2 laoshi, very short, curly black hair, late 30s) didn’t like my nationality and would ask me every couple days about my country’s governmental policies and encourage the rest of the class(all natives of Asian countries) to gang up on me.
The other students, being more professional than the teacher, always declined with a shrug and grin. I ignored her questions but inwardly it made focusing on the subject at hand(learning Chinese, hello?) tiresome. There are some good teachers at Shi-Da just as there are a few good apples in a generally rotten barrel of apples. But you have to get very lucky to find these good teachers.
I met many scholarship recipients from tiny countries which recognize Taiwan; many of these students didn’t study and seemed more interested in talking about football and clubbing.
If you enroll in easy classes where you are sure to get high grades, and take the scholarship exam for the purpose of enrolling in classes at a lower level(I or II) and not really learning anything, you can get the scholarship.
[quote=“nihonjin”]
By the way, what annoys me with learning Chinese here in Taiwan, is that my Taiwanese teacher tends to practice her Japanese instead of giving me a Chinese conversation practice.[/quote]
Yes, this was a major fault with my teachers - using class time to practice their English instead of their students’ Chinese. The only solution I found was to be in a mixed class - equal numbers of Japanese and Westerners usually worked.
I am stuying at a language institute in Sydney. Even back home, highly annoying teachers are to be found…
My teacher ignores me or talks over me when I say something in class or when I offer an answer, nods and smiles and then ‘repeats’ what I say to the rest of the class which happens to be not what I said, because she hasn’t actually heard what I said…
Is my accent bad? No, the Taiwanese understood me fine when I lived in Taiwan… But when the people of Chinese background speak in Chinese, she listens. :bluemad: I don’t understand what’s wrong with her. I thought teachers are supposed to encourage you to practice… I don’t know if she’s partially deaf or what. She’ll ask the class a question, I’ll offer an answer, she seems not to hear, and then after a period of silence, she’ll give the answer as if noone had said anything. Weird. Everyone else heard it. Am I supposed to put up my hand?
As for when I studied in Taiwan, I had very high expectations, which I eventually learnt to let go of.
My high school Russian teacher was like this. I never could figure out what I’d done to annoy her.
She, even after hearing me answer, would continue to berate the class because no one knew the answer. So I’d answer again, louder. (Holding up my hand made no difference.)
“Vaaat? No one knows the answer?” The teacher would continue to complain about lazy students.
By this time most everyone in the class would be looking at each other as if this was really more than the usual daily dose of surrealism.
Finally, one annoying classmate that this teacher just loved would repeat my answer, and the teacher would exclaim, “Yes, Jason! That’s it! Why did none of your classmates know this? They are not as hard working and smart as you.”
But she had been in the death camps during WWII, so I figured she had a right to be a bit strange.