Shida Rant

Language Learning Chinese
21

I second that opinion!

I felt so far behind in my class that I hired a one on one through my school (500 NT an hour). I was nervous about who I would end up getting for a teacher - they did not give me a choice. However, I ended up with a young xiao jie who is still studying to become a certified teacher.

She actually requested to tutor me as she wanted to practice a little bit of her english!
(hmmmm, should have gotten a discount, HA!)
Anyways, I have no gripes because she is wonderful. Her teaching methods are very, very good. She has a warm and enjoyable personality and a laugh that is contageous which makes you smile. She is patient when I mess things up, and allows me to repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat again stuff I don’t quite understand.

She prefers to use chinese only while teaching, but understnads when I can’t communicate in chinese and need to revert to english. (I am only level one). I was surprised when, during the first session with her, I opened my book and she told me to close it and put it away. She had made her own handouts explaining the material I was having trouble with…she said the book was worthless and had too many errors, was archaic, and boring. Her handouts are really good, border line ingenious.

I guess the most important thing is that I get what she teaches me. I have noticed an improvement in my own capabilities and actually had fun learning with her. I think she enjoyed it too because, often times, we would go well over the time I was paying for and I wasn’t charged anything extra.

I want her for my second semester as my classroom instructor, but she will be teaching level 3 only. Damn :rant: ! So, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping I end up with someone like her for level 2.

22

Someone mentioned earlier about reapeating a level so you can cruise one level behind your actual ability.

Sorry to say (at leat for my school) students can no longer repeat courses. You have to advance to the next level at the end of the semester…even if your score was a 60% (the lowest score you can get and still be allowed to stay at the school). :loco:

I challenged (politely) the office staff and director on this matter, and was told that it was in force because students were abusing the ability to repeat so they can “cruise” and not advance, thus obtaining a Visa or ARC via the school without any intention of seriously studying Mandarin.

IMHO, what do they care? A level 1 pays the same as a level 4 or any other level! 17000 NT is 17000 NT no matter how you get it. Seems a bit slef destructive to their school since a lot of folks will drop because they cant keep up; Thus loss of money for the school :loco:

23

Sandman, can’t say I would recommend Shi Da to you. The students are considered as being for the benefit of Shi Da, not the other way round. You will be patronised like a small child. It’s somewhere I would go if your Chinese was pretty good however as talking to them in English is pointless. The administration were startingly incompetent even by Taiwanese standards when I was there in 1995 and it seems nothing has changed.

I found Zheng Da in 1992 to be better with younger teachers but the admin department there was a fairly unpleasant experience. No matter where you go I think you will be treated like a small child. However in the early days of learning characters I do think a classroom environment helps. I also think that I would advise being taught in the early stages by a foreign teacher. I was taught to read my first few hundred characters by an Englishman (Head of Chinese Studies at my university) and it was a quick no-nonsense cramming session which worked. We did some oral training with a guy from Canton, and listening classes with another Englishman who was booted out of China during the CR. I would have to say it was all very effective. We learnt Hanyu Pinyin in five days and 20 characters a day. And I would have to say I think most people would agree that Leeds had a good record of turningdetermined monoglots into reasonably competent Chinese speakers. It’s all in the method. Confuse-us was NOT a good teacher hahaha. Once you get a smattering under your belt it gives you the confidence to go on. Who cares if it’s a gweilo or Canto speaker or crumbly old Marxist Worker teaching you? Do you really want to spend three months mearning Bo Po Mo Fo and how to say “xue” instead of “shoe eh?”

Then when you need to practise your tones babble incoherently at the wife. (Tones matter by the way. You haven’t learnt a character until you know what tone it is.)

Another thing about Shi Da from my time there was that the teachers vary widely in how much they give a damn. I had a brilliant young (40s) teacher for a whole term, and then some crumbly old Beijinger I couldn’t understand (after 5 years of Chinese!) so I left.

24

Derek, that’s great! But beware, it sounds like you might end up marrying her, hahahaha! (It does happen :stuck_out_tongue: )

25

Derek, that’s great! But beware, it sounds like you might end up marrying her, hahahaha! (It does happen :stuck_out_tongue: )[/quote]

Haha…i see your point. :laughing:

I have never cheated and never will, but the temptaion is surely there. :s

Plan B perhaps, if things don’t work out - relationship is still a bit young, but things are improving gradually.

26

A bilingual incoherent babbler? She’s going to just LOVE that! :laughing:

27

I just registered at ShiDa on Weds morning for the fall term. It was busy and annoying, but so much more painless than it could have been, after reading the OP’s experiences! In the previous month while deciding on a school, I found Miss Lin and Chris on the sixth floor to be very helpful and both seemed to have a sense of humor, too – I was dreading trying to deal with the “bitches” on the sixth floor (thread after thread on ShiDa mentions this) so I was actually so lost for words at being spoken to in English (after practising everything in Chinese) that at one point Miss Lin asked me if I could actually read English! I’d asked her about payments in Chinese, and all the information was clearly provided in English on the registration form she’d just handed to me! This is the kind of embarrassing thing that happens if you have bad expectations!

The only “problem” I had during registration was the woman I had my oral exam with on the stage. We were chatting about life and three times she corrected my “nan peng you” to “nu peng you” – as if I didn’t know the gender of my partner of five years. :loco: I patiently explained in Chinese that not all guys have girlfriends or wives, some have boyfriends. She looked like she’d just sucked on a lemon. Everyone else I dealt with during registration was polite and helpful.

Will post back here regularly with names of anyone I find helpful, useless or hateful at ShiDa! :wink:

28

So I went to “orientation” on the 31st and then went upstairs to line up to find out when and where my class was. Turns out my name was not on the list. So I went down to the maelstom of the office in order to find someone to talk to about this. After 10 minutes and 3 different desks later I was put in a chair And told to wait patiently while they went through EVERY paper record they had looking for my name and student number. Were it not for my trusty student card and receipt of fees paid I would not actually exist there. Finally, they sighed and asked me what class I would like. (which is what they should have done and signed me into at registration). So I got the class time I wanted, after all. Lucky me.

The next day I show up at my class to find a nice mix of different ethnicities and who seems to be a GREAT teacher. I feel very fortunate in this regard. This will be all review for me for a while, but that’s what I wanted because I have made a dog’s breakfast of my limited Chinese studies until now.

Note to self: try not to have expectations.

29

lol magnolia… “nu peng you”… :wink:

well… the 1st registration day was a hazzle, but it was ok i guess. But i just didn’t understand why we had to go through ALL those different posts… the oral examiner sucked though. the lady was rude and didn’t help at all. I found out later that she had made some really big mistakes concerning my schedule. I wasn’t able to find my schedule on orientation day! so i went to 6th floor to talk with the ppl there. Turns out that the oral examiiner had “forgotten” to take my papers, so i wasn’t in any classes - and at that time, the classes i wanted were full. and she tried to blame it on me!!! I’m rather fluent in chinese, so i wouldn’t let her blame it on me… so i started to talk to another lady, who was much more understanding, and knew that it wasn’t my fault. luckily, there were several other students behind me with the same problem. This oral examiner didn’t take any of our papers, so we simply had no classes. and since the admins don’t know english, i had to stand there and translate to the students behind me…

anyway… i got my schedule that day… and i had to try this new class. and you know what… I LOVE IT!! my classmates are great, we are all pretty much at the same level… all of us wanted to change to intensive class at first… but Now, none of us wants to leave. Our teacher is really good, and she is teaching us so much more than a textbook can ever do. So, in our class, we just chat in chinese all the time and run through the chapters. We made an agreement to step it up a notch, so we could learn more, and not pay the fee of an intersive-class.

So, i was !"#¤%&/£@$€ at Shi-Da on my first two-accounts, but despite the screw up, things are great… :slight_smile:

(i’m sure some of my classmates are in here… Waves )

30

Rant over. The classes are going swimmingly and there are lots of people there to practice with. There are lots of girls there to practice with. I’ve had some fun practicing my German and Spanish as well.

One of the things I missed out on in my time and previous studies here was putting any effort into immersing myself in the language. Must not make same mistake again. And there’s lots of girls to practice with.

31

[quote=“canucktyuktuk”]Rant over. There are lots of girls there to practice with. I’ve had some fun practicing my German and Spanish as well.

One of the things I missed out on in my time and previous studies here was putting any effort into immersing myself in the language. Must not make same mistake again. And there’s lots of girls to practice with.[/quote]
Wear protection.

32

Wow! I have a great class, too, with a range of nationalities and a competent and easy-going teacher who hasn’t once yet made a remark like “ALL foreigners do A” or “ALL Taiwanese do B”. I have a nagging suspicion that she might be too nice and it’ll be easy to coast, but that’s easily remedied by an attitude adjustment on the students’ parts and not her bad at all. On the whole, compared with CLD and the Chinese Culture University, I’m almost overjoyed! They should run a class on elevator etiquette that includes learning how to recognize directional arrows along with the bopomofo, though.

With canucktyuktuk and marri’s classes also better than expected, that’s at least three decent classes at Shi-Da this semester. Is that a record? :wink:

33

I was getting a bit worried at the start of this thread! I plan on enrolling for the courses beginning in December, and I sure hope I end up with one of the good teachers. Two of my friends (one Japanese, one Korean) are currently studying there, and they don’t have good things to say. Hopefully I’ll have a better experience.

34

I’m a bit of a lurker here… but I wanted to throw my 2 cents in… I read this thread shortly before coming to ShiDa and expected the worst, but I’m another person who has really had quite a good experience here thus far. Everyone has been very helpful, if a little busy–but no more than the admin folks at every other university I’ve been to. Perhaps if you’re not used to dealing with the chaos of uni registration in general ShiDa might be overwhelming, but all things considered I think they do a really good job of it. I’ve certainly had my fair share of confusion (I went back and forth between the library and the MTC building about 5 times today to photocopy various documents, retrieve forgotten umbrellas, etc), but my own stress level and clumsiness are more to blame than that of the professors/staff.

As far as actual class–it’s only been a couple days and I can already tell that this is the best Chinese class I’ve ever had. I am used to a class with 30 people, most of whom have plenty of Chinese speaking family members and are taking the class to learn to write/improve grammar/(worst case) for an easy A… here, there are about 9 people in the class–all have similar levels of experience, but we are also all from different countries. Using Mandarin is the only way to actually communicate effectively, but we are all overcoming our awkwardness about it together. The teacher is very helpful and kind, but doesn’t seem interested in letting anyone off easy.

From the chaos of things it seems completely possible to have a negative experience here, but based on my (and others) experience thus far, I wouldn’t get too frightened by the scary things mentioned in this thread… ShiDa is a university, not a torture chamber! No matter how strict the teachers are, surely the ultimate goal is for YOU to learn something! If that isn’t happening, it shouldn’t be too difficult to rearrange things…

getting an ARC, now THAT’s another matter (kidding, kind of)

alright, I suppose I’ll go back to lurking now…

35

Shi da is a fine school with a lot of great teachers. Don’t let the office staff scare you away, folks. But DO be careful. They have no idea what they’re doing.

A case in point: Last summer I missed 15 hours of classes during a single month, so I had to make a visa run to thailand during the academic break (poor me, right :sunglasses: ). Before I left I registered and paid my tuition for the coming semester. Before paying I tried to get the office staff to answer a simple question: would the school deny me admission based on my poor attendance during the previous semester?

“You pay yet? You pay over there.”

“No look see, I know tuition is non refundable so I want to make sure I’ll be admitted…”

You no pay? She take you money. Pay first, then register."

After 10 minutes of this I convinced one of them to look up my attendance record and give me a straight answer.

“Of course! No problem! Why you think that? We welcome everyone to come. You think too much.”

So I paid and left. Had a blast in Thailand.

So come the first day of the new semester I arrive early to pick up my class assignment. But wait! They can’t find it!

“You late over 15 hours…” shaking their heads sadly, now. “Office deny admission…”

“But I specifically asked you about this and you said no problem. You said no problem, I would definitely be admitted and you let me pay tuition thinking that was true.”

“Of course we let you pay, but…” now everyone is giving me the ‘crazy foreigner’ look. What’s this waiguoren so upset about?

In the end it worked out with some help from the foreigner who works in the office (David?). Apparently the school has a policy that they give you one pass on attendance violations.

If they have that policy, why’d they put a block on my admission in the first place?

Just to watch me squirm?

:fume:

36

Yes, the office peole are largely incompetent and they have no idea how to file things or anything. as far as their “rules” go, I’m sure they just do whatever they think is right at the time. If you annoy them enough they will do what you want them to.

After twice dealing with them over missing registration letters and not knowing where my class was and eventually getting a verbal “don’t worry, everything is OK” from them I parked my butt on a chair in the middle of the office and calmly demanded that they physically show me my papers that they should have had in the first place once and for all. After skooting from one desk to another (I refused to get up and just rolled in the chair) and having a group of them laughing at me in that annoying way chinese people do when they don’t know what to do, a helpful foreigner took 10 minutes of his time to explain what I wanted (even though i had already communicated this and they clearly didn’t want to be bothered with it) “Tee ehee-It’s no problem, see, you have a class” “yes, but I need to know that my paperwork is in order.” “tee hee of course it is!” “prove it by showing me. I’ll wait.” Finally one of them brought a two foot high stack of paper over (this is how they file things here) and told me to look in it myself.

I was #3 from the top.

I don’t know about you, but I NEVER let my papers get screwed up while living in a foreign country!!!

Luckily, I’m having a great time in the classes and taking full advantage of the other stuff they have there.

Somebody should teach the office people how to use a spreadsheet and a numeric filing system or something.

37

[quote=“beautifulspam”][quote]
Sandman, can’t say I would recommend Shi-Da to you. The students are considered as being for the benefit of Shi-Da, not the other way round. You will be patronised like a small child. It’s somewhere I would go if your Chinese was pretty good however as talking to them in English is pointless. The administration were startingly incompetent even by Taiwanese standards when I was there in 1995 and it seems nothing has changed.
[/quote]

Shi-Da is a fine school with a lot of great teachers. Don’t let the office staff scare you away, folks. But DO be careful. They have no idea what they’re doing.

A case in point: Last summer I missed 15 hours of classes during a single month, so I had to make a visa run to thailand during the academic break (poor me, right :sunglasses: ). Before I left I registered and paid my tuition for the coming semester. Before paying I tried to get the office staff to answer a simple question: would the school deny me admission based on my poor attendance during the previous semester?

“You pay yet? You pay over there.”

“No look see, I know tuition is non refundable so I want to make sure I’ll be admitted…”

You no pay? She take you money. Pay first, then register."

After 10 minutes of this I convinced one of them to look up my attendance record and give me a straight answer.

“Of course! No problem! Why you think that? We welcome everyone to come. You think too much.”

So I paid and left. Had a blast in Thailand.

So come the first day of the new semester I arrive early to pick up my class assignment. But wait! They can’t find it!

“You late over 15 hours…” shaking their heads sadly, now. “Office deny admission…”

“But I specifically asked you about this and you said no problem. You said no problem, I would definitely be admitted and you let me pay tuition thinking that was true.”

“Of course we let you pay, but…” now everyone is giving me the ‘crazy foreigner’ look. What’s this waiguoren so upset about?

In the end it worked out with some help from the foreigner who works in the office (David?). Apparently the school has a policy that they give you one pass on attendance violations.

If they have that policy, why’d they put a block on my admission in the first place?

Just to watch me squirm?

:fume:[/quote]

Ahhh, the ever so common evil office staff. Riddle me this:

Teachers are fair, but beware!
the office xiao jies are none to contend with.
If you value your head,
its best to be said,
leave your questions at the door
and your heart on the floor.
You are at the mercy of the office xiao jie.
She asks for your money,
dont even think for a second its funny;
give her a smile,
bend over in denial,
and prepare to be defiled,
for you are at the mercy of the office xiao jie!

Why is it that sooooooooo many foreign language schools have evil, rude, grumpy, pretentious office staff? :loco: Is it a prerequisite to get the job to be a complete b*tch?

38

What if the complaints were presented to a newspaper or the MOE rather than here?

39

it’s nothing new, Shi-Da has been run the same way for years. Everyone knows about the admins incompetence.

40

Hey, you’re a middle aged woman in a country where 25 is considered over the hill, the temporary job you took to mark time until prince charming showed up on his white horse has turned into your career, and those brad pitt lookalike foreign students you hoped to meet aren’t showing up like they were supposed to. You should have gone to nursing school like your sister, who is now married to a 7-foot tall harvard educated pediatric heart surgeon with a villa in paris, but it’s too late for you now, and your career has culminated in responsibilities that a coked-up monkey could handle on a bad day. Lao ba and lao ma are clammering for grandchildren but the only guy making eyes at you is your next door neighbor the blue slippered grandpa in a betel-stained wifebeater. Meanwhile those damned foreign teachers make 3 times what you do for half the work.

Are you bitter?