I found that I did my best when I was in a class of all Japanese classmates. I only quit my school because of money.
I am probably wrong, but I think writing is something you can study on your own. The speaking is what guidance is needed for.
You would have loved the all Japanese class I just switched out of, 5 Japanese girls, 1 Japanese guy and me, second day of class the example the teacher used was who has a big (da da) nose.
My Korean friend left Shi Da because she said the teachers favored the Japanese students over anyone else. She has now returned, since the great little school we were attending, CLD Perfect, got booted off the government’s list.
At CLD I had the most fantastic teacher, Ye Laoshi. She was young (27), full of energy, funny - and she taught us well. We weren’t allowed to give short answers as replies, had to make full sentences. She taught us loads of words that weren’t in the textbook, practical words to use in conversation (boy, did I learn some interesting words in that class). She got us talking, discussing all sorts of issues, and seeing the initially silent Japanese students open up and talk was amazing. Ye Laoshi helped me become a better listener, but she also helped me not to be afraid to talk. She didn’t make us write, and I’d practice that in my spare time, not enough, of course, but I did OK.
I was hoping that CLD Perfect would come to a new arrangement with the government, but that hasn’t happened, and now they’ve closed, saying their moving to a new, cheaper location. Looks like I have no choice but to enroll at Shi Da since it’s the only “legal” school I can afford (and it’s $5000 per semester more than I was paying before, ouch). I hope I’ll have a positive experience there, but as one of the older crowd, I certainly won’t have much patience with any teacher who treats me badly.
I once went to shida as I wanted to ask a few simple questions about their courses. Simple questions, politely put.
One robotic answer for EVERY SINGLE question:
“Come in on sign-up day, pay money, take test, we put you in class”
“Sorry, may I ask you: can I change classes later if I feel the class is unsuitable?”
“Come in on sign-up day, pay money, take test, we put you in class”
Etc etc.
Now call me strange but this kind of behavior towards a paying customer is unacceptable.
I’ll never go to a school where I have to put up with rude old hags who think they are the keepers to some forbidden kingdom of Chinese and all foreigners should be humbled to be in their presence.
dude,
don’t let them put you off, that’s the worst part of Shi-Da. You can change class after you have signed up. Look for a white guy sitting across from the ladies, his name is Chris and he can answer any question you might have. I am hardly a defender of Shi-Das attitude towards the students but you can get past that, if you really want a structured way of studying Chinese just swallow your pride and deal with them.
I hate to break your hearts, but I’m sitting in Chris’ living room right now (using his Internet too) and he no longer works for Shita. 
He must have got tired of dealing with angry, confused foreigners trying repeatedly to decypher the system there. For what it’s worth, thanks, Chris. Can’t say we blame ya!
[quote] Guess I’m a failure in the “real Chinese learning” department, but my accountant doesn’t seem to think so.
[/quote]
How is your personal income related to the argument I was making about Shi Da being a better place to study Chinese than Pioneer or TLI?
Another point that should be made is such Chinese buxibans were guilty in the past of serving as “visa schools.”
In addition to the perpetually hung over classmates I had at Pioneer, there were also the “visa students,” whom we would see once in a great while (before the trip to the foreign affairs police usually) talking to the secretary about how to convince the police they were actually studying at Pioneer and not doing something else. I’ll never forget the secretary trying to test the guys using Book 1 of Practical Audio Visual Chinese and telling them they should at least be able to speak a few words of Mandarin to the cops, or else the cops would be very suspicious.
I can’t say I shed a tear when the government cracked down on these places.
I think she meant her accountant is chinese and they communicate in mandarin. As for the schools closing why would you care if someone wastes their money by paying for the school but not showing up for the class ?
Personally I would have liked to have more choices in where I could study and I suspect so would a lot of other people. I know a lot of people who work in Taipei and would like to study chinese but once they have dealt with the staff at Shi-Da they go somewhere else.
It sucks about Chris leaving, I dealt with him when I was getting my application in and he was always very helpful.
[quote=“Etheorial”][quote] Guess I’m a failure in the “real Chinese learning” department, but my accountant doesn’t seem to think so.
[/quote]
How is your personal income related to the argument I was making about Shi-Da being a better place to study Chinese than Pioneer or TLI?
[/quote]
She means that she has learned Chinese well enough to make a very good living with it. Therefore what she thinks about the various schools here is worth listening to.
She’s running a business then, and I’ll take her word for it that she’s successful.
However that does not negate the fact that Shi Da is an established university here that offers an excellent program for learning Mandarin.
It seems there are people here that just want to complain about it.
For the money, it’s hard to find a better, more comprehensive program than Shi Da here.
It’s popular to criticize them for not being up to date, having “bad teachers,” poor service, etc. but in the end, they have no trouble filling classes, and once you get a teacher you have a solid semester of Chinese class, unlike Pioneer or T.L.I. where group classes suddenly end because half the students decide they’d rather teach some more hours at a buxiban or spend a few more mornings a week snoozing.
In general, the students Shi Da attracts are at least marginally more motivated than the typical student at one of the “language centers” here, and the reason is that it’s more of a commitment. You have to pay 18 grand up front and they won’t fudge your attendance sheet for you when you go to the Foreign Affairs Police. So you actually have to go to class if you want to stay here (what a novel idea)
So it doesn’t matter what sort of learning they provide for students, only that they can fill classes and you believe the students are “more motivated”. So it’s better to have a class that has nothing to do with your wants or needs, but be sure of being able to attend it every day, than to have something that suits your needs?
It’s paramount to have a “comprehensive program” even if it isn’t in line with your goals?
Whatever.
Saying the students at Shita are generally more motivated because they had to fork out 18K to sign up is kind of like using the argument that “I’ll exercise once I buy that expensive treadmill for my house.” Doesn’t make you exercise any more. It just means your clothes rack is that much more expensive.
If Shita is able to fill classes and keep a reputation as being “better” than all the other schools, it probably has far more to do with the fact that they are one of the oldest games in town, and even more so that they are affiliated with a National University (“guoli” instead of “sili”). That swings a lot of weight in a lot of circles, totally independently of what actually goes on in the institution.
I had to go to Shi Da last week to get some information for Ren Ai Hospital, because their staff didn’t know what kind of health check I needed (that’s a whole other tale, sheesh). After reading about the horrible office staff, I was understandably nervous, but to my surprise and joy I was helped by an extremely nice and capable young woman named Jenny, who spoke English. She’s one of the students there and works part-time in the office. She said she’s normally there in the mornings, and I’d like to recommend her to any of you who are intimidated by the other staff.
My friend who was with me is also a student at Shi Da, and she told me the woman who was at counter #5 was notorious for being a dragon lady. I’ll do my best to avoid her in the future.
Wear protection.[/quote]
Post of the year, sandman! 
Seriously, I’ve been lurking on this thread for a while, but have been loathe to post in it thus far as it’s been bogged down by bitching about the Shi-da admin staff. I’ve been studying here for nearly a year, and while each teacher is different, my Chinese is still far, far better than what it was when I started. There have been some interesting posts about language learning, so I’ll just comment on the posts I found noteworthy.
Actually, in almost four semesters at Shi-da, every teacher has had a completely different method for “ting xies”. Granted, I’ve moved up to a higher level each term since starting here (having begun at level 3), but still.
First term: Exactly as you described, the teacher would just dictate a passage from the textbook, maybe altered slightly to take out some of the harder characters. Not the best way to learn how to use characters, but it was good at getting me familiar with writing again, I needed to brush up on my knowledge of characters after a couple years’ absence from learning Chinese. This was the only term I had “ting xies” every day, the others were once a week.
Second term: This was really interesting. The teacher would say a sentence with the vocab word, and knock on the table when she got to the place the vocab word would be, and we would have to guess which word it was and write it correctly. She even knocked on the table the same number of times as there were characters in the word!
Third term: Probably the most innovative approach to “ting xie” of all. This was a higher level class with lots of chengyu, so what the teacher would do is either say a chengyu and we would have to use Chinese characters to write down the meaning in our own words, or, read out a word which we would have to use to make our own sentence with.
Current term: The teacher will read out sentences that we write out. Unlike the first term, the sentences are not taken from the textbook, but are along similar lines to the theme of that lesson and include several vocab words in one sentence. We do about 5-7 sentences in total. The good thing about this is that sometimes we do have to think which words do go in the spaces other than those taken up by vocab words.
Perhaps “ting xies” aren’t as pointless as we think!
In my second term, we did a lot of pattern drills - the teacher taught it quite effectively, she would make signs and put them up on the board, with the first part of the sentence written out, then would have us complete the sentence with words from the text. It didn’t need to be exactly the same as the text, but I think she could have been more innovative in coming up with different ways to use the pattern.
‘Organised eclecticism’ in what sense, Buttercup? I think this sounds really interesting.
Ah, I feel an intrinsic v extrinsic motivation debate coming on! 
You are right, of course. Though sadly I have to admit that extrinsic forces do play some part people’s motivation to study, whether it be because you had to fork out 18K, or to keep getting the grades you need to continue receiving a scholarship, to increase your chances of finding a non-English teaching job in Taiwan, or even so you can communicate better with your significant other 
(not speaking from experience on that last one, I’m afraid.)
Thanks, I will tell her when I see her. (She’s in the classroom next to mine LOL)
Hey, I wrote heaps, and no-one has gotten stuck into what I wrote yet. Get on with it! 
Wow, Taipei Swan you’ve waited 4 years for a reply to a post that you put so much work into. So let me the one to say your post really gets me pumped to take some tingxie tests. There, hope that was worth the wait!
I found that I did my best when I was in a class of all Japanese classmates. I only quit my school because of money.
I am probably wrong, but I think writing is something you can study on your own. The speaking is what guidance is needed for.[/quote]
I agree absolutely. Writing the characters is time-consuming but easy, and you can teach yourself. That was the disappointment for me at ShiDa. All the time spent on doing things I can do just as well or better all by myself.
I also despise the use of English (or any language other than the one being studied) to teach Mandarin, but the structure of the textbooks here make it inevitable, and they (tend to) make teachers lazy. When I studied in Cologne, from day one of the beginner level class we were not permitted to use any other language than German in class, nor were we allowed to consult a dictionary. It required work and focus on everybody’s parts, but a month later I was arguing with my Egyptian classmate about al Qaida in German.
Focusing on characters and using English to explain grammar and definitions (even though spoken English was kept to a minimum) makes it easy for the teachers primarily. And, it is not fair for students who do not speak English. And, I cannot believe this is still done at intermediate and advanced levels. Then the unending stream of boring, disjointed, condescending dialogues in the textbook. Of course, if you are highly driven or intelligent, poor teaching will hardly hold you back for very long, but I am not so lucky!
The straw that broke the camel’s back for me, however, was when we had three days left before the semester test, we had finished all the units ahead of schedule, and then we were given a pile of review worksheets to do in class. Just once to have something that was a bit more interesting and not squeezed out of the textbook would have been a nice break from cramming characters, vocab, and grammar. I had already worked my posterior off and knew the material inside out and looked forward to doing some authentic material or something to that effect, and the idea that we were just going to review, take a test, and start another round the next semester was too much for me.
After three months, I knew some more characters, vocab, and grammar, but my speaking barely improved. As an English teacher, I know how much progress can be made if you have a class of eight committed students for two hours a day who are willing to do a bit of homework (never mind the hours of compositions I did each day). At the bare minimum, I think one can say without question that the Mandarin courses on offer at ShiDa and elsewhere, I suspect, do not qualify as an efficient system for teaching languages.
Having said that, my teacher was very pleasant and likable, and it could have been worse.
Rant over.
[quote=“Buttercup”]Did a year and a half at Shi-Da and a year and a half with a 1 to one teacher; 5 hours a week, with a big stretch in the middle when I was being a lazy beast. Shi-Da actually suited me quite well. The best teacher I had was Fan laoshi who actually co-wrote the second AV Chinese book. Rote-learning was good for me at first. I think part of language learning is just programming auto-responses into your brain wiring.
Now I have a really good teacher who prepares loads of interesting material for me; DVDs, newspaper articles, etc. I wouldn’t dream of giving that up and going ‘back’ to school.
This was my route, but I really do agree with ironlady’s position on studying the four skills together. I see it so often in English teaching in Taiwan also; children who speak no English learning ‘phonics’. It’s moronic. Ting xie tests are crap; completely pointless.
I actually have a basis for comparison as I have also studied Thai, where I didn’t go to school at all. My tones are crap in Thai and find it much more difficult than Chinese. The main benefit of Shi-Da for me was that my teacher wouldn’t accept bad pronunciation. Although I’m not perfect, I have a decent basis.
Anyway, I could write loads of thoughts about this but it’s all pretty subjective stuff…[/quote]
This is funny, I had Fan Lao-Shr as well, she was a real battle-axe but I loved her in the end and she did care about teaching. She made us translate her AV Chinese book( before she published it) into English for our homework assignments. So if any of the English instructions are fucked up you can blame me for that. No need to hire professional translators when you have a 5 students to do the work for you for free! I did 4-6 fucking hours of homework A DAY. My other classmates were two Georgetown students on scholarships who were born with silver spoons up their asses and two Russian scholarship students who had been studying Chinese for years in Soviet Diplomatic Missions Language Factories of The People. One of the Russians looked like that Draco guy in the Rocky movie.I was teaching 6-8 hours a day on top of this. Teacher Fan would always say in the mornings,“You look so tired you should get more rest and drink hot water.”
I couldn’t figure out how they chose me to be in this group, I think my Bo Pe Mo Fe was good or something.
I was 26 years old and was considered the “Old man” of the group. This was before the new classrooms were built and the ceiling material would fall on the table during class. A lot of the other teachers were old. I don’t mean elderly, I mean ancient. In the States they’d be propped up in bed in an old folks home filled with meds watching the Price Is Right. They needed their time to get their pensions I guess. I used to have 5 or 6 dictionaries-most of them worthless, no computers, no useful internet, no electronic dictionaries. I had to ask my language exchange partner to teach me how to use a dictionary because they never did teach me at Shi Da. The dictionaries were in Wade-Giles, Zhu Ying, and Ping Yin. I didn’t take me long to figure out that the Chinese didn’t know how to teach their language and that it wasn’t of big concern to them that anyone else should learn their language. Those were the days whenever a Taiwanese person had a grievance with any particular country they’d go to Shi Da to take it out on the students. The secretaries were nasty back then too. I transferred to Zhen Da and it was Muslim paradise. The classrooms were clean, modern and comfortable, the teachers were friendly and prepared, materials were new and the staff there were so nice to me I used to drop by years after just to say hello to them. Zhen Da changed from a quarterly to a semester system which was too expensive for a lowly Engrish teacher salary.