I’m considering enrolling in a Chinese language program at SHIDA or other reputable universities in Taipei to advance my Mandarin.
Does anyone have any comments/suggestions/advice etc please?
Thanking you in advance!
Yeah. Don’t go to Shida.
Shida is far from reputable. Unprofessional is more like it.
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Wow what’s going on there these days? Did you post anything on it?
I did. A while back.
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Same as it ever was 吧
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beautiful sentence
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I went to Shida for 2 semesters as an intermediate student back in 2005. It really is the gold standard in terms of measurement. If a student has attended 2 semesters without knowing any Chinese, they will be functional. It takes 3 years of classes to be 100% fluent. They support both bopomofo and pinyin which was helpful to me not to have to learn an additional phonetic system
Pros: I learned from other students (from Japan and Korea) how to study Chinese. Once I did it there way with flash cards, giving myself listening and writing tests to quickly learn each chapters vocabulary, then participating in class was extremely valuable.
Cons: I was in an awful class with an old bat who was quite mean. Every few days, someone would drop out. Just listening to her berate people was so painful especially at 8am in the morning. This was still a learning experience for me and helped me understand what it can be like to be a student here. I was going to leave the school and when I went to the registrar, they offered me a new class choice. That was where all the students went to! Her class was full and she really enjoyed teaching.
Another issue is that I am so busy with work and the entire rigmarole of getting in and out of the school took too much time.
If you can’t commit to Shida, I’d recommend others on Roosevelt Road that cater more to working professionals.
If you do the work, you will learn. Usually when people don’t make progress, it’s because they’re unable to trust the teacher’s advice about needing to read, write, speak, and listen.
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I couldn’t disagree any more than I possibly could. Their standard is a turd wrapped in gold flakes.
My first two semesters left me barely functional. That’s being generous.
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I think the philosophy of language schools here is they provide you with the foundation, and the materials to develop further in your own time between classes. If you have 2 class hours per day, you need to be spending another 4 hours taking in the language and practicing in other ways, maybe flash cards, graded readers, or podcasts and TV shows at the higher levels.
Like any kind of education, you only get out what you put in I suppose
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Definitely put in lots to get out little with their shortcuts. I did the three hour class. Could barely string sentences until the third book.
I pay people to teach me Chinese and the suggestion is to go learn it outside.
Why am I paying them?
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I had a similar issue at a Kaohsiung university famous for language studies over a decade ago. The teacher was middle aged but was putting most effort on teaching writing. She also refused to use any English in class as a policy even in first basic class. I had trouble writing and so she would make rude comments publically about me in class berating me for slowing them down despite the class being full of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese students who could all read and write characters already.
I was already disliking said school but the final straw was when they broke an existing agreement for payment. They had a special deal with me to allow 3 instalment payments and then midterm decided that they weren’t going to honour that arrangement and demanded the cash up front or get out. I told them if they did that I wouldn’t renew. they didn’t care and still wanted the cash up front so I finished that semester and left. Long story short I learned more Chinese outside with friends than that class.
The teacher ended up running off with an adult student back to the USA lol
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Highly unlikely anyone achieves 100% native fluency in three years of study. Obviously depends on the individual but 100% fluency means no discernible accent no missed tones complete vocabulary and instant recall.
Three years I would expect the ability to hold your own in a conversation with the occasional checking of meaning of unfamiliar terms or phrases.
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My simple advice to you:
If you are really serious about learning, go to the south, like the CLC at NCKU in Tainan or any other center in a city that does not have many English-speaking residents. Not only are the teachers good, but you will be forced to speak Chinese outside of the classroom too. Taipei is too international and most of the people I have met who have studied at CLCs in Taipei spend most of their time speaking English outside of class. Learning a language is more about the immersive experience outside of class than it is in class. You’ll thank me later. Good luck.
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I promise you the only philosophy of language schools here is to make as much money as humanly possible. I spent nearly a decade not going near Chinese learning because of the awful and counterproductive habits they (all but one Chinese teacher I’ve ever had) instilled in me. It turns out you shouldn’t be memorizing lists of 50 random words out of context. It turns out you need to keep seeing words and sentence patterns over and over again in different contexts to get a feel for them. There is literally not a language school on this planet that teaches this. “Chinese is hard”. No, teachers take something that you brain can handle easily and they MAKE it hard, then the school makes lots of money because you think you need them in order to succeed.
I recommend OP look into strategies for language learning that actually work, like comprehensible input, shadowing, and graded readers. Get a tutor and tell them what you need. You’ll save money and the desire to throw your textbook at your teacher.
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I didn’t say native fluency. I’m talking literate. Read write speak listen at a professional level.
If you don’t have a job, and dedicate yourself to language, you can do it in 3 years.
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For every two hours of class time, you have to study 4 hours to prepare.
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Correct! I could only give it 70% as I was working long hours at a tech company. So I understood that my score would not be perfect.
I went from failing to 70% and my Japanese study partners couldn’t understand how I was satisfied with that. It was a tough but great experience at that time in my life. I wouldn’t go back but I wouldn’t change anything.
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No English should be used when learning a new language. Just like any language, you have to write out your spelling words. Chinese is no different. Writing will help you learn faster especially with Chinese as after about chapter 4, sounds start to repeat which makes it hard to differentiate with reading words.
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As a student, I give the university an educational mandate that it should fulfill. An appropriate ability to express oneself in writing and orally within a certain teaching period.
In my opinion, the distribution of this task should be 70/30, so 70 is teacher and 30 is student.
I studied at Shida and Chinese Culture University many years ago, but not much has changed. The others are right that Shida is a waste of money and they’re probably still using the same textbook for the past 30 years and reading the textbook back to you. Locals will recommend that school because it’s the only one they’ve ever heard of. I’d take their recommendation with a grain of salt.
Chinese Culture University was much better for smaller class sizes and more attentive teachers.
And no you won’t be fluent in 3 years. Conversational perhaps but not fluent.
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