I’ve done 6 quarters at the NTNU MTC: the first two when I was an exchange student, and then, quote unquote:
so I’ve been there, done that. 
Then I came back on Taiwan Scholarship, which meant I was restricted to government-mandated programs and I stepped in the same Shida again because I thought (a) this is where the most motivated people went and (b) I would have a wider selection of more advanced classes, which would benefit me. Only later did I realize how wrong I was, i.e. (i) I was learning the most on my own, (ii) the more advanced class was still a time-waster (although in the following quarters I switched to better teachers), (iii) apparently the most motivated students of Chinese are South East Asian people (such as Vietnamese), who are discouraged by the high tuition at the NTNU MTC and go to other places (such as Wenhua).
Digression, and excuse the blatant generalization: in studying with “non-Western” people, there’s also the benefit (to you) that their English is generally more limited so there’s no option other than to communicate in Chinese, even during breaks. They need to learn the language because they’re staying in Taiwan, not going anywhere, and they’re putting a lot of their own money towards it. The NTNU crowd, on the other hand, are mostly Europeans and Americans (“ABCs,” etc.) who will be leaving Taiwan eventually and thus have less pressure to learn the language: their stay in Taiwan is more vacation-like and they want to have some fun as well (not that there’s anything wrong with it). Also, for most European or American people who make it to Taiwan, $30,000 per quarter is hardly a lot of money, so there isn’t so much financial pressure either.
Back to the NTNU, it can be reasonable if you get a good teacher, but these are few and far in between. From the rest, you need to run, and I mean RUN. There’s a limited timeframe to change classes and the best-informed can push their luck but eventually many people stay with the mediocre teachers just because all the good groups they could have moved to have filled up.
Then there’re the 5 ass-hours a week you need to spend doing time in “large-group classes,” which are by and large a collective exercise in wasting time (more precisely, there will be 1-2 somewhat interesting “large-group classes” every quarter but it’s likely they either collide with your regular classes or add up to less than 5 hours per week and then you still need to attend some of the rest, which are crap). Of course, to mitigate this problem you can take “culture classes,” which are likely better, or go for an “intensive” course which meets the 15 hours/week requirement but this is all extra tuition (the first two quarters I did were actually intensive and I recommend it for beginners, the group goes much faster because the “intensive” label and higher price tag weed out the unmotivated people; thing is, above a certain level there aren’t really enough people to sign up for an intensive class anymore).
I don’t have first-hand experience with Wenhua and wouldn’t expect it to be some sort of paradise. On the contrary, knowing what I know about the educational system here, I guess it suffers from exactly the same problems as Shida but hopefully at least the toilets are cleaner because it’s in a newer building.
I was actually considering switching to Wenhua from Shida in the middle of my Taiwan Scholarship program but I reluctantly stayed as it would have been a bureaucratic nightmare to abandon ship (as foreign student in Taiwan you’re bound to your place of study very much like a mediaeval serf to his feudal lord).
How much would that cost for how many hours of lessons a week?[/quote]
I’ve no idea, as I’ve never really had this option. Perhaps other people can shed some light? Taiwan’s famous for cheap labor though, so a more appropriate question to ask would be: “how to find a quality tutor?” Not that I know the answer to this one either.
My mindset was that I actually wanted to see all these places and took it as an opportunity. If you have zero interest in the region, an airfare to Manila can be less than $1000 one way, and the flight is less than 2 hours, so I would say it beats queueing up in the Immigration Agency.
Even if you register at Shida, all you’ll get is a 60-day visitor visa, which you need to extend, twice. Then, you can convert it to a residence permit (ARC), hopefully valid until the end of your stay but possibly expiring on the last day of your classes. That adds up to at least 4 visits to the Immigration Agency, each time with a lot of supporting documents, such as transcripts, attendance records, etc., with the possibility that you still need to do a visa run towards the end of your year of studying if you wanted to stay a little longer to do some sightseeing, etc. Also, extensions are free (just cumbersome) but visas and ARCs are not.
[quote=“loqo19”]I think I could make more progress if I am surrounded by Chinese speaking persons. […]
I have been in Mainland China several times, so I’m really curious about Taiwan […].[/quote]
I think it’s a good idea to come here, you’ll be learning much faster. Not necessarily in class though. Since you’ve already been to China, Taiwan seems like an obvious choice (if this were your first trip you could debate the pros and cons of starting to learn Chinese in either of the two places).
Hilarious 