I’m a 35-year-old woman from London, I’ve been teaching English full-time in Taiwan for one year (before that, I lived and taught in Hong Kong for 5 years).
I want to stay in Taiwan for the foreseeable future, therefore I want to study mandarin (although I love living here, I’m starting to feel frustrated by the language barrier, and self-studying isn’t getting me very far).
I’ve been thinking about enrolling on a mandarin course starting in August, when my current job contract ends. However, it seems that language students must present proof of having studied that language for one year, in order to get a work permit.
I can’t afford to study without working, for one year!
If there is no way around this, I guess I’ll never be able to learn mandarin properly, which is quite a depressing thought.
Does anyone have any insights on this issue? Googling hasn’t provided much clarification, just thought I’d ask here, before contacting the authorities.
I’d you just want to speak Chinese sufficiently, you need to find LOTS OF input that you MOSTLY understand, perhaps a good podcast with dialogues and explanations. You’ll learn better that way than trying to cram through textbooks. You will need to get to the starting point with a bit of brute force though.
If you want to read and write, ask someone else. I never even tried.
If you want to study at school, aren’t there any schools that provide courses during your non working hours, or vise versa?
Full time for English teachers can be 14 hours, so I think you can learn on a work ARC.
Not sure where you’re teaching but buxibans are after school so you can teach English in the afternoons/evenings, and go to Mandarin class in the morning. I did it for several years. If you really want to learn beyond basic conversation, you’ll have to learn to read and write and IMO a classroom is best suited for that. They’ll teach which characters are the most important to learn in the beginning. Then once you attain a certain level of fluency you can self study by just reading whatever you’re interested in.
Progress is very slow with self-studying, at this rate, it will be years before I’m conversational. If I already had the basics in place, it might be easier. But I’m starting from nothing, and it just feels very difficult and inefficient.
@tando and @Malasang88
Good points, thank you. It seems easier to study while on a work visa, than work on a student visa. This is definitely a good option (although I was really hoping to quit in-person teaching and start doing it online, I don’t think I can get a work visa to do this).
Great thread! I’m interested in working whilst on a student visa in the future also. I didn’t know you had to study for one year to be eligible for a work permit! I thought you had to prove that your course was one year or more than one year long, can someone confirm? Thanks!
Definitely study while on a work visa. If you’re not required to be in everyday at certain times and can have a flexible schedule, you can go to class in the morning and work in the afternoon.
