AmourChina

I just finished the course. It ended up at to be two months though because I couldnt get more time of work. I followed Charly's suggestion and went to LTL in Beijing. The whole thing was quite an experience. First, I had tried to learn Chinese for a while, but honestly never really got beyond simple greetings and telling people I do not want to eat dog meat. I would love to be fluent but as I only had two months and am not 20 years old anymore, I decided to aim for being able to function normally in everyday situations, make polite easy small talk during dinner with relatives and maybe have little easy conversations with others. The school recommends to live with a homestay family which I decided against as I have plenty of that with my in laws when we visit them. I started out with an intensive course, which meant four hours of class in a group and then another two hours of individual tuition afterwards. That was a pretty intense program but I wanted to get as far as possible within the time I had. Classes I was quite surprised but I quite enjoyed being a student again and learning Mandarin. A lot of the other students were a lot younger than me, but I was happily surprised that there were several students of a similar age (I am 41) or just a little bit younger than myself. I had not studied anything for a very long time so I was a bit worried about getting into this again. It turned out to be better than I thought though. Studying for six hours a day is exhausting, but I am used to long hours from work and the sense of achievement when for the first time a taxi driver understands what you say makes it all worth it. Our group class was quite small with four students which I found a good size to have some company but still giving everyone the time to speak and ask questions. Both my teachers were very good, not just from a professional point of view but also making the lessons fun and engaging. Learning Having tried to study Chinese for a while I thought this would give me a little headstart but this was not really the case. I had never been able to get my head around tones and used them wrong. It took me and my teacher a long time to improve those and I think this would have been easier if I had never tried to say them myself but had started with a real teacher from the start. Life Beijing is obviously a very big city and being away from the family was a bit of a problem but in the end my wife supported me with the whole thing as if it was not for her I wouldn’t be doing the whole thing anyways. I lived in a small apartment arranged by the school which was ok because it was close to the school and clean. Most of the other students I met lived in homestays, which seems to be a school speciality there and I could see the value in it. Having a real life practice partner who cannot speak English so you are forced to use whatever you learned would have been good. If I manage to get time off again, I think I might try living with one of the school’s “families”. School LTL has been really good, thanks a lot for the recommendation @Charly. Accommodation, organization, payment and visas went all smoothly but the most important part for me were the teachers. My wife tried to teach me for a while, but a trained teacher is just a lot more effective. They are a good bunch of people and the atmosphere is very relaxed which made the whole thing often feel more like a holiday rather than “going to school”. I also quite liked that it was not just people in their twenties studying there. I went to visit my wife’s family afterwards with her and think I achieved my targets. Her dad was very impressed (or at least pretended to be….) with my Chinese and I felt it made a big difference to them that I am trying to learn Chinese. Of course I am still far away from being able to normally communicate with them, but just being able to organize every day things like buying train tickets, ordering food and so on made my life a lot easier. At the end of the course I took an HSK exam and passed level two without any problems. Hopefully will be back for more next year, my aim is to reach at least HSK 4 and be able to have normal conversations with the family.

Thanks for the replies! @Charly1967: thanks for the recommendation, LTL sounds good. They seem to have a school in Shanghai too, have you ever been there? Or is Beijing simply better because they speak the better Mandarin there? @ExChinaPat: thanks. I tried studying online previously, but that's just not for me, but will check Nanjing @tsap seui: thanks for the encouragement. I am not sure how far I will get in three months, but will report back afterwards. I am sure it will be tough, but I am also looking forward to it.

I find http://www.nciku.com a great dictionary, though somehow their website recently is not that reliable anymore.

I decided it is time to really learn Mandarin. I tried taking courses online, I tried to get my wife to teach me, I tried three different books and none of those really got me anywhere. I want to be able to talk to my parents in law and understand what our children say to their mother when they grow up. I have a full time job, so taking a year off is not an option, however I think I can get 3 months from my boss at the end of this year and I want to spend them studying intensively in China. I am not sure when I will have the opportunity to study full time for that long again (if ever during my working life), so I really want to make the most out of that time. Anyone has any suggestions for a good, intensive and well run language program in China? I am open to going anywhere, but would prefer studying in a Mandarin speaking area to be able to practice speaking and listening on the street. I would be going alone, as I know if my wife comes I will only end up speaking English with her again.....

I tried Rosetta Stone and that was really useless. ChinesePod is a lot better, but I think I need a real person to teach me (my wive is useless when it comes to speaking slow Mandarin with me)