Where to learn Mandarin in China?

[AmourChina]

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.....

[Charly1967]

I managed to get 8 weeks holiday last year and spent them in Beijing learning Mandarin after years of trying to learn this language online. I think you are doing the right thing - intensive study in a Chinese language envrionment is the only thing that will give you real progress - unless you are some language wizzard who can learn how to speak from just studying grammar rules.

 

I spent almost half a year planning my trip, there are a lot of different options. After talking to just about every single language school in China I chose LTL in Beijing (http://www.livethelanguage.cn/learn-chinese-beijing/), because a) their website looks professional and b) they were very helpful with answering questions and support with the planning (they also have staff who can speak proper English, which helped a lot).

 

If you are looking for a recommendation, I can recommend them. My teachers were very good (not just some Chinese person who goes through a book with you, but real full-time, trained teachers), the school well organized (it is run by a German...) and they are very helpful and supportive once you are there. The school is not that big and has a very personal feeling to it, which made for a nice and relaxed studying environment.

Even though I am in my 50s, I chose the homestay option, which meant that my "homestay parents" were not that much older than myself. It worked out very well though, the food was great, the apartment nice and I ended up speaking pretty much nothing but Mandarin all day at home.

 

I am still not fluent (not did I expect to become fluent in 2 months, though it remains my final goal), but I got a lot closer to it during those eight weeks than I thought I would.

[Guest ExChinaExpat]

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.....

 

You appear to have already realized that trying to learn Mandarin from a Chinese partner can be compared with spinning your wheels on ice while facing an angry lion face to face. There are also hundreds of Chinese students who know a little English and think for this reason they can teach a native English speaker Chinese. That also doesn't work out so well.

 

Another issue is one-on-one classes. These are good for starting to learn, but the lacking ingredient are peers to challenge and support you. Since you are working, and have limited mobility and flexibility you would be better off to find something in your current area. Yes, you could try traveling to another city and finding a course, but you've said you only have three months for that.

 

In the end, it's your stick-to-it-tiv-ness that is the deciding factor. To learn Mandarin requires an every day commitment that means you've got to be a self-starter who practices every single day without fail. If you want to find a teacher try checking with Nanjing University, Jiangsu province. They have a Masters degree course that focuses on teaching Western foreigners Mandarin.

 

There are online courses available like www.newconceptmandarin.com, which for a few extra bucks will provide an online teacher. They are not bad, but can be a little pricey. Depending on where you are living, you may want to seek out a Western-born fluent Mandarin speaker who is willing to teach. There are advantages to working with a native English speaker.

 

Finally, there are many young Western students who go to China specifically to study Chinese at the university level. These students can be a good resource to helping you find a teacher or get new input. You can seek them out by calling or contacting the universities in cities like Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing.

Edited January 27, 2014 by ExChinaExpat (see edit history)

[tsap seui]

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.....

Hot damn, I am IMPRESSED!!! With a driven determination like you have, willing to take 3 months off of work, leave your wife in America, and go to China to laser focus on studying Mandarin...you can't help but succeed. My hat is off to you, what a spirit.

 

I'd love to be able to sit and talk with my in-laws, and brother in-laws...tell them my admiration and love for them, and hear their stories from ago. But, they don't have much time left on this old dirt clod, ma and ba that is, and it would take my feeble brain decades of study. LOL

 

Good luck on your venture. I am truly impressed beyond anything I have ever read.

 

tsap seui

[AmourChina]

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.

[dnoblett]

I added the "Mandarin" tag to this topic notice the additional similar topics below.

 

http://candleforlove.com/forums/tags/forums/Mandarin/

[tsap seui]

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.

Good luck man, you sure impressed me with your dedication to your goal.

 

tsap seui

[Charly1967]

I have not been to their Shanghai school, so cannot comment on that. I personally recommend Beijing because in Shanghai they speak Shanghaihua and heavily accented Mandarin so the practicing environment is better in Beijing. I am not really sure how a homestay in Shanghai would work as I believe most people speak Shanghaihua at home.

Depends where you want to go to of course, but if it is mainly for learning Mandarin then Beijing is probably the better choice.

[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.

[Randy W]

A new "word of the day"-type page from the Shanghaiist, on both Facebook and Weixin(WeChat)

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/Everyday-Chinese-with-Shanghaiist-1305595592841509/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf

 

Everyday Chinese: Asking for and giving opinions - http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0YMI8W_U9qss0oFnz_bqng

[Randy W]

Expression of the day - http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JeAY9ysUUfjfppCmdB8oQg

 

狗带
gǒu dài
“Go die”

 

狗 (gǒu) means “dog”, but 狗带 (gǒu dài) has absolutely nothing to do with dogs.

It has entered popular usage these days among youngsters because it sounds like “go die”. You can use the phrase if you want to tell a friend to “go to hell” in a half-joking manner. Definitely not recommended for use when speaking with a stranger.

⊙A: Can you lend me 1000RMB?

B: Go die.

A: 你可以借我1000块钱吗？

B: 狗带。

A: nǐ kě yǐ jiè wǒ 1000 kuài qián ma?

B: gǒu dài.

⊙Boy: You are really fat!

Girl: Go die!

Boy: 你真胖啊！

Girl: 狗带！

Boy: nǐ zhēn pàng a!

Girl: gǒu dài!