Originally Posted by moondog

I found the classroom instruction I received at my university in the US to be far better than its equivalent. Granted I did the drill in a forgotten era when most of the textbooks were abominable (including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton), but the teachers just weren't very engaging. IMO if your goal is to learn the language in order to communicate in business and social settings, plus read newspapers and watch TV (as opposed to preparing to enroll in a PhD program at Peking University), getting a reasonably solid background before arriving and using your time in China to apply it in real life is the way to go.