Originally Posted by
dtsm
Sorry, but disagree. It 'putonghua' which is taught in both Taiwan and China, and they don't differentiate betw N, S or Taiwan. Both in Taiwan and Mainland, they still teach the rolling 'r' but on the streets where you practice, depends on your location. If you're in beijing, it will definitely be more accentuated then if you're in say shanghai or taipei (and definitely in kaohsiung).
Southern taiwan is a lousy place to study because major dialect spoken is actually taiwanese. Best place, imho, remains National Taiwan University, site of the former 'stanford' program (which has since moved to mainland, tsinghua u). My former classmates in grad school all went through there, and many of them are lao wai who are tenured Asian Lit and Lang professors stateside. And they still believe NTU remains tops....
Actually there are differing opinons on this.
First of all, most universities use "Practial Audio Visual Chinese" curriculum developed by National Taiwan Normal University including NTU in the North and NCKU in the South.
I was a student at both NTU and NCKU in the Mandrin program. In background, I am native English and Japanese speaker. At NTU the class sizes are about 20-30 per class (2005) and after class there was no need to speak / practise chinese. Most students were Japanese, American, Canadian and British with a few other nationalities represented. In Taipei, you can get by not speaking Chinese. Go to movies, resturants, clubs and most businesses you can communicate using English/japanese or they can find someone who can speak english/japanese readily.
In the south, different circumstance.
NCKU uses the SAME program your friends used at NTU. Class sizes as of 2007 is limited to a max of 10. There is less foreign influence in the south. More south Asians and Europeans. You must use the chinese you are learning. It is more difficult to order food, call a taxi and negotiate a price without Chinese.
You are correct that in the south there is a Taiwanese dialect spoken frequently by the
older population but a vast majority of the younger / university crowd speaks Mandrin.
Personally I feel that instruction at a school is important but constant pressure to use what you are learning is what helps you to learn faster. I have learned as much outside the school as in.