Chinese language immersion school recommendation?
 

Hi. I am thinking of trying to learn Chinese, and assume the best way is to start with an immersion course of study. FORBES magazine recently wrote about this school:

http://studyinblcu.com/lxs/_02001

Anyone know about how good this is? A 4-week class for about $1000 was mentioned. How much can a person learn in that time?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated, including other schools that are good, thanks.

Be realistic. You're not going to learn much in 4 weeks, at least much that "sticks." If you want to start learning Chinese, do it where you are now. I wouldn't advocate coming to China specifically to learn Chinese unless you're willing to put at least a full summer or equivalent of a semester in, minimum. And I recommend you don't come to China knowing zero Chinese. At the very least, in your current location, find a class or Chinese (Mandarin-speaking) university student now, and have them tutor you in the basics of sound system, pronunciation, common greetings, numbers, etc. You'd get more out of a China-based course if/when you do go. Chinese is not a good language for trying to learn completely on your own, as you'll likely develop bad habits of incorrect pronunciation and intonation without a native speaker to correct you and model speech for you.

BLCU was one of the first universities to teach Chinese foreign students, so it's famous. I attended in 1987 but it's not a good choice any more. Too many distractions and other foreign-language speaking students around....especially those that are just in Beijing to have a good time. If you want to be in Beijing, Beijing Normal University has smaller foreign student population that are more serious, and quality of instruction is supposedly better. Make sure that any University-based course you are considering is focused on speaking/listening if that's what you want...as opposed to reading and writing. I don't think any of the Uni-based courses are best for people with absolutely zero Mandarin. There are also private, non-Uni based language schools and some of them are pretty good. Advantages are that you get personal instruction (can set up as one-on-one or cheaper, join with a small group), and they tend to focus on speaking and understanding unless you specifically request reading/writing also. The schedules are more flexible and short courses they can set up/already have set up, but the per-hour cost is normally higher than Uni-based courses.

It's very difficult for a beginner to do complete true "immersion" classes in Chinese, as it's just not efficient to communicate instructions etc. to people who know nothing. Generally what happens is that after several months and increase in level/ability, the interstitial foreign language prompting/explanations go away and things are pretty much done in Chinese only. I say months, not weeks. As for general immersion, being in China should be enough as long as you are motivated and don't spend 100% of your free time with other foreign students. And there are other places you can go to learn Chinese besides Beijing (which has the disadvantage of being fairly expensive place to live), though I'd tend to choose something in the north for your first round, as Mandarin pronunciation is closer to "standard" and will be easier to understand when out on the street practicing. If you can stand the cold in the winter (or won't be there in the winter), Harbin up in the far northeast is a very good place to go and learn beautiful clear Mandarin. And you won't have the distractions of Beijing.

Again though, be realistic about how little Chinese you'll really know at the end of 4 weeks, though of course your opportunities to practice in the field will be unlimited. I think you'll be better off and cheaper starting at home and seeing if it's for you and how committed you really are....saving an in-China language course for later.

Wow, thanks for all this excellent information, this is terrific. Very thoughtful of you.

Sounds like a long-term project.

I've thought about subscribing to a Mandarin channel on satellite/cable TV and starting with listening to children's programs. My wife is a professor at the U of Chicago and I should try to find some Chinese students there to have beers with.

How about a largish Chinese conurbation...London? ;)

http://www.soas.ac.uk/languagecentre/

My son was at BLCU for 1.5 years, spent another year at a Peking University in their pre-university program and is now in his first year of "regular" college studies at Peking University. It is still a big challenge for him to understand his instructors and "get" all the material.

He enjoyed BLCU, and as jejie mentions, certainly in the summer it is chock full of foreign students on a lark, so the study rigors there would be questionable. You didn't say what your ultimate goal is and I don't know how old you are... if it is to get any significant Chinese language skills, I think you might be disappointed. If you are interested in a cultural experience and a taste of the language to see if you want to pursue it, and have the time and money, then it could be an interesting 4 weeks.

You might consider taking a semester (doing weekends or nights) at your local university/college just to get a flavour. From your post, I'm assuming you haven't really been exposed to Chinese and trying it at a local venue might give you an idea if you really want to jump into an immersion program.

IMO, the hardest part isn't the speaking, it's the characters. And, you cannot get too far in speaking without learning the characters. There's the whole "traditional" vs "simplified" character argument, but that's something you can tackle when you're much more advanced.

Go to archhinese.com. It translates both ways and gives you audio. Also, shows you each stroke individually, in the right order, of Chinese characters. Great site.

DB

I agree with you that characters are more difficult to learn than the spoken language, but strongly disagree with you on the particular point I bolded. I know many people who have learned to speak quite good Chinese but still can't read worth a d@mn much less write. You learn the important characters you need as you go (men, women, entry, exit, restaurant, etc.) even if you never get to being able to write coherent sentences.

OP, you are correct in that learning Chinese once you are an adult, is a long-term proposition (never-ending, in fact, heh-heh). But with your connections at U Chicago, you should easily be able to tap into the Chinese student group there, some of which might be happy to tutor you for some extra pocket money, or other quid pro quo that doesn't represent a big cash outlay for you. In fact, this is how I first learned basic Chinese in Florida--another interested friend and I found a young Chinese student/intern who needed some extra money and was happy to tutor us two evenings a week. Didn't cost us too much and we gave him freebies like taking him to Disney World/Epcot, teaching him to drive a car, etc. Did this for almost a year before finally going for a summer program in China. I got much more out of that summer having some basic Mandarin under my belt already.

5 years ago, my wife and I could not speak ONE word of Mandarin Chinese.

When we decided to learn, we went via the immersion method.

We moved to Taiwan. Lived there for almost 3 years. Every day we studied at NCKU for 2 hours in class and lived life.

The first year was really difficult however since we started at zero, our Mandarin accent is pretty clear and standard (well not according to the folks from Beijing but that is another issue)

After one year, we can communicate normally about most things at a simple basic level. After year two, we can communicate without thinking about it and specialized vocab is becoming familiar.

We didn't think there was any more point in going to school after this because we were having relatively no problems with communication and the curriculum they were teaching now started to go tangent (ie: historical based phrases, how traditional characters become simplified characters, poetry etc)

Our goal was to communicate, not to get a degree in Mandarin.

Reading and writing is still difficult for me but speaking and listening is really not an issue anymore.

We studied traditional characters in Taiwan and now that we live in China. It is a real easy transition to simplified. However if you learn simplified characters first, it would be very difficult to study traditional afterwards.

I don't know the OP's background. My wife is Japanese so her ability to read characters is far better than mine. Her reading and writing skills improved far much quicker. For me, getting into the habit of reading characters was my biggest obstacle.

Do not think that 3 months study is enough. It is a long time process. Just don't give up.

Why go to BLCU? That's so... normal and boring. It's like an "oh... okay" kind of school.

I've taken classes at CUHK and I regretted it because the interaction with the regular (i.e. non-language) part of the school was so... non-existent. Asking someone to speak Mandarin to you would be almost an insult at times. Then I went to FJCU in Taipei and the interaction between normal students and regular students (one of the advantages of taking a class at a university rather than a language school, imo) was much more integrated. If you really want to do things the interesting way, why not go to Minzu University of China, formerly CUN? It's an ethnic minority school so instead of seeing a bunch of foreigners around campus you get to see Uyghurs, Zhuangs, Kazakhs and others, many of whose first languages aren't Chinese. Why go to Beijing just to talk with Han Chinese, you can do that anywhere in the world. Ethnic minorities are what make China interesting, imo.

Have you traveled much to southern Taiwan? Some ethnic groups in that region have close ancestral ties to the Philippines/scattered Pacific islands, no?

$1000 for 4 weeks sounds steep. OP, are you going to be in Beijing? I can't help as much on Beijing as much as I can schools in Shanghai.

If you only have 4 weeks, then I'd sign up for classes 3-4 times/week and then just spend as much time practicing with locals. Too much class and you'll just memorize something you'll forget in a few weeks.

Middlebury College in New England, IIRC NH, has been running a highly respected intensive Chinese language program for years on their campus during the summer, for at least eight weeks and probably more. This program is used by certain Fulbright-type fellowship winners before they are sent to China. It seems to be very effective.

I was about to suggest the traditional way to learn a language: get a girlfriend or boyfriend who does not speak English at all!

More seriously, if your wife is a faculty member at Chicago, you may be able to take courses there, perhaps just the ones that don't have many students, very cheaply. She should check whether her faculty employee benefits include tuition and if so, whether it's just for children or covers a spouse too. The tuition benefit might extend to a group of similar private schools, so something like Northwestern might be covered too if that would be more convenient, although perhaps not quite as cheaply.

BTW, what's her academic field, if you don't mind saying.

Yeah, many of them do. I think Taiwan is the best place to learn Chinese, but there's so few Taiwanese aborigines compared to minorities in China. As far as a unique experiences goes, going to Minzu University you'd get to see a side of China many Chinese people don't even see.