| Hey, honestly, I'm in Beijing right now studying Chinese (in CHINA - I know, amazing - sorry I'm haven't traveled much), and I'm glad I didn't go to Shanhai. Although they DO have this cool new bar where everything is made of ice. No serious, ice. ALL ICE. Anyways, as for the questions, I used to study at BLCU. BLCU is an amazing school, but waaayyy too many Koreans and the class sizes were a bit too big. They do a lot of grammar and speaking got a bit difficult. I was gonna go to some other school, and so I asked the people at PRC Study, which by the way is a pretty good program as an alternative to worldlink, who were very rude to my mom and a bit haughty and overpriced for nothing, imo. When I first came to china, PRC Study took care of basically everything for me. My homestay is awesome - they clean my room! I feel like I'm some kind of slave owner actually - and they always offer to help me with my chinese. I know some kids who've gone through different programs usually had some problems with their homestay family not really getting the cultural differences, but mine were really friendly. But, they do offer to help all the time. Anyways, they said if I wanted to, I could try their school as a trial for about a week. It's in Wudaokou, and the classes were much smaller, so there was a lot of speaking. The teacher's forced me to speak, and I used to be really shy about it, but I kind of grew out of that. I'm going to be here for about three more months. It goes by really slowly then really quickly. It's kind of weird. My Chinese level was about Low Intermediate, and now I'm upper Intermediate. The main thing is my speaking level went up about several levels, and now I have no trouble working my way around the city. It was a great place to study mandarin chinese, speaking wise. Top three pros. 1. did a lot of speaking 2. small class sizes 3. good teachers/staff Cons 1. classes were too early. It started at 8:30 instead of the 9 I was used to. I know it's only thirty minutes, but that's a big difference for me, especially since I work out in the morning. 2. small class sizes does mean, less partying. I'm a major fan of drinking, and after my friend's left, I have to say my drinking crew shrank a little. 3. Wish we focused a little bit more on grammar. But my class was pretty advanced and so I think that was just me being a little anal. I dunno. I can get around Beijing fine, which seems to be the most important thing. Anyways, hope I helped. I'm in China now, if anyone wants to meet up for a drink! |
Where to Study Chinese, Beijing or Shanghai?