Comments on: Studying Chinese

By: Todd Alperovitz

Todd Alperovitz — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:40:33 +0000

Thanks for the information Chris.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:13:27 +0000

I started studying at the TLI a few years back in Taichung just doing one on ones. The emphasis is on conversation and spoken vocabulary only which I personally think is better for beginners. Taichung TLI is quite close to the railway station. It’s on Taiping Street. I don’t remember the exact address. It’ll be a lot closer to you than Donghai university.

By: Todd Alperovitz

Todd Alperovitz — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:51:13 +0000

Roy - until your post, I didn’t even know TLI ran a branch in Taichung. Everything is up in the air at this point, I am leaning towards attending Tunghai.For the first day of class today, I seem to have won the instructor lottery: my new instructor is excellent, the class was conducted 100% in Chinese, she spoke quickly, clearly, kept us all on our toes, used visual aids, and we all had a lot of opportunities to speak.

By: Prince Roy

Prince Roy — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:51:47 +0000

I had a far better experience than you did at Shida, but it was in 1988.

I think the problem with Shida (and schools here in general) is that it just has too many students now that learning Chinese has become a Big Business. Back when I was there, there were only three of us in a class.

I also now appreciate the fact that our teachers were Mainlanders from the north.

I'm curious to learn where you'll study in Taichung. I did my junior year abroad there in 1989-1990, and was a classmate of Poagao.

What have you heard about TLI?

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:05:08 +0000

I’d be interested to hear more about your final exam. It sounds like maybe it’s changed a bit since I was a student there. Did the teacher make the test herself, or was it standardized? Also, did it involve listening to a CD? Back when I was a student, we didn’t even necessarily have a final. It was all pretty much up to the teacher.

The other aspects of the class sound just like the good ol’ Shida I knew and endured.

By: Todd Alperovitz

Todd Alperovitz — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 07:46:37 +0000

Paul - Great to hear from you again, I miss our conversations at Greenbrier Apartments.Joe - I look foward to the update.David - You didn’t miss anything.Chris - That is right. In fact, I myself am not sure how it will work out. Plan is to move to Cathy’s home in Jhongsing and possibly taking a bus from Jhongsing to Taichung 3 days a week for classes at Tunghai University…. we’ll see, everything is up in the air now.Mark - The test was a standardized test, we were in the testing room. The test was divided into four sections: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.The reading section had passages that we had to read and then answer a handful of questions for each passage by picking from multiple choice. The writing section was very small, we were given a sentence with a blank we needed to fill in the blank for the right character (zhuyin and pinyin were provided). In another we had to plug in characters so a sentence would be grammatically correct. Another section had a set of maybe 6 characters that we had to insert into the appropriate places of a passage.For the listening section we all put on our headphones and listened to the same section at the same time. The speaker on the tape said a word or two and we had to circle the correct pronounciation (zhuyin and pinyin). Another part involved a short sentence and we had to cirlce the right picture for the scenario. The third part was a longer passage we listened to then had a handful of multiple choice questions.For the speaking section we answered each question when the prompts came up, it started with saying our name and student number. After this we were given a list of maybe 8 or so characters that we had to speak into the headset followed by two complete sentences. I found this section a little hard because I could hear everyone’s responses around me and everyone was either +/- 2 words from the next person so it was a little hard to focus. The last part of the speaking section had a picture of two people in an office talking about what they did the day before (the test was a clipart extravaganza) and we had to answer what each did the previous day.My instructor said that this was the first time they were giving a schoolwide final exam. She said the first draft had a lot of errors because it was written by the office staff so it didn’t match instruction completely and that the current one still had a few errors.According to the powers that be: If you scored above an 80 you would start the next semester at Chapter 12…. from 50-80 you would start at Chapter 5… and below 50 you would start over at Chapter 1.

By: david on formosa

david on formosa — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 05:40:40 +0000

After reading your review I no longer feel worried about the fact that I never had the chance to study there. Thanks for sharing your experience.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:52:38 +0000

You do a good job of keeping us up to date and have some sweet ass pictures. i will email you soon with the Washtenaw County Update.

By: Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:05:53 +0000

Todd,

Joebot gave me your blog link. Nice to see things are moving along for ya!

-Paul Taylor

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 03:54:39 +0000

Isn’t Jongshing Village a small place between Tsou-tuen and Nantou?If you keep studying Chinese will you do it through TLI, a university or some other means? If my memory is right TLI is a lot closer to Jhongshing village than any university.