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4 2018

Study Mandarin Chinese in China

Study Chinese in China

A Perfect Adventure


Studying Mandarin Chinese abroad in China is the perfect get-away-from-home adventure. More and more students see learning Chinese as an advantage to their careers.
Today we would like to introduce several different options that you have for studying Mandarin Chinese in China. We will explain the pros and cons of every option and suggest the one that best suits you according to your level, expectations, occupation and budget.
There are 3 main options to study Chinese Mandarin in China:
•    Universities
•    Private schools
•    Private tutors

Study Chinese at the University
Generally speaking, the universities are the place where you can get the courses with the best quality. The reason is simple: most universities have a more experience on teaching Chinese than any private school. Also, the most experienced teachers prefer to work there. These are also the people that wrote most of Chinese textbooks (if not all).
The other big advantage of signing up for a university is a cheap accommodation at the foreign student’s dormitory (normally a private room with bathroom).
But studying Chinese at the university have some problems:
•    No flexibility: You can’t start a course at the University whenever you want and the scheduling of the lessons is fixed (and you can’t negotiate it).
•    Full-time commitment: Universities only offer full-time courses, with a minimum of compulsory lessons four hours per day, Monday to Friday.

•    Price: The best universities are more expensive than private schools.
•    “Traditional” teaching methods: Universities’ teaching methods work on the longterms but are extremely boring and during the first months you’ll perceive little to no progresses as they’ll focus on characters and phonetics. Also, it doesn’t matter if you are English, Japanese or Iranian: they’ll teach you the same way.
 

Study Chinese in a private school
Private schools represent the most flexible and economic way to study Chinese in China.
•    If you wish, you can show up at the school and start the lessons the same day. Also, if you are at least two people they will start a course for you in one or two days (the time to find a teacher). You can get one to one classes, small groups and sometimes big groups classes (more than 8-10 people).
•    Another advantage of private academies is that you have the option to pay only when you attend the lesson. Thus, if one day you are sick or tired you don’t need to pay.
But there are also some drawbacks:
•    Flexibility leads to no commitment: Because of the flexibility there is a huge turnover of students that join and leave the courses at any time. It may happen that, if most of your classmates decide to leave because they haven’t time anymore or whatever other reason, the course will be cancelled. It’s often no profitable for the school to have only few student and wait for others to join.
•    Business philosophy: Private schools work the same way than other business in China. There’s much more offer than demand and the faster way to get more customers (AKA students) is to lowering the price, of course at expense of the quality. If they succeed to beat the competitors they will start to increase their profit margins by reducing the cost and increasing the price. So we suggest you to avoid the cheapest schools and settle for quality.

Get a private Chinese tutor
Private tutors are cheap and easy to find.
Private tutors are a bit more expensive than private schools (after all it’s a one-to-one lesson) and their teaching experience is equivalent or even higher than the teachers in those schools. They are supposed to act as a complement for your regular classes so normally they aren’t willing to prepare so many contents for your lessons. Apart from that I don’t see any problems on hiring a tutor.
Tutors are quite useful for beginners as a complement to the regular classes or for those beginners that are working full-time and don’t have the time to attend a regular course at the university.
Actually tutors are always good at any stage as they can help you to reinforce your weakest points.
 

If you’re interested on studying in a specific city, here are some places we can help you:
Study Chinese in Beijing,
Study Chinese in Shanghai,
Study Chinese in Xi’an,
Study Chinese in Wuhan.

No matter which is your choice,

contact us and we will work out a solution for you!

 

Schedule a free trial lesson with our teacher!