Class sizes at Beida

[Phillip]

Hi. This is my first posting so sorry if this has already been answered by someone. Regarding Peking University's "short-term" Chinese language programmes (I'm thinking the semester-long courses as opposed to summer school) can anyone confirm the 8 - 15 students per class they mention on their website? I'm trying to find a place to study whose classes aren't too enormous and I've heard 20-30 students mentioned for BLCU (basically my other option). Is this accurate?

Thanks in anticipation, and for everyone's thoughtful postings. They've been a great help.

[lylestyle]

my class sizes range from 10-15 people, so its about accurate from what you read on the website. I think the class sizes are fairly suitable for a good chinese learning environment, not to big and the teachers usually do a good job of getting the class involved. However, I know Beida has a repuation for accepting more students than what is appropriate for the amount of teachers, so this won't be necessarily true of the following years, I'm not sure. Beida is good overall though, the teachers are very capable.

[Phillip]

Thanks for your help. That's good to know. I have one more question: At Beida, are the only options for foreigners the summer school or the semester courses? Do they have any year-long or two year courses in Chinese language? I guess what I want to know is, can I study there for more than one semester? Does, say, the intermediate course lead onto the advanced course, or are they completely seperate?

[lindseyohcheer]

I attend BeiDa too and my Han Yu class has 20 people. They are accepting more people than they ought to which doesn't really affect the Han Yu and Kou Yu class sizes but it makes the elective classes bloat to unmanageable size. This semester elective courses ran out before we got halfway through the registration period and I got stuck with pronunciation class which is too big that we only get to speak less than 5 mins each per day and I've already fallen asleep pretty much every session. I wanted to be in 听力。

My Han Yu teacher is better than Kou Yu and the Classicial poetry teacher is very very nice and patient. She's good at teaching although her English (which is of course used rarely in classes at BeiDa) isn't very good. For some reason many teachers are very old which makes class dull. When we had a substitute for kou yu class my classmates were telling me that they wished we could keep the substitute instead. I've pretty much had old teachers for Chinese and there is an advantage. The only advantage pretty much is that they offer a deeper insight to the culture and history which comes out when they teach