Review of BLCU Chinese Course

[The_]

Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster here. If this is in the wrong section please move where appropriate.

 

This is a review of my time at BLCU for my first semester in the 20hour Chinese language course. I will try to cover all of Roddy’s points suggested here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/35923-university-write-ups-and-reviews-a-guide/.

 

Application process

 

The application process for me was quite easy because I live in Beijing. I just went to the university and filled out the application and turned it in. It costs 600RMB to apply. Unfortunately, I don’t remember all the documents you need to apply. After applying, you wait about two weeks and pick up your acceptance letter. This letter has the registration process and info for reserving a dorm room on it, applying for an X-2 visa, registration info dates and times and whatnot. I’m sure the process is quite different for people out of the country. I definitely recommend not using an agency as I don’t believe BLCU will turn anyone away, even if you apply after the application deadline. This, of course, is just my opinion and should not be taken as fact, but it seems to be the case as Chinese language programs tend to be a cash cow for universities.

 

After the first semester, I knew I was continuing another semester so I had to get a letter of recommendation from my main professor and I had to fill out the BLCU application again. This time however, you do NOT need to pay the application fee. Again, the acceptance letter gives you the info on it for the registration process where you go through the same process and placement test. The registration period is three days. I went the first day of registration and found it to be lengthy due to how many students were also registering. A classmate of mine did it the last day and he said everything went fast.

 

Course and Funding Arrival and Registration

 

I signed up for the 20 hour a week semester course. I am going for two semesters, but have to pay my own way. I applied for the CSC scholarship but somehow fell through the cracks and CSC nor BLCU received my application.

 

On the day of registration you stand in line to pay all fees. You pay the course fees, 11,600RMB for one semester for the regular 20 hour a week course (23,200RMB for a year program), or 19,100RMB for the 30 hour a week course (38,200RMB for a year) and medical insurance which is 300RMB per semester. I paid 11,900RMB in total. You can pay in RMB or by credit card or UnionPay.

 

To register, you start by going to the place where you to reserve your dorm room if needed. I did not do this location as I live off campus. So I started by going to teaching building 3 (三号教学楼) to queue to pay registration fees. Outside of the building, there is a board with registration instructions and where to go to accomplish each step of the process. This first step took over an hour of waiting because there were so few workers taking the fee payments from students and so many people waiting to pay. In typical China fashion, workers seem to be there with all the equipment to process students but they are not working/and or playing with their phones. I did this whole process with my wife who is Chinese so she did all of the talking.

 

After you pay your fee, you go to another area in the same room and pay your insurance fee and get your student dining hall/library card. You then leave this room and go to another room in the same building where you give them your Chinese name and they give you your student ID card and student handbook.

 

Inside this building where your register and get your student ID card there are about three large white boards with all the student’s names and numbers on it explaining the time and date and location of your placement test. It is impossible to miss. Take a picture of your info and don’t forget it. If you do, you will be placed in a low level class be default. Or so I hear.

 

The placement test starts out with questions in pinyin and then moves onto汉字 (characters). I had studied at a private school before so I knew some Chinese, mostly spoken and how to read pinyin, no characters, so I could do the beginning part of the exam. After you are done with the paper exam, you go up and speak with the examiner and she talks to you in Chinese, asking you simple questions like “你是哪国人？ And 你家有几口人？” (“which country are you from?” And, “how many people are in your family?”). Depending on how you do and what you say, she will suggest a level for you.

 

A few days after the placement test, if must go back to the same building to see which level and class you are assigned to. Remember this info as it also tells you which classroom to go to.

 

Classes, Classrooms and Teachers

 

BLCU has six levels, starting at total beginner, A level, and on up to B, C, D, E, and F, which is for highly advanced students. That equals three years of classes with each letter representing a level and semester. “A” level has a lot of students so it is also separated further into numbers with A0 students having no Chinese ability at all, while A4-A5 students know some Chinese and can speak a tiny bit but don’t know characters, ending with A9-10 and A+ which is for people who have studied Chinese before, know some characters and can speak a bit better. Each letter level has this structure from what I hear, for instance, there is a B+, C+, D+ etc. The different levels also start at different chapters in the books we used. The + classes usually are much harder because they have more Japanese, Korean, and heritage speaker students.

 

I was placed into A4. So we started half-way through book one. This skips the numbers, “bo, po, mo….etc” alphabet, and how to read and understand pinyin. We started with characters and reading pinyin from the beginning.

 

We have four classes. The main and most important class is comprehensive (综合), which is 10 hours a week and teaches you the new words and grammar. It usually consists of reading new vocabulary in unison and then the teacher makes example sentences and dialogues that we go over and over changing some of the nouns or verbs and then we form a small group of 2-3 students and we practice these dialogues with each other. We would also read the dialogues in the lessons in our book and the teacher would explain the grammar and usage of the vocab. Some days we would have 听写 (dictation), and others we would be given flashcards or a huge list of vocab written on the board and the teacher would ask us questions using those words. We would answer using the grammar patterns she used, something like 你游泳游得很快吗？(Do you swim fast?), and we would have to respond using that grammar pattern.

 

We used a book series called Speed-Up Chinese (速成汉语) Peking Press, for this class. I liked the books and thought that they were pretty well laid out. They have 10 lessons per book, and each lesson has one or multiple dialogues using new grammar and words from that lesson. The other classes are speaking and listening (口语 and 听力) which are each 4 hours a week. These classes use Short-term Spoken Chinese and Short-term Listening Chinese (汉语口语速成 and 汉语听力速成) by BLCU Press. The last class is a “living” Chinese class where you learn some aspects of Chinese culture like painting and whatnot. This is 2 hours a week.

 

My class had 18 students enrolled, but three never showed up after the first few days, two switched to another class, and people would alternate showing up or not. In reality, only about 8-10 students per class showed up every day. I feel very fortunate for this actually.

 

I am from the US and there were no other people from North America in my class. Koreans outnumbered any other ethnicity. Everyone else was from a different country. We did have 3 Spanish speakers though.

 

My main teacher was apparently ranked in the top 30 in all of China (this was told to me by a classmate, so no reference, sorry). I really liked her teaching and liked her style. She was great. She also taught us more grammar than just ‘A’ level grammar, which I also appreciated. She said we should be exposed to it so we can get used to it earlier rather than later.

 

My Speaking and Listening teachers were grad students studying MTCSOL (Masters in teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages) at BLCU. They were also good, I enjoyed their teaching. I did not like listening class simply for the material. I feel it gives nothing meaningful to my learning and I felt like it was more of a babysitting class than anything else. More perspective on that, granted a bit old now, can be found here starting with post #14 http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/35250-blcu-general-discussion/.

 

The classroom was nice. It had new seats and desks, a projector and white board for the projector, a chalk board, a PC and speakers, an air conditioner, and central heating. Although this should not be surprising as I believe foreign students receive better accommodation and classrooms than the native students. This may be the case at every university in China of any real standing.

 

We did get homework in our 综合 (comprehensive) class but none in our speaking and listening classes. I hear that it depends on the teacher as another student’s speaking teacher required them send her WeChat messages of them speaking every day.

 

There are two exams, a midterm and final exam in each class except the “living Chinese” class. The comprehensive class is the most important class and probably the most difficult exam. You can also take extra classes on your own dime. I’m not sure what they offer these days as I never looked into it. You do get a trip to the great wall, Chinese opera, and a tea house, all paid for by your tuition money.

 

In total from the comprehensive class, we learned about 800 words. If I include the vocabulary from speaking and listening it would possibly be near 900-1,000. I am happy with the progress. A former colleague of mine went to another school and learned half that in the same amount of time.

 

Campus and Environment

 

The campus is small but I find it nice. It feels like a smaller version of any university campus in the US. There are  ATMs, little stores, cafes, a library, restaurants, a dining hall that is 2-3 stories, and probably more. I cannot talk about the dorms as I mentioned, I live off campus.

 

Final thoughts

 

I’m going to stand on my soapbox here for a minute. I believe BLCU gets a bit of a bad rep as I have read and seen people make lots of claims about it and the experience they talk about is based off second hand info. Things like it’s all westerners and all students do is party. I think every Chinese language course will have slackers, partiers and no-shows. No university is excluded from that, get over it and focus on your own studies. Also, people have got to face the fact that your classes will be full of foreigners who speak some English and you will never be away from them until you get to higher levels. You are in a Chinese language class after all. Everyone wants a genuine China experience with no English speakers and that is unrealistic if you are a beginner. Also, I think it highly unlikely to befriend Chinese people if your Chinese is not up to a decent level as speaking so simply and dumbed-down to a beginner gets draining on the native speaker. This fact has been discussed on this forum before.

 

Overall I would highly recommend BLCU to anyone who wants to learn Chinese from qualified instructors. As it is one of the premier universities designed to teach Chinese to foreigners they attract top-tier instructors (or so I’d like to believe) that for instance, Beijing Fashion Technology University would not. I also had three different friends who went to BLCU for over year and their Chinese abilities were great. They all recommended it to me. The key is to focus on you and your studies and not let others bother you.

 

That is all I have for now. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I will be continuing another semester starting in March so I could do another write up after that if there is demand.

 

[Chris Two Times]

Would this go into the "Universities in China" forum?

 

Thanks for the write-up! I'm glad to hear that BLCU is a worthwhile place to study. I have had one eye on the place for a while and have considered a year-long course of study there.

 

The key is to focus on you and your studies and not let others bother you.

 

Absolutely. I agree.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[The_]

.

[BLCU_Simon]

Good review!

I should try to do the same for the intensive Chinese courses I took there last year. People will benefit the comparison between Intensive and Regular courses! I take it you are not the "Beer Garden at 4 PM" kind of student... ;-) 

[reric123]

Great write up. I'm coming in to the program in a month with absolutely 0 Chinese experience, so I'm excited to see where it takes me. I don't drink, and I'm a little (though not much) over my partying years, so hopefully I'll be able to focus heavily on my studies. I would do the intensive courses, but I need to spend some amount of time every day working (I work online) otherwise I won't be able to pay tuition. Thanks for the positive review, I'm looking forward to it..!

[edelweis]

@reric123 you are aware of the Chinese firewall, some websites being completely blocked (e.g. Google), and some others being very slow? Do you have a VPN?

[reric123]

@edelweisI am aware of that. What VPN do you recommend?

[fabiothebest]

I'm using VyprVPN, it works well. Beware that apparently these days using a vpn in China became a real crime for the Chinese government.

[edelweis]

I always used a professional VPN preinstalled by the IT department of my company to access our corporate network (and through it, internet websites outside China such as Google etc) , so I don't have names of retail VPNs...

 

[reric123]

I see. Thanks for the tips. I'll look into getting a vpn (and not getting arrested!)..

[Nhung Nguyen]

Is that better to have a China bank account with money before I arrive the school, isn't it? The school won't give you time to pay later as I may not have enough cash at the spot or a Chinese bank account at that time?