2 week study trip to China. Worth it?

[Jan Finster]

Hello all,

 

I am new to this forum and I wonder how to make the most of a 2 week Mandarin study trip to China. I started learning Chinese by myself 2 months ago and my current level is somewhere around HSK 3. I have already been to Beijing and Shanghai for business and I have seen the major sites in those cities, so I would not need too much time for sight seeing.

 

(At what level) does a short trip make sense?

How much can I realistically improve in 2 weeks and is this really more effective than  investing the money in an online Skype teacher?

How would you suggest I spend the 2 weeks? (Language school, private tutors.... (any ideas or suggestions on courses and/or locations))

 

Thank you for your help and suggestions!

 

[Shelley]

I would say it would be worth it. Any time spent immersed in the target language must be worth.

 

I am not sure where you want to go but maybe something LTL have to offer might suit. Spend time living with a Chinese family.

 

Could be fun and interesting and a chance to scrub up your Chinese.

 

If you really managed to get to HSK 3 in 2 months you should be able to make good use of 2 weeks.

 

Find them here https://ltl-school.com/

 

Just so you know, I have written some articles for them, I am a freelance reviewer, so have no other connection with them.

[NinjaTurtle]

Jan,

 

Pick one "mom and pop" restaurant and go to it everyday. (People at "mom and pop" restaurants usually do NOT speak English, which, believe it or not, is exactly what you want.) Strike up as many tiny conversations as you can with the family. Whenever you cannot understand what they say, have them write it down. (Most people at "mom and pop" restaurants are more than happy to do this for you, as long as they are not too busy. See if you can go at times when they are not busy.) Of course they will write in Chinese characters, but see if you can get them to write the Pinyin too. (I have met Chinese people who struggle with writing Pinyin, believe it or not.) If you cannot get them to write the Pinyin, take the papers home and you can get other people to write the Pinyin for you later.

 

Learn the phrases 请写 Qǐng xiě (please write it down) and 请写拼音 Qǐng xiě Pīnyīn (please write it in Pinyin) as you will use these phrases often! (Make the motions of writing on a piece of paper and they will get the idea.)

 

For the price of a bowl of noodles, you get a good lesson in 'real' Chinese. Once or twice or three times a day! Pretty good deal, I would say. (I still do this everyday.)

 

Take several pens or pencils and a lot of paper! (A spiral notebook would be a good idea.)

[Jim]

Could you sign up for a short course in something else, like cookery, taught in Chinese with local fellow students? Would guarantee a bit more interaction.

[abcdefg]

Agree with above. Go to a private language school for your two weeks. Take daily intensive classes, learn informally (like @Jimand @NinjaTurtle suggested above) in addition to your coursework. 

 

Much better than an online Skype teacher. Why? Because immersion like that is more "real." You will feel stimulated to learn by the need to communicate. 

 

I have never done a home stay with a Chinese family like @Shelley suggested. Might be helpful; I'm just not sure. If you got a family that was not a good fit, it would be impossible to fall back and regroup because of your tight time constraints. 

 

 

[roddy]

Do this, in very intensive miniature. Although I'd go for a private school rather than tutor, you don't have the time to find a new tutor if something doesn't work out. 

[realmayo]

I'd follow the earlier advice about a tutor, one-on-one, 8am to 12pm.

 

I would guess that your pronunciation will have some errors (maybe loads and loads) that you're not aware of yet, and two weeks in China would be the perfect time to learn what those errors are and catch them before they become too ingrained!

 

One goal for the two weeks would be aiming for extremely good - and extremely confident - pronunciation when answering the four or five questions you'd expect to be asked a lot in China (I'm called XXX, I'm from XXX, married yes/no, I've been to China a few times before because blah blah).

 

You'll therefore need a patient tutor who knows rigorous and boring pronunciation work is a key goal from the beginning. You also want to be confident that you've got a tutor who speaks very standard Chinese, and stressing that your focus is pronunciation from the start might make it likelier to get assigned such a teacher if you're applying to a private school.

 

Four hours of pronunciation would be too much on its own though of course -- but another nice thing with a real face-to-face teacher is that you can review the textbooks you've been using and make them come a bit more alive than self-study.

 

Then try to fix yourself up with another tutor or a language-exchange partner for a couple of hours later in the afternoon for some more informal, outdoors stuff - ordering in a restaurant, buying fruit in a market, whatever it may be.

 

 

Hope that's food for thought -- it happens to be what I'm planning myself for two weeks on another language in another country later this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[happy_hyaena]

An extremely short (study) trip makes the most sense in the beginning IMO. You say that you started studying by yourself? Get yourself drilled on pronunciation.

 

> How much can I realistically improve in 2 weeks and is this really more effective than  investing the money in an online Skype teacher?

 

Assuming $1000 flight tickets, $200 visa, $300 on accomodations, $300 food and drinks + any extra that will be spent on the class itself (which could be a lot...), we're talking at least $2000 I would guess in total. (In reality you'd still have to pay for homecoked meals and so on but whatever). An iTalki community tutor or teacher can go for about $7-$25 per hour. (I pay my tutor $4 for 30 mins once every week to supplement going to language cafes). Assuming that you go for a nice professional teacher with thousands of lessons under their belt, charging $20/hour that's still 100 hours of lessons, 1-to-1! And note that these will be 1-to-1, with a teacher who could customize your lessons to you, have you follow through a textbook, give you homework and so on. Or you could do 50 hours with a really qualified teacher + 100 hours with a community teacher charging half the price.

The problem with this is of course that this would be dragged out over quite sometime. Going to China makes a lot more sense if you're going to spend a whole semester there. Partly because one-time costs like flight tickets and visas aren't as heavy, but primarily because your whole life will be focused on China: surviving in it, exploring it and learning the language.

 

When I was around HSK 3 level I took time off from my other studies to go to China. I spent one semester and it gave tremendous results. I jumped from that HSK 3 level to HSK 5 level in one semester, and it made it so that I could start to consume native media and become more independent from textbooks. I studied 20 hours a week, 8-12 mon-fri. I calculated the cost of tuition to be about $5 per hour IIRC. The positives were that I could, like I said, focus all my time on learning Chinese, and not have to focus on other parts of my life (e.g., finishing my degree). In addition to those 4 hours in class, I spent 2-3 hours in the evenings doing homework and reading through the textbooks of the class above. So that's 7 hours a day of Chinese studies, meaning that I probably spent more actual hours on Chinese in that one 4.5 month period than I did in the 3 years of studing Chinese before that. I also did not install a VPN, so I started watching videos on bilibili as much as I could. This ended up being more fun than going to class, because I had to share the teachers' attention and time with 14 other students (though many classes aren't that many). So in the end, those 20 hours/week classes were great for improving my vocabulary, listening and reading skills, but they didn't do as much for my speaking ability. Though living in the country and interacting with non-Western classmates will help a lot with that.

 

If it's possible, you should ask your work for a 4-6 months temporary leave to go to China for a semester. If not, just try to enjoy your 2 weeks as much as possible.

 

 

[JenniferW]

Thanks for asking this question! 

 

I'm thinking of a 2 or 3 week trip to China with language classes 5 days a week later this year. I worked in China for several years, have done some classes and courses both there and in the UK, and have done enough travelling (for me), but would like the chance to spend a bit more time language learning. So it's good to hear what people think.