My summer in Taipei

[rmpalpha]

I took one year of Chinese during graduate school and studied on my own (using NPCR 3 and part of 4) for about two years. Around last winter, I decided that I was tired of my slow progress and wanted to immerse myself in a Chinese speaking environment as well as study Chinese. I accepted the invitation of a friend and went to Taipei in January for two weeks to check out the city and meet my future Chinese language teacher. The trip went quite well, so I decided to bite the bullet and plan for living in Taiwan for two and a half months.

One thing I should mention about myself before I continue - I'm a deaf young male who teaches chemistry, so I have summers off, and, because of my being a teacher, I was able to do this in the first place. Because I'm deaf and have no latent spoken language ability, I had very little interest in speaking and listening skills, and wanted to focus exclusively on reading and writing skills. Last year, in the fall, I contacted several programs in mainland China and in Taiwan asking them what kind of classes they held during the summer, to see if I could get around the listening/speaking requirements in a Chinese language program. I generally received negative responses, mostly because their curriculum was integrated - so there were no 口语 classes I could skip or anything like that. The ICLP also responded in the negative, but offered to email their teachers to see if one would be willing to teach me on an one-on-one basis.

A few days later, I received an email from one of the ICLP teachers, and over the course of a couple of months, we discussed my goals and eventually arranged a meeting while I was there in January. That January meeting was quite challenging for me, because my prospective teacher and I corresponded for three hours, all in traditional Chinese, on paper and pen, discussing different things - my Chinese study history, what I'd been doing in Taiwan, my goals for the Chinese language, what I expected from the class, tuition, course texts - basically making arrangements for me to take Chinese during the summer under her. It was quite overwhelming because this was the first serious conversation I had ever had in Chinese for so long. It was also quite exciting, because this was exactly what I wanted - to finally acquire the skills to be able to interact with people (albeit in a written form).

So, spring semester came and went, and I went to Taiwan in late May. I applied for, and got, a 60-day multi-entry tourist visa, and took (and passed) the HSK level 3 test during this time. When I arrived in Taiwan, I didn't start my classes until about a week and half into my Taiwan stay as my teacher had finals during that time, and I still had to get settled, get over jetlag, etc. Once classes started, we had about eight weeks of classes minus a few days here and there for travel (for me!). We ended up deciding on 今日台湾, which is a decent text.

We basically met every weekday for two hours in a coffee shop (丹堤咖啡, if you were curious), and went over the material over a cup of tea. My teacher gave me what I felt was a lot of homework - about 2-3 hours a day on average - but I was grateful for it as it was great practice for my Chinese expression skills. The teacher was very good at forcing me to use my Chinese actively rather than just read Chinese texts and "listen" to her write in Chinese. We always corresponded using pen and paper, and I have three full notebooks filled with our correspondence over the eight weeks that we had classes together. The format for our lessons varied, but with each chapter, the teacher would assign me the following exercises:

1. Vocabulary list questions - basically two questions per vocabulary item. Since each chapter has around 50 vocabulary items, this amounts to about 100 questions that I had to answer. These were not easy questions for me to answer either - questions like 「你认为家庭对人的重要性是什么？」or 「拿美国跟非洲的乡下比，有什么差别？」were quite common. Since there were so many questions, we usually spent a day or two just going through my answers and discussing my grammatical errors or unfamiliar words in questions.
   
2. Textbook exercises - this included the grammar and vocabulary exercises. This was generally not that time-consuming, but some of the grammar points inspired much discussion and comparative examples.
   
3. A discussion of the textbook passage - the teacher would quiz me on my retention of the textbook passage content and vocabulary. I don't think it was that useful, because it basically amounted to me memorizing the text and key vocabulary/phrases, but there were a couple of interesting discussions that stemmed from the textbook.
   
4. A review sheet bringing together the grammar and vocabulary, that had three parts. First, there was a set of questions to answer followed by a grammatical pattern that I had to use in my answer - I felt this was very restrictive, but it still reinforced my understanding (or lack thereof) of the grammar point in question. Second, there was a question that required a short paragraph and incorporation of five or six vocabulary items - also very restrictive as I often felt that I had to shoehorn in one or two of the vocabulary items. Third, there was a 300 character essay that I had to write following a prompt.
   
5. A 500-600 character essay assignment where I had to respond to some sort of prompt. There was one occasion where my teacher and I had completely different mental images of what the essay question was about, which led to an interesting conversation.
   

I began the summer session doing these by writing my answers by hand, but towards the end, I used my computer to input my answers. I still did a good deal of writing by hand during class, and I think that really cemented my learning how to read/write characters - as well as read a native Chinese speaker's handwriting. We would sometimes laugh together as I tried to decipher one or two of my Chinese teacher's handwritten characters, and I have to say that I got sick of writing 台灣 or 喜歡 pretty fast because there are just so many strokes to write each time >_<

So, with this much work, it took us about a week to get through each chapter. The teacher said that we would probably be able to finish the whole book in the eight weeks alotted, but we only got halfway through it by the end. I honestly have no idea how ICLP or MTC teachers can find the time to give feedback on students' work, given how much homework the students are given, and the number of students per class. Maybe my teacher and I could have covered the material more quickly if we could communicate orally, as writing is a pretty slow process, I dunno. I was very satisfied with the quality of my education in Taiwan and would choose her again as my teacher, without hesitation.

So what did I do besides attend class and do homework? I interacted quite a bit with the deaf Taiwanese community - and for those of you who are curious, Taiwanese Sign Language is pretty much unintelligible to an American Sign Language user, as sign languages are not universal. I learned a fair bit of Taiwanese Sign Language, but confess that I chatted much more with people who had studied abroad in the US or learned American Sign Language at one point, just because it was so much easier to communicate with them. I would have taken a Taiwanese Sign Language class if I could, as there are quite a few classes offered throughout Taipei, but most conflicted with my classes, unfortunately. Right now, I can understand the basic gist of Taiwanese Sign Language, but I can only communicate very simple things about myself - family, occupation, that kind of thing.

I also taught American Sign Language to a group of deaf Taiwanese. Taipei's largest association of the deaf offers one American Sign Language class in three levels - beginning, intermediate, and advanced, with the first two taught by Taiwanese deaf people who had gone to the US to study abroad for a number of years and returned to Taiwan for work. I was offered the opportunity to teach the advanced class this summer, and I accepted. It was fun, but it was also a lot of hard work, as the students' levels were so varied. I definitely know what a language teacher feels like, in some ways. It was also a huge time sink to prepare for and then teach two 2-hour classes a week, since I had already made a big commitment to studying Chinese. I don't regret it though. One thing that was interesting, though - if a student didn't know how to say something in American Sign Language, they would often replace that concept with the equivalent in Taiwanese Sign Language, so I had no way of knowing if they signed it incorrectly or if they used their native sign language.

I also did some travelling - I went to Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, as well as visited Jiufen, Sun Moon Lake, and a couple of other landmarks. Some of these trips were made with deaf Taiwanese friends, so I had a real insider's perspective on these landmarks. I also made the Kaohsiung trip by joining a group of 40 deaf Taiwanese two weeks after I arrived in Taiwan - that was a very interesting experience, to say the least, since I had a practically nonexistent knowledge of their sign language and they didn't know any English or American Sign Language either.

One last thing. Apparently, to the deaf Taiwanese there, a deaf foreigner coming to Taiwan to study Chinese was interesting enough to broadcast on TV. So, I was featured on a daily news program produced by deaf Taiwanese that is broadcast in Taiwan every morning at 8 am. You can see my one-minute-long news article here:

－ I'm the first story of that news clip. All of my comments are in American Sign Language, and the reporter himself knew ASL, so he was able to directly translate my remarks into Chinese subtitles. I still cringe at how I looked at that time, but I think no one likes to see themselves on camera ;)

I think that's everything - I would gladly do it again, and am thinking about possibly going back next summer. I already miss Taipei tremendously - the people, the food, the culture - but do not miss the language barrier or the summer heat. We'll see how things work out next year

[HedgePig]

That's a very interesting write-up, rmpalpha. I'm not deaf and will almost certainly never study in Taiwan but I really enjoyed your article - thank you.

[Meng Lelan]

Awesome report. The textbook Taiwan Today was also used in the third year classes at Middlebury.

And Taiwan has some kind of daily news report online for the deaf? That's what it seemed like from the YouTube link you gave. Love the big fat 繁體字 captions.

[abcdefg]

Well done! You made excellent use of your time and were fortunate to have a very good, dedicated teacher. Plus you mingled with the people and got a feel for language as used in daily life. You made a contribution through teaching as well. I'm impressed. Hope you have the chance to do it again next summer. Appreciate the inspiring and informative write up.

[roddy]

Excellent and interesting write-up!

[stoney]

Thanks I enjoyed reading about your time in Taiwan.

I laughed when you wrote "I was offered the opportunity to teach the advanced class this summer, and I accepted. It was fun, but it was also a lot of hard work, as the students' levels were so varied." This happens teaching oral English too.

Did you ever consider trying to learn cursive, so you could write faster?

[rmpalpha]

Meng Lelan: There is a daily news program produced by deaf Taiwanese that is broadcast in Taiwan every morning at 8 am - I forget the program's name and channel, but many deaf Taiwanese watch it. I happened to meet one of the reporters for the show early on in my trip, and he wanted to interview me (he went to Gallaudet and already knew ASL).

The textbook, 今日台湾, is only an okay book in my view - none of the vocabulary or grammar in one chapter is really reinforced by any other chapter. The exercises are pretty sparse, and there is an article at the end of each chapter written at a level far beyond my normal reading ability. I think I would have learned far less from the book had I studied it on my own. The cultural topics within are quite interesting though, but the information is a bit dated (circa mid 1990s), so lots of things have changed since then.

stoney: I'm not really that interested in learning cursive script though it'd be useful in the future. I need to improve my Chinese handwriting first ;)

Thank you to everyone else for the positive comments - it was a great experience, and I'm glad to share it with all of you.

[Meng Lelan]

Ah, wait a minute, your Youtube link actually clued me in on this website:

http://news.pts.org.tw/

You scroll down and there's the 手語新聞. Also a bunch of programs I wasn't even aware of. This is a great resource.

[Ludens]

Thank you very much for the write-up, I find it very inspiring.

[thechamp]

Wow! I'm partially sighted, so often have to use magnifying glasses etc to read chinese - and I thought that was hard! This is really amazing 加油！

[divergio]

I'm a former ICLP student and I was really pleased to read that the school was able to accomodate you. I've forwarded the news broadcast to another friend from that time. 

 

Have you returned to Taiwan since?  If you ever do I'd love to meet you.

[baumspecht]

...If he does not answer:

 

How about meeting me? I will be in Taichung from March 2015 until June, same year. My prof was to teach european languages...

 

Best regards

 

Baumspecht@web.de

 

(...or anyone else who likes to meet someone from Euorpe is welcome to drop a line)

[oceancalligraphy]

Just wanted to update the info from post #8.

 

The news broadcasts are now put into monthly playlists on the 公視 youtube page. For example, the November broadcasts are available at 2014年11月公視手語新聞.

 

Another way to find broadcasts is by searching 公視手語新聞 at youtube. It looks like searching by playlist brings up broadcasts dating back to 2009.