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Greetings Wise Locals,
Trying to get my Chinese up to professional-ish level after a couple of years of study at home, online resources and tutoring (thanks for the many helpful posts on this form). This is with an eye towards working here, in my field, afterwards.
Any thoughts?…I’ve narrowed it down to two after campus visits and online searching:
Sichuan University v. Southwest University for Nationalities
Any pro’s or cons on either would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance and enjoy your summer (rainy though it may be).
Both are good options but have different strengths. I haven’t studied at either so I’ll let someone else answer with first-hand knowledge.
Also, check out this thread on the forum: Anyone Studied Chinese at Uni in Chengdu?
I studied at SW University of Nationalities, but not Sichuan University. The first semester I did the normal classes (10 to 20 people to a group depending upon how many students liked that teacher’s style), and maybe it’s just my learning style, but I didn’t really like getting such little attention/speaking time in class (note: it’s probably the same for the normal classes at SU). Second semester I sprung for the one-on-one classes at SWUN (about 10,000rmb per semester, but only 6 hard hours of class time). Even though it was considerably less hours of class time, the teacher has the ability to just focus on your strengths and weaknesses. So it was a big boost to my grammar, fluency and vocabulary. Not to mention the fact that for half the class you can just discuss topics that you want to talk about, while the teacher is arming you with the appropriate vocab for that topic the whole way through. If you do the one-on-one the important thing is steer the class time in the direction that you want it to go, and not stick to the book if you don’t want to. Although, if you’re visa isn’t an issue, you can just hire a tutor anywhere for those six hours a week, so neither university is necessary and it’s possibly cheaper.
If your visa is an issue, and you do like the one-on-one, check out if SU has the same option, and class hours/cost.
If you don’t want to spring for the one-on-one classes, one good thing about SWUN is that if you don’t like your teacher’s teaching style at any point during the semester, you can simply walk across the hall and try out a different teacher(note: at a different level as well). My understanding is that the benefit of studying at SU is that it’s 20 hours a week and not 16 (which really comes out to be about 14/13 hours if you include the breaks). Also, a lot of people tend to pick SWUN because they think their are less native-English speaking classmates divert your attention away from Chinese learning. Not sure how relevant that argument is these days…
Hope that helps…
I’ve been to SU for a couple of months and the normal classes are pretty much the same as SWUN as from what I can read in Bobby’s post. The group classes at SU cost 8800RMB/semester though, and if I remember correctly SWUN is only like 5000-something.
Never heard of the 1on1 tutoring at a University. Are those 6 hours in 1 day? 5 days? Can u choose the schedule yourself? What about the exams? Is the VISA exactly the same? Sounds really interesting!
Quote:Never heard of the 1on1 tutoring at a University. Are those 6 hours in 1 day? 5 days? Can u choose the schedule yourself? What about the exams? Is the VISA exactly the same? Sounds really interesting!It’s not 6 hours a day, it’s six hours a week, so more like 2 hours a day for three days a week. You can choose whatever schedule is best for you and your tutor. No exams, but if you’re not looking for a degree in Chinese, those things don’t matter much anyway. The visa is exactly the same. The normal classes are about 6000rmb a semester if I remember correctly. The one-on-one classes are 10,000rmb a semester. So the trade-off is considerably less hours of class time, but all the attention is on you, not spread out over 10 or 15 students.
Quote:So I assume you can agree with the teacher to not teach characters at all?I’m sure that’s possible, although I not sure how far you can go with Chinese with out learning some characters. Certainly at the beginner level it’s important to master pinyin, so they should have tutors that are appropriate for that.
Do you have an English speaking contact or something over at SWUN perhaps BobbyDigital? I filled in the online application on sunday but haven’t received any reply yet.
What hours do the Universities teach within? For those who are working here, it would be useful to know if something like this was available ‘out of hours’.
@ Brendan,
normal classes at the uni’s are in the morning. I studied at SU and it was from 8.30-12.00 plus an extra class on Wednesday afternoon 14.00-15.30. I saw the option of one on one before but never asked about it, so I don’t know the hours.
@ Vincent,
I started, before coming to Chengdu, with just pinyin and spoken Chinese, but after a while I think it limits you. And although at the start characters are quite difficult it gets a lot more interesting and useful. Even after just 1 semester I prefer to read characters over pinyin as pinyin above a sentence with characters just distracts.
Regarding SU classes. Yes, they are kinda big, about 20 max, although often “just” 15 show up. So yes, you do get less speaking time, but my comprehensive teacher taught the grammar really well and if you work hard after class you can still get a lot of progress. The biggest reason for me to choose a uni was that here I’m sort of forced to go to class every day, do homework, learn for dictations, etc.
My first plan was do to 1 or 2 semesters, but after 1 semester I’ve decided to go for a bachelors in Chinese, so hopefully I’ll be fluent in Chinese after a few years.
Same thing happened to me last year around this time. Wouldn’t worry too much about it, but if you want to contact SWUN to follow up： 陈老师（Mrs.Chen) is usually the point person and very helpful (here’s her email address: [email protected]).
Group classes are usually on weekday mornings four days a week,four “class hours” a day, and they have different days for different levels. Individual classes are usually two hours a day, three days a week, and it’s between you and the teacher whenever you want to have class.
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