Studying Chinese at Wenhua

[R_jay]

Hello

thanks for the review on Wenhua. I am currently a Shi-Da student and I am extremely frustrated with the MTC. The teachers are boring, the facilities are old and the classes make me wanna sleep. I will start my fourth term of Chinese next week and enrolled at Wenhua and after seeing your review got much more excited. I decided to change mainly because of the price and the high school atmosphere of Shi-Da. I thought that if I was gonna get frustrated again by my classes, at least I would save 6000 NTD (200USD). I will begin from PAVC 3 Lesson 7. My advice to anyone now is to avoid MTC and search. There are many other places that suits one's different needs. Shi-Da is just the one we easily heard of and thought was good but actually is a place where you go to listen to teachers chat about subjects that interest themselves.

Nice to know its come in useful for some people. If you've taken the intensive course then you're at the level can choose electives, I'd recommend the song lyrics one if you can. Its alot of fun, and useful. My friend timed her trip back home to take a month off just so she could take the next level song lyrics elective again lol (its not offered every term). The writing course is strenuous, it's really wearing me down. I didn't like the reading one so much either. All the culture series of electives seem fun. And yes the teachers are younger so they often teach you slang terms related to the new words in the book, it comes in handy.

[nibo]

I received an email from someone at the school stating that they don't have classes before 10:00 in the morning (maybe just for beginning levels). However, on the site it looks like that do, at least sometimes, offer classes in the 8-9 range. Can anyone comment on this? I work in the early afternoon and really want to take morning classes.

[R_jay]

Looking at the class list on the office wall it seems the classes for the 3 elementary levels are either 10am or 2pm. Looks like the 8am classes start at the pre-intermediate levels.

[nibo]

Thanks for the help. Do you know if the 10:00 class seems to be a 3-hour class or a 2-hour class?

[R_jay]

That will depend of the level, all elementary levels (the first 3 levels) are 3 hours, all after that are 2 hours not including the optional 1 hour elective.

[SloanRanger]

I've just enrolled on a 12-week intensive course at Wenhua starting in September. I'd not even considered CCU before reading this post but I had a look round the campuses of the main schools in central Taipei and the facilities at Wenhua definitely looked the smartest, so hopefully I've made the right decision. It was NT$20,100 for 12-weeks so at least £100 cheaper than anywhere else I could find and a lot cheaper than Shi-Da.

Ask Taiwanese about CCU and they'll all tell you it's at Yangming Shan in the middle of nowhere, which is true of the main campus, except that the Mandarin Learning Centre is located in the School on Continuing Education at on Hepingdong Rd in Da'an, opposite Da'an park. Its 7 mins walk from Technology Building Station, 15 mins walk from Shi-Da, and 25 mins walk from Guting MRT.

This is definitely true, every time I told a Taiwanese I was thinking of studying at CCU they looked at me like I was a complete moron (I'm familiar with this look) and told me it would be a very long commute.

Anyway, if there's any other Forumosans planning on studying Elementary 2 at Wenhua in September please drop me a line.

Cheers

[KoreanWave]

Is late registration possible?

According to the website, the application deadline is 2 months before class starts (http://mlc.sce.pccu.edu.tw/default.asp? ... =1&lang=en).

For students already physically in Taiwan, will they allow later registration? For example 2-3 days before class starts?

[Nyko]

Does anyone have any experience with studying simplified Mandarin at Wenhua? I've previously studied in Beijing so when I return to study I want to continue simplified so that I don't have to slip back a level or two. The website states they have courses in both simplified and traditional, and I selected simplified at each stage of the registration process and online test. However, I was told now (after I've paid) that there aren't simplified lessons at level 1:3, and that they only start from 2:1 upwards with a 1 hour elective lesson...

[Feiren]

Wenhua will be very similar to the MTC.

Hello

thanks for the review on Wenhua. I am currently a Shi-Da student and I am extremely frustrated with the MTC. The teachers are boring, the facilities are old and the classes make me wanna sleep. I will start my fourth term of Chinese next week and enrolled at Wenhua and after seeing your review got much more excited. I decided to change mainly because of the price and the high school atmosphere of Shi-Da. I thought that if I was gonna get frustrated again by my classes, at least I would save 6000 NTD (200USD). I will begin from PAVC 3 Lesson 7. My advice to anyone now is to avoid MTC and search. There are many other places that suits one's different needs. Shi-Da is just the one we easily heard of and thought was good but actually is a place where you go to listen to teachers chat about subjects that interest themselves.

Nice to know its come in useful for some people. If you've taken the intensive course then you're at the level can choose electives, I'd recommend the song lyrics one if you can. Its alot of fun, and useful. My friend timed her trip back home to take a month off just so she could take the next level song lyrics elective again lol (its not offered every term). The writing course is strenuous, it's really wearing me down. I didn't like the reading one so much either. All the culture series of electives seem fun. And yes the teachers are younger so they often teach you slang terms related to the new words in the book, it comes in handy.

[R_jay]

Does anyone have any experience with studying simplified Mandarin at Wenhua? I've previously studied in Beijing so when I return to study I want to continue simplified so that I don't have to slip back a level or two. The website states they have courses in both simplified and traditional, and I selected simplified at each stage of the registration process and online test. However, I was told now (after I've paid) that there aren't simplified lessons at level 1:3, and that they only start from 2:1 upwards with a 1 hour elective lesson...

Seems about right, starting 2:1 you can take HSK electives which are all simplified, but the main class is traditional. 1 on 1 classes can use a China simplified textbook. The Han Institute produces a simplified textbook series and uses it to train their teachers, so I assume their classes will similarly at least have the option of using that textbook.

But why would you slip back a level? I previously had only studied simplified characters and by the end of the first term was equally proficient in both. I kept studying traditional, took the HSK preparation elective in my final term before I left and can now read a simplified newspaper with few traditional/simplified issues. I can't really write by hand using simplified, but that isn't really important.