Studying Abroad (in China)

I've noticed a steady influx of foreigners living and travelling through these parts. Maybe it's my big ego (haha!) but I'd like to think that some of them came to live/visit Dalian after reading my website!

There are many reasons why foreigners come to Dalian. It's well-known in China for it's natural beauty, cleanliness, fair weather (most of the time), and laid back way of life. Aside from work, Dalian is an excellent place to study Mandarin Chinese (aka 普通话 putonghua). Generally, the Dalian locals, especially the educated ones (high school educated or beyond) speak pretty standard putonghua. In all honesty, the best putonghua speakers in the country hail from Jilin and Heilongjiang province but cities there are just too damned cold and desolate to be hospitable for foreigners.

After you spend any amount of time in the northeast provinces studying putonghua, venturing down south and speaking to Chinese there really hurts the ears. Most Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu residents, for example, butcher the Chinese language with their bad accents.

Chinese is increasingly becoming an important language on the world scene. In my hometown, Toronto, many ethnic Chinese (mainly originating from Hong Kong) and others are learning Chinese in anticipation for the day Mandarin rivals English on the world stage.

So where and how do foreigners learn Chinese in China? There are two ways to do this:

A) You can go the 'full time' route and take a course at a university. This can be expensive and counter-productive at times. You would be in class with many foreigners, Japanese, Koreans, other western country citizens. Sure it can be fun and rewarding but some students forget that they're here to study Chinese and spend more time having fun than actually studying Chinese and/or practising it. Classes generally run from 8am-1200pm and there is some sort of activity/outing in the afternoon.

When choosing a Chinese study program, make sure it has a solid reputation for Chinese teaching. Many schools in Beijing and Shanghai are good as well as Dalian schools. Neusoft institute has a Chinese study program but it stinks. There is no after class activities and you're left to your own devices between classes. The dorms suck and the international department (in charge of all foreigner related affairs) are a bunch of lying, incompetent fools. But don't take my word for it, you can ask the students who moved out of the dorms mid-term (hell, I wouldn't be living here if I had to pay rent either!) and the other students who left half a year early into a one year program.

In Dalian, I've heard that the Dalian University of Technology, Dalian University of Foreign Languages and Dongbei University of Finance and Economics offer good Chinese study programs.

B) The less intensive and more relaxing "study at your own pace" way is to get a job, usually an English teaching job, and study on the side. Some employers offer half-assed "Chinese lessons" where either the teachers aren't very good or teach stuff that isn't very useful for survival in China or the school kind of lets the lessons fall by the wayside after awhile due to lack of funds or interest by students. Don't forget, Chinese is a really tough language to learn.

If you take this route, the best thing to do is to get a local Chinese person as your tutor. To find a good tutor, you should ask him/her if she has done the oral putonghua exam. This is a national exam that can be taken by university students which tests their proficiency in spoken putonghua. Give me a shout if you're looking for a Chinese tutor in Dalian, by the way.

An 80% score is the minimum grade that teachers need to attain to be a fully qualified teacher. Unfortunately and probably not surprisingly, many teachers in China haven't attained the 80% score. A 90%+ score is most desirable for Chinese language teachers and a 98%+ are the top TV and radio news broadcasters. At Neusoft, only 2 instructors in the whole school have gotten over 80% on their exam.

I don't agree with most things the CCP does here, but one thing I do agree with is their efforts to promote standard putonghua around the country. Believe it or not, the government spends a lot of money these days pushing teachers, professionals and government officials to take 'Chinese' lessons to improve their putonghua. Imagine that, Chinese adults learning the Chinese language in class!

There are too many dialects and local accents that are unintelligible with standard putonghua. This is a big reason why some foreigners who study Chinese speak better Chinese than many Chinese themselves!

I've often wondered if there could ever be an oral English proficiency test. What would the standard be? American English? British English? What would be considered correct and desirable? It's an interesting question to ponder...