Learn the language
View/Add Comments (0 Comments) | Add to Favorites (0 Favorites)
Learning the language of the country you are living in can change many things, this especially applies to China. Though you can survive in Shanghai with English and basic Chinese, learning the language, learning Chinese greatly enhances the experience of living in a country like China. Staple advice, huh? Well, those are my experiences with learning Chinese... I went through a whole lot of different teaching styles while learning Chinese, and did not care at all anymore in between. I learned at overloaded university courses, from private teachers, in group courses of the confucius institute and other places, did not really turn out well. I even gave more or less up on learning Chinese, or rather, on increasing my proficiency. For my daily life my Chinese was sufficient enough and at work I did only communicate in English. This went on for a while and I did not see any need to improve my Chinese, though it bothered me somewhat that I gave up on it. A friend with no prior experience regarding Chinese surprised me quite a lot with his improvements after a corporate training and some private classes. That kind of got me and after some discussion he bothered me into giving the school SN Mandarin in Shanghai a try. I had no prior experience with the school and was in general rather doubtful regarding the quality, after bad experiences in the past. It was only due to the great improvement of my friend that I gave it a try. Though I do not really want to advertise any specific place for learning a language, the school I mentioned greatly helped me improve my Chinese in 1 on 1 private lessons. I suppose this is, at least in theory, possible at any of the numerous Chinese language schools in Shanghai. The difference for me personally was at least partially due to the English proficiency of my teacher. Only, at other places, I had quite some different experiences. Well, my point is that after further improving my Chinese I had yet another access to China. It somehat improved my living standards as well and I am not as sick of this place anymore as I used to be. Might even end up increasing the duration of my stay, something that would have been impossible for me to even consider it, a few months ago. Just my 2 cents.
Submitted on Jun 03, 2015 - Category: Living Overseas, Network: China
Submitted By
AndiSN
Comments
