Having completed my oral/reading and writing test during registration day, on Orientation day (2nd September) I found out they placed me in Intermediate Reading & Writing. That was OK until I picked up the text book and read it. I was not happy at all! I flipped to the last page and I could read it perfectly OK. The vocab in the text book wasn’t particularly hard or anything I haven’t heard of before. I was a bit puzzled as to why they placed me in this class, but there was nothing I could do until I turned up to my first class.
When I turned up to my first class I told my teacher I think they placed me in a class that’s too easy for my standard. And I didn’t come to Taiwan
I spent the next 2 school days rocking up to uni at 8am to try and transfer into the Newspaper Reading (1) class. I didn’t care what time it started I just wanted to sit through 2 hours of their class to see if I was suitable. Who knew that it was so hard to just sit in a class here because people don’t move!!! (And teachers don’t let you listen in unless there’s space, fair enough because the rooms are small) I did meet 2 people that wanted to transfer from their ‘intensive’ newspaper reading class to a ‘regular’ class but even they had difficulty because nobody was moving out of their class! I then decided to sit through ‘Business Communications’ as it is supposedly a harder level than Intermediate Reading and Writing. The content in that class was really boring, and was full of foreigners that didn’t quite speak Chinese as fluently as people in my current class that I just decided to return to my class. I figured what I get out of a language is less about the classes I take but more what I put into it myself in the spare time. Plus, my writing really can do with a lot of improvement so its not like I won’t be learning anything in the class they placed me into. It's just that, I really wanted to learn some Classical Chinese that I used to learn during my highschool Chinese school days which I never paid attention to! Now I'm just stuck learning about practical things like MBA, Credit Cards, Convenience Stores, The Internet...
Having gone through this MTC experience, my conclusion is that they don’t do a very good job of really testing your abilities, especially for Overseas Chinese as most of us didn’t study Chinese at university, but probably speak it at home, have studied Chinese in some capacity in the past and is more or less fluent but just need brushing up (like myself!) Or maybe I just got the short straw of the stick…maybe some other Overseas Chinese students got placed into something exactly that they wanted?! I don’t know, but having spoken to others in my class, it seems like a lot of Overseas Chinese were placed in ‘Beginners Chinese’ even though they could just sleep through class and pass. I get the feeling they really try to satisfy foreign (non-Chinese) students though, probably as a good marketing exercise, and they rely on their local reputation as a Chinese language school for local Taiwanese. If there’s a survey I can do at the end of this course, I will definitely mention something about their entrance testing system, or providing information about available courses to study!!
Apologies for spending so much time complaining about the testing system and my class schedule, but I just needed to get it out there so I don’t keep repeating this story to all my friends (some have probably heard it for the 3rd time now!)
Well I decided to stay in my class for a few reasons, and I guess the biggest reason is because I liked my class mix. If I am going to hang around Taipei US , 2 from Australia (myself included), 2 from Indonesia , 1 from Thailand and 1 from Sweden
Plus I quite liked this teacher as she speaks Mandarin with that perfect accent I wish to attain and her teaching method is quite good. She also makes us not only read and write but speak in class, so we all get turns to express thoughts more coherently and eloquently in Chinese. (as most of us probably only speak basic Chinese required at home or to get around Taipei
And as easy as I thought this reading and writing class would be, its not. There are dictation tests here where you probably have to go through over 200 Chinese characters in ‘1 Chapter’ to be able to sit the test. Even for someone that supposedly thinks this level is too easy (me!), it still takes me a good 3 hours to practise writing all the words and sentences once, and you need to go through it at least 2 or 3 times more before you are ready for a dictation test. (I think the dictation test we had on Friday shocked my fellow classmates as most were not prepared for something that intense. I have the pressure of having said ‘I’m too good for the class’ to actually top every single test now. Should have kept my mouth shut on Day 1!) In addition to regular dictation tests, there’s an essay to hand in each week of about 500 words. I know 500 words doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you are out of Chinese writing practise it’s not easy! Again, our class was a bit taken aback with our teachers’ expectation, as some classmates didn’t hand in an essay of that length or in a proper 3-4 paragraph structure. And I must admit, I didn’t write my essay in its proper structure, my writing was more like this blog. Free flowing prose?!
There are ‘supplementary’ hours to take at the MTC too in which I will review later once I actually attend one of those classes. I’m looking forward to weekly Chinese Poetry lessons and watching Chinese films =D.
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