After some time not really learning Chinese, then taking a rapid leap forward online, I decided to try an Intensive Mandarin Course.
This entailed visiting a school in Sanlitun for 6 hours a day, five days a week. The morning is dedicated to new words and structures, the early afternoon to speaking and the latter stages to listening and understanding. A rotation of teachers ensures the student gets exposure to a wide variety of Chinese accents, from native Beijingers to those farther afield.
There were only two other students so everyone got plenty of attention from the teachers – some more than others – and we had other people in the class with which to practice conversations.
Heres a tip for those attending certain language schools – if one of your fellow students is a 20-something year old with short skirts and long blonde hair, you get zero attention from the male teacher. I mean zero – the other two of us got completely ignored for the last 55 minutes of the hour long session.
The next day he decided to teach from the back of the class where he could get a better look at her legs.
The first day was dedicated to tones, sentence structure and pinyin, then basic introductions and niceties.
The second morning we learnt a few verbs like ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ and started building vocabulary. The first vocabulary took the form of numbers, family members and countries.
The female teachers stuck with the usual “Do you have a brother”, “Which country do you come from” etc.
The male teacher’s number lesson went along the lines of “Repeat after me: Yī, èr, sān, sì (1,2,3,4), good – lets learn a new word…”
“Todays new word is Nán péngyǒu, which means boyfriend”
Ignoring the rest of us, the blonde gets asked “Nǐ yǒu nán péngyǒu?” (Do you have a boyfriend?)
“Yes I do. My boyfriend is Spanish”
After a visible wince, “Oh, well lets carry on – Wǔ, liù, qī, bā (5,6,7,8)…”, then “I’ve got a wife you know, Jiǔ, shí, ling (9, 10, zero)”
The other two of us look at each other and sigh.
The teacher calls the end of the class and moves to the back for a better view of her legs.
Homework
The second day also had homework – I’d forgotten how much I hate homework. To facilitate this we were told to buy a text book. The homework wasn’t in the text book, the vocabulary may have been in the text book, but the book was all in Chinese Characters, so I couldn’t tell. So far no further mention has been made of the text book, so it feels like a worthwhile purchase…
Learning in Beijing
I’m convinced that Beijing isn’t a particularly helpful place to learn Chinese as very few people have the time or inclination to let you practice simple or correct Mandarin sentences. In a restaurant, nobody asks “Please may I have the bill” – they just shout “maidan” (settle the bill), then “maidan” again a few times whilst the staff try to ignore them.
The only place I can have a normal conversation is in my local corner shop, where they always seem to be offering to help me practice as their bit of fun for the day.
On the third day of the course we were given a native Beijinger to take us for listening practice. After listening to a nice clear Harbin accent the Beijinger appeared to be adding “aarrr” to the end of everything. Sanlitun became, Sanlituarrr; fanguan became fanguarrrr – all very appropriate for the upcoming Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Too Intensive Mandarin Course?
If I’m honest, 6 hours a day plus homework, 5 days a week was too much to absorb fully everything I was learning. By the fourth day, I had a headache that just wouldn’t go away and by the end of the fifth, I accepted defeat and rearranged the lessons down to 2-3 hours a day, which should be far more manageable.
So far, the class has yielded excellent results. It’s a struggle, but we can now describe a reasonably complicated night out, deal with restaurants and shopping, and direct taxi drivers. By the third day, the taxi driver who took me home fully understood all my directions without having to resort to the usual written note, so I was pleased with that.
Of the three classmates, one has amazing grammar, but can’t remember the vocabulary; one has a great vocabulary, but dodgy pronunciation and I’ve got decent pronunciation but consistently fail to get the sentence order right. All the words are correct, just not necessarily in the right order to make any sense. You’d think that would be an easy thing to fix…
It’s funny you say that Beijing is not the best place to learn Chinese because everyone learning outside of beijing is always told that beijing is the BEST place.
I think it’s because you have no local language to deal with in beijing. In my city (in southern China) the local people speak a different dialect, which is 100% different than mandarin. So talking to older people is basically impossible for me (unless they have studied mandarin.) Even trying to buy things at the market is hard because the local dialect pronounces four and ten the same (si).
Also, foreign students all across the country learn the beijing accent from our books. Since most books are made in beijing, they add the er (儿) to a lot of words. My teacher will sometimes tell us “that’s more of a northern thing,” but we still have to learn it the way it is written in the book.
And I wouldn’t be disappointed that you are not learning the “real” chinese. I mean, why bother learning “Please may I have the bill,” when nobody says it. (and really, nobody says it in any part of the country.)
You should learn the language as it is spoken, not as is most polite (someone told me that saying “polite’ words, like please, is actually less polite. If you ask something like, ‘please give me some chopsticks’ you are putting a formality between you two, and you are saying you can’t be equals. Like, family members would never say ‘please’ to each other when asking for something.)
I actually say thank you all the time, like every time a waitress brings a dish, and they always laugh at me because it is so uncommon (and to them, silly). But I still do it because I can’t help it.
It’s true that a huge benefit of being in Beijing is the wide range of accents and dialects to which we’re exposed.
The problem is getting any practice as everyone is too busy rushing around to want to listen to a random foreigner. When out in the smaller towns and countryside, where people have (or at least are willing to make) more time, I’ve had some quite long and interesting conversations.
Your point about polite words putting up barriers is interesting as I’m also still saying please and thank you far too often.
Ditto to the please and thank you. And I always say I’m sorry when I bump someone…they look at me very strange.
Jen
I’ve been thinking about that today as I’ve been out and about. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop any time soon, the same as letting people pass and not shoving them out of my way – it’s just too ingrained
I enjoyed your blog. I also live in Beijing and take Mandarin classes. May I ask where you took the intensive course. I just moved here, but I would like to take an intensive course next year.
My teacher teaches us the Beijing accent as well.
I spoke to quite a few in the local area, and among my favourites were http://www.mandarinhouse.cn/, http://livethelanguage.cn/, http://www.capitalmandarin.com/ & http://www.hutong-school.com/. The courses all seem similar, so it really depends on how far you’re willing to travel and the timetable you want to commit to.
I’m going to finish this course, then maybe try one of the others, and will write them up here.
I studied at both http://www.mandarinhouse.cn and http://www.livethelanguage.cn – Live the Language is much better.
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Mandarin is a difficult language to learn. I understand why you had a headache after each class. I am glad that you are improving and you can now give directions effectively. For sure, with continues dedication you’ll be a fluent speaker of the dialect.
Thank you – I appreciate the encouragement!
I agree that learning a new langauge is always hard, especially Mandarin. As for me I strauggle a lot with characters, but it gives more motovations to study on the other hand.
Mandarin learning can be a real fun and sudying characters is a very interesting thing as you can understand and remember much more words and notions as characters have a lot of sense and based on the perception of the world many centuries ago
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Hi Steve,
Your forward is very funny. Taking the leap forward, can’t stop smiling. I want to take such a leap right now. I am interested in learning Mandarin, reading, writing seriously for work. I am interested in intensive learning but don’t know where to go, how to go about without losing money or enthusiasm. If I start self learning, could you recommend me any book accompanied by video and online stuff that will instill a solid base and step by step take me to a level where I am can read, write and grammatically be sufficient? I will appreciate your help.
tea
Hi, have a look at this post about Grasp Chinese, which I found very helpful for a beginner
Mentioning that saying please and thank you seems impolite to many chinese because it puts distance between speakers is so enlightening. My boyfriend is Chinese and whenever i tell him “please” and “thanks” IN ENGLISH he would often say i ruined the good feeling… And when I would do something for him and expect a “THANK YOU” i would have to remind him, “I don’t care if I am your girlfriend!! I did something nice for you! You acknowledge it with a THANKS! at the very least!” It took some getting used to, but he does it a bit more now and hopefully doesn’t feel as weird about it when I do it. When I do thank him- I have to say remind him I am speaking English and here it is the custom to thank people so whether he likes it or not I am thanking him!! GET USED TO IT and also do for me 😛
Chanced upon this and was very interesting to see this thing about politeness.
As a native Chinese speaker, I don’t think there is such a thing at all, ie being polite will put up barriers!
When asking for a bill, ‘Mai Dan’ suffices because that is what it is meant to be – not about being polite or not. After all politeness would be in the tone one asks for it and the way one gestures to the waiter/waitresses. And if you thank them every time they bring a dish, there is nothing wrong with that at all – they probably will appreciate your politeness.
One thing I have noticed in China is that some foreign visitors find the locals extremely rude, ie not thanking people for holding doors open, rushing to grab seats on the metro etc. This is probably due to the fact that some people might not have been educated or exposed to an environment where everyone acts in a polite manner. As the country slowly evolves, hopefully this changes. Thus I am of the belief that it is not in the Chinese culture to be naturally ‘impolite’ so that barriers can be breached – that is certainly not the case and wherever in the world we go to, politeness should be upheld!