Learning Mandarin In a Private Chinese Language School

Learning Standard Mandarin can be made a lot easier than mainstream opinion holds it today. The first thing you should do is naturally to come to China. The reason that being China is absolutely necessary is that even though there are ways to make learning Standard mandarin easier, it is never going to become a walk in the park. You need to be here, on the ground, and experience the language in its natural setting in order to be successful. I have written a previous article for this web site where I clank down on studying the standard mandarin language in a university class size. I mentioned then that the two largest obstacles that you will be unable to tackle in an efficient manner in large class size in pronunciation and the Chinese writing system. This remains true.

These obstacles are very hard to get used to and each person will struggle with different aspects of the curriculum. This necessitates a smaller class size, as one teacher can never hope to address the individual concerns of thirty students. This fact feeds heavily into the point of this article.

As already noted, I claim that learning Standard Mandarin in a country that is not China is all but impossible. If you come to China for language studies a university is a good place to start learning right? Wrong: First of all foreigners will surround you and you will not actually need to speak Chinese to go about your day-to-day activities. Countless people have failed to capitalize on their in China for this reason. Secondly, the most important aspect of applying the language in natural communication is having access to the section of the Mandarin language that matter for you own individual hobbies and ambitions.

Say that you are interested in skydiving and that you want to go jumping out of a Chinese airplane. Because the odds that an entire class will share your ambition to do this are non-existent, you will never find a class curriculum where thirty students are taught the necessary terminology. Furthermore, the teacher can simply not create the necessary tailor made content without having access to an entire staff of administrative staff, which would really make the university into a very large private school. The reason that private Mandarin language schools in China are more expensive is of course that they have a much higher staff to student ratio. But what you get for that money is not really something you can compare to being force-fed a deluge of vocabulary from pulpit, especially taking into consideration that the flood of new information is not relevant its entirety.

For to discuss an optimal way of learning Mandarin we need to involve components that can only be derived directly from individual attention. In order these components are individual questions and answers, attention to pronunciation on a personal basis, attention to individual methods of writing, which means both stroke order and awareness of stroke radicals. Furthermore, a small class size, or at least a much higher staff to student ratio, means that it is possible to address the individual goals of students Mandarin studies. Ultimately a private Mandarin language school, as opposed to a public university, is a business and is therefore much more aware of competitive factors. For mandarin language studies these factors make a world of difference.

To conclude: learning Mandarin is difficult. It is essential to be in China to succeed in your studies. The first two major difficulties that you will face in your Mandarin language studies are pronunciation and the Chinese writing system. These barriers are difficult to negotiate in classroom where there are too many students per teacher for the teacher to address your individual questions. Furthermore, a large class size, like the ones in a Chinese university, rules out the possibility of creating the content you need to as an individual target the most important aspects of your Chinese studies.

Rui Ming works for a Chinese Language School that is a great option for those that want to learn Mandarin in China.

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Learn Mandarin Online - The Cheap Way to Learn Mandarin

So you'd like to learn Mandarin Chinese... how will you go about it? Have you thought of using the internet? There are many good reasons to learn Mandarin online. For one thing, there's the obvious issue of cost, but there is also the issue of cost effectiveness.

What do I mean?

Consider this... attending a class is not cheap. One-on-one learning is even less so, for about $40 per hour, and you won't get your education tailored to your specific needs in a class, as you would if you learn Mandarin online.

For example, one teacher directs his attention to a classroom full of people. One student has some difficulty in pronunciation, another in sentence structure, another in verb conjugation, and so on. Can one teacher fulfill every student's individual needs while teaching a class as a whole? The teacher may offer advice after class, if there is time in the student's busy schedule... but is that enough?

Out of the whole class at course's end, how many will speak fluently? How many will speak fairly well? How many will barely be able to carry on the simplest of intelligible conversations?

How many will have given up?

Now consider this... if you learn Mandarin online, you have the ability to tailor the learning experience to conform to your certain needs with better focus, and at your own pace. Using all sorts of multimedia resources available to enhance your learning experience, you can learn Mandarin online quickly and effectively.

With the internet, you can download audio, video, worksheets, tests, interactive lessons, there's one-on-one support and forums for advice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all at your leisure. Multimedia packages usually cost under $100 for everything you need to learn Mandarin online, with all the resources mentioned above and more. Certainly, it's much more cost effective and beneficial to learn Mandarin online. Why not start now?

Check out Rocket Chinese for the best way to learn Mandarin online. For a full review of Rocket-Chinese Click Here

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Ways You Can Learn Mandarin

Being able to speak more than one language is great way to open your eyes to different cultures and customs. If you have always dreamed that someday you would learn Mandarin, your chance is now. Why wait for that someday when you could be speaking another language tomorrow?

Some languages like Spanish and French are so popular that books about learning those languages are falling off the bookshelves at stores. Though it is true there are not as many resources on how to speak Mandarin, there are enough to make learning the language just as simple as the other languages. Even a friend that speaks Mandarin can be a resource for you.

Your friend can help you to find the best book or class to take to learn Mandarin. They can also help with your class assignments if you need someone to practice talking with someone who will be able to correct you if you have your words mixed up. Maybe you could take them out to dinner and practice talking in Mandarin.

To find that perfect language class for you, you may have to do some research. If you live in a rather rural area, finding a Mandarin class could be difficult. Call your local community college or check out their website to see what language classes they offer to the public. Attending an actually attending a class will make learning easier for some, while learning on your own may work better for others.

Since not everyone has access to a community class because of location or time, there are other ways of learning Mandarin. Almost everyone today has a way to access the internet so take advantage of this great resource. You may even be lucky enough to stumble across a site that will offer a free trial of a class so you can make sure you really want to devote your time to learning this specific language.

Public libraries are also great places to learn about all kind of things. Look at the online catalog for your local library to see what books they have available for you to check out. Even if you find a book at an online bookstore that you plan to buy, see if your library has it so you can look through it before buying.

Learning a new language will take time so be patient with yourself and work hard. A good study area is also a great idea. There are usually many distractions for someone studying at home, so find a different location if you need to.

If you need to set goals for yourself in order to get things done, a deadline by which to learn Mandarin online may be a good idea. Maybe you could plan a trip to China so you are motivated to finish your book or class before you go. Remember you will also learn a lot on your trip that you cannot possibly learn from a book or class. Culture has a lot to do with language so bring your notebook and pen and keep on learning while on your trip. Grammar lessons should be included in any lessons you take.

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Learning Mandarin - An Interconnected Learning Process

When discussing mandarin studies I often focus on the holistic nature of a good curriculum. Learning Mandarin can be very difficult if the learning process lack one of three key aspects. Studying something as complicated and the Standard Mandarin language must be interesting, it must be efficient and it must be focused. I consider this to be a holistic approach because there is a great deal of synergy inherent in each of these qualities. For something to be interesting it should be focused on what you are interested in and it must be dealt with in an efficient manner, or you will loose motivation before you reached the target of your studies. Conversely, for something to be efficient it must be targeted, almost per definition. There simply is no point in pursuing a target of little concern to you. As a parallel argument, for something to be efficient, it needs to be target, as I just noted, and if it is targeted. Lastly, and for the same reason, for mandarin language studies to become targeted they must be interesting and furthermore, the language studies are then, per definition, efficient.

So, the holistic approach is really just common sense. To make learning interesting, efficient and targeted is not exactly a Nobel Prize winning theory. However, it is my opinion that most schools still manage to evade on corner of this triangle. I think that this is the reason that learning mandarin has a reputation as very difficult. I remember a fire safety seminar back in Pre School where a really cool fireman came in and explained to us what fire really is. The exothermal process needs three elements: fuel, air and heat. Take out one and you kill the fire. The same applies to the triangle I just discussed, remove one of these components and a student's motivation just dies.

So: how do we make sure that the necessary ingredients for superb mandarin studies are all there? Because they are all interlinked, the solution to this conundrum is also interlinked. It begins with a reasonable class size. I don't really know what a principal is thinking when he decides that 1 teacher can simultaneously teach 30 students Mandarin. Standard Mandarin pronunciation is less complicated than Chinese Cantonese, for example, but it is still complicated and it is initially difficult for students to wrap the tongues around the tones. However, putting students and teachers in a situation where individual pointers are just not feasible, as they are not in a classroom with 30 students per teacher, one makes learning mandarin a insurmountable task.

This pronunciation issue highlights the holistic nature of language studies. With out being able to properly speak people are handicapped in every way. The studies are not, therefore, efficient; they are also not interesting as they are only about reading about the language, not about using it. Furthermore, as students are unable to speak independently, in their life outside school, there is no room for targeting the things that matter most to them. That makes the language student completely unable to control and focus their efforts in the direction of their own aims.

The pronunciation alone is not the whole issue with large class sizes either. There are many ways in which Chinese language studies become very difficult without individual attention and personal interaction between teacher and students. However, these reasons are not either the entire issue here. On an interpersonal level it is very hard for students to feel that they are being helped when the teacher don't know ones full name. The lack of sense of personal attention also kills motivation as progress cannot be commented on or even encouraged effectively.

In the end, a small class size is not going to lead to a perfect environment alone, other facets are without a doubt key points to consider when aiming for an optimal service. It is however the area in which most schools fail atrociously and it is therefore an area that is easiest to fix.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin language Academy in Beijing that is a great option for those that want to learn Standard Mandarin. If you are interested in more information about learning Mandarin in Beijing, please consult the website of Beijing Gateway Academy.

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Learning Mandarin and Class Sizes

Like most instances of learning, Standard Mandarin, the lingua franca of contemporary China, is imparted in a large classroom environment. A university class typically holds no less than thirty students per teacher. This is not optimal for most students, as those that desire to learn Mandarin are most often not familiar with the tonal nature of the language or the concept of character, as opposed to an alphabet.

Education, regardless if it takes place in a public or private institution, is a service. It is something of value that is imparted by one party onto another party without goods changing hands. It is the small things that make the big difference, in life, in products and in services. The difference between a manufactured product and an experienced service is this; in manufacturing, attention to details means that every product that is produced is identical, in services attention to details means that every experience is unique. So why should we not teach in a matter that reflects the service nature of education?

The answer to this is simple. There is a great social force that comes from how we are taught as children, which is a reflection of how our parents were taught, which go back until the public school systems around the world was formed. During most of this time, and still today in the vast majority of instances, there were not, and are not, sufficient resources in place to impart education as an optimal service. However, that is not to say that there have not been instances, and still are instances, where it is not possible.

Today the world is rich. By any possible standard we are wealthy. Even the poor are rich by the standards set for most of humanities time on earth. With the advent of computing, we took another step into the future. We made the first tool that did not make manual labor simpler, but actually made thinking simpler. With all this change, there should be sufficient resources, and new types of resources to reach for an excellent service in education in more instances.

Mandarin studies should be such an area. The relative wage difference between western countries and China should allow for students to gain access to a much smaller class size than they are able to today. The benefits of a smaller class size are those that can be harnessed from more attention from the teacher. Those benefits can be divided into two categories.

The first of these categories is communication elicited by the teacher. In mandarin language studies such benefits will be mainly oriented to correction of pronunciation, which can be very difficult indeed. Not only is the Romanization of mandarin, called pinyin, in many sets of sounds, directly counter institutive. There is also an added dimension to pronunciation dealing with the pitch of words. There are four categories of words that even thought they are made up of the same letters, have different, and multiple, meanings.

The second of these categories is communication elicited by the students. This is especially interesting for language studies in general, and therefore also by the subset of Mandarin language studies, because the individual ambitions each students have. A person will be interested in a small proportion of the language that other people will not care on iota about. This interest cannot be addressed in a large class size, as it would take up much more time than a teacher has available. But in a smaller class size this interest can be addressed and used by the teacher to impart more sections of the language.

The argument is dead simple. It should be possible, to a much larger extent than is done today, for a teacher to be alone with 5 to 10 students at a time. Especially for language studies in China. Standard mandarin is difficult to learn. This action could be taken today and should be taken by private language schools, which have the resources to be able to teach in this way.

Rui Ming works for a Mandarin language Academy in Beijing that is a great option for those that want to learn mandarin in China. If you are interested in more information about the Academy's program, please the course page: learn mandarin in China.

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