Mandarin Scholarship Taiwan » study chinese

NTNU Mandarin Training Center

kang-wei — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:54:21 +0000

國立臺灣師範大學 National Taiwan Normal University, Shi-Da, founded the Mandarin Training Center in 1956 for the study of Mandarin Chinese by foreign students.

The Mandarin Training Center represents one of the world’s oldest and most distinguished programs for language study, attracting more than a thousand students from over sixty countries to Taiwan each year and making the Shi-Da area of Taipei one of the city’s most cosmopolitan.

[Wiki: National Taiwan Normal University]

Blogger BrettEverett has written about his experiences at NTNU’s Mandarin Training Center. It gives a great insight into what Mandarin scholarship students can expect in the way of administration and teaching methodology. It’s very important for Mandarin scholarship students to know what they want before they commit to a university. Once the scholarship is linked to that university you have to wait two semesters before you can change.

NTNU’s Mandarin Training Center hasn’t lived up to what I expected it to be. We have currently have 8 students (the max), at one point had 10 students in our class, and all of their literature says that 5-6 students is average size for the intensive classes. The difference between their regular and intensive classes are two students and one extra hour of class a day. That is, there are 10 students in a normal class and they only meet for 2 hours a day instead of 3.

I’m also disappointed in MTC’s teaching methodology. It’s focused mostly on writing. We also have to do a lot of homework outside of class. My issue with that is that writing is my weakest area. I haven’t written characters for three years now. I always use computers to do my homework, and as such have practically forgotten how to write. My classmates are 2 americans, a Chinese-Indonesian guy, 2 Japanese guys, a Japanese girl and a 16 year old Mongolian girl. I joke that the Japanese girl is a walking character dictionary. She always knows how to write whatever character we are studying.

I don’t care much for writing characters. It wastes a lot of time and I’m poor at it. I don’t have years in which to dedicate myself to writing a single character hundreds of times until it is correct. I want to work on speaking and recognizing characters. To me, being able to communicate with other people in Chinese is why I’m here. Squiggly lines don’t interest me. If it isn’t clear, I’m very unhappy with my current school situation. Of our tests and everything else we do, 20% is speaking, 20% is reading recognition and the last 60% is writing.

This is opposite of what I want for myself and is making me less and less happy as time goes on. I keep scoring poorly on the tests because I write the characters wrong. Its frustrating always asking the teacher for more time while my Japanese classmates have finished their tests and are napping while waiting for us to finish. Even though I have a scholarship from NTNU, I can’t see myself staying there in the future if the situation doesn’t improve.

National Taiwan University Mandarin Training Center

I personally equate prestigious universities/programs with inflexibility and encourage scholarship students to really do their research before they commit. I will be posting as many different experiences from different universities as I can find.

Related story:

Studying Mandarin at Shi-Da

Taiwan donates scholarships to Dominican Republic

kang-wei — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:01:49 +0000

Dominican Republic is one of the 23 nations, including the Vatican City, that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Taiwanese Ambassador to the DR, Isaac Tsai, will donate US$1 million to the Ministry of Higher Education (SEESCYT) on behalf of his country. The funds will be used to help Dominican university students. The Taiwanese Embassy announced that this is the ninth set of funds awarded as part of their Mandarin Language and International Scholarship Fund Program.

According to the SEESCYT, the fund will provide Dominican students with the opportunity to study Internet technology, medicine, bio-chemistry, economics, foreign trade, banking and markets and rights and integrated communication at universities abroad. The funds will also be used to employ two Taiwanese teachers to teach languages at the UASD University and at the Foreign Relations Ministry’s School of Diplomacy.

Daily Dominican Republic News on July 23, 2008

Dominican Republic has maintained diplomatic relations with Taiwan for 63 years.

Rotary International Youth Program limits interaction with Taiwanese

kang-wei — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:23:51 +0000

Read an interesting article today in the China Post’s Foreign Community section. The piece was titled High school students leave Taiwan satisfied. It focused on two students, one from Demark (16) and one from France (19), who spent a year in Taipei’s public school system as part of the Rotary International Youth Program.

The Rotary International Youth Program allows thousands of teenagers worldwide to attend a year long exchange program in the country of their choice.

Mads Meoller, the Danish student, made some interesting comments regarding the,

written agreement between the exchange students and the organizers of the program that discouraged them from learning about Taiwanese politics, and matters concerning the weaker or stronger sex, which limited their interaction with their Taiwanese counterparts. “It was a fight to learn about culture,” he observed.

I can understand discouraging learning about politics in China for example, as it may get you in trouble, but in a free society like Taiwan it seems overly paternal. Would an exchange student going to Australia be obliged to follow similar guidelines?

And this, “discouraged…from learning about…matters concerning the weaker or stronger sex”. What does this mean exactly? Male exchange students can not have female friends and female exchange students can not have male friends? That’s what it sounds like.

The net result for our Danish friend, “It was a fight to learn about culture,”.

Having participated in four different exchange programs, I feel that my exposure to different political systems and building friendships with both sexes made the experiences life changing. Of course just attending the institutions was valuable but having restrictions like these does seem to be a contradiction in terms.

Note: The article has not yet been put on the China Post’s website.

Quote from the article, thanks for being honest Patty:

“I was worried at first!” said Patty, 16, who recalled her yearlong experience with foreign students at her senior high school in downtown Taipei. She believed that all foreign teenagers liked smoking or hanging out in bars, the opposite of how “normal” Taiwanese students behave. Patty was in for a pleasant surprise when Aude Gery joined her class in August 2007.

Studying Mandarin at Shida

kang-wei — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:48:16 +0000

Blogger Shu Flies is a Mandarin scholarship student at the National Taiwan Normal University’s (Shida) Mandarin Training Center. Located in Taipei, Shida is the place were most foreigners end up learning Mandarin.

Shu Flies has written about her experience at Shida. She alludes to bureaucratic delays for visas, stresses student responsibility for a rewarding learning experience and much more….

I’m back on the island from my three-week sojourn back to California (it would have been two weeks, but the visa office had other ideas. Thanks visa office!), and I’m taking advantage of my jet lag to type up a review of my time at Shida’s Mandarin Training Center.

I have no idea how systematized the teaching methodology is at the MTC, but I’ve heard from many other MTC veterans that your experience there depends in large part on the teacher you get. There are the good, the okay and the just plain awful: I heard horror stories about teachers showing up half an hour late, teachers not showing up, teachers showing up for one week then announcing they are off for a two-week vacation, teachers using class time to tell personal anecdotes that are both too-much-information and not related to the course material, etc…..

MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary

kang-wei — Sun, 04 May 2008 05:00:20 +0000

The creators of MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary say it’s “the no. 1 Chinese study aid!”

I completely agree with that statement. I’ve been using it for about 3 months and now find it indispensable. You can search effortlessly with Chinese, Pinyin or English.

“This website offers more than just a dictionary, it offers various tools such as: flashcards, quizzes, text annotation, Chinese text input and more. The MDBG dictionary is used in many schools and universities all over the world…”

A Hong Kong based mirror has just been added for users located in Asia.

http://hk.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

Chinese lyrics with English, pinyin & videos….

kang-wei — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:19:40 +0000

DirtyAmp is a great blog dedicated to providing Mando pop lyrics in Chinese (traditional), English and Pinyin. The site currently offers 18 songs form 12 artists.

Here’s Jay Chou’s 周杰倫 (zhōu jié lún) I’m Not Worthy / 我不配 (wǒ bú pèi) (Thanks Hsinchu DrityAmp!):

“A sad, beautiful song by Jay Chou about how the busy life of his stardom brings about lonely nights with no time to pursue a relationship.” DirtyAmp

Poor Jay! His new album is titled On The Run / 我很忙 (Wǒ Hěn Máng). The literal translation for the album is “I’m Very Busy”. I think he’s trying to tell us something…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnQH7xnKHRY]

[--- 歌詞 / Lyrics ---]
Verse 2x:

這街上太擁擠
zhè jiē shàng tài yōng jǐ
This street is too crowded

太多人有秘密
tài duō rén yǒu mì mì
Too many people with secrets

玻璃上有霧氣在被隱藏起過去
bō li shàng yǒu wù qì zài bèi yǐn cáng qǐ gù qù
Hidden in the foggy glass lies the past

妳臉上的情緒
nǐ liǎn shàng de qíng xù
With your sulky face

在還原那場雨
zài huán yuán nà chǎng yǔ
Returning to the rain

這巷弄太過彎曲
zhè xiàng nòng tài guò wān qū
This lane is too crooked

走不回故事裡
zǒu bù huí gù shì lǐ
To return back to the way things were

這日子不再錄
zhè rì zi bú zài lù
The green days are gone

又斑駁了幾句
yòu bān bó le jǐ jù
With just a few short exchange of words

剩下搬空回憶的我在大房子裡
shèng xià bān kōng huí yì
I’m left alone in the house with empty lingerning memories

電影院的座椅
diàn yǐng yuàn de zuò yǐ
Even seats in the theater

隔遙遠的距離
gé yáo yuǎn de jù lí
Brought us farther apart

感情沒有對手戲
gǎn qíng méi yǒu duì shǒu xì
Feelings with no partner

妳跟自己下棋
nǐ gēn zì jǐ xià qí
Is a game of chess played by yourself

還來不及仔仔細細寫下妳的關於
hái lái bù jí zǐ zǐ xià xià xiě xià nǐ de guān yú
There’s still no time to properly write down what I’d like to say to you

描述我如何愛妳
miáo shù wǒ rú hé ài nǐ
Describing how I love you

妳卻微笑的離我而去
nǐ què wēi xiào de lí wǒ ér qù
Yet you’ve left away with a smile

Chorus
這感覺已經不對
zhè gǎn jué yǐ jīng bú duì
This feeling isn’t right anymore

我努力在俛回
wǒ nǔ lì zài miǎn huí
I tried hard to return

一些些應該體貼的感覺我沒給
yī xiē xiē yīng gāi tǐ tiē de gǎn jué wǒ méi gěi
Some of the feelings I wanted to give

妳嘟嘴許的願望很卑微在妥協
nǐ dū zuǐ xǔ de yuàn wàng hěn bēi wēi zài tuǒ xié
The small desires you humbly permitted to be compromised

是我忽略妳不過要人陪
shì wǒ hū lüè nǐ bú guò yào rén péi
Were my mistake yet you still wanted to be with me

Oh 這感覺已經不對
zhè gǎn jué yǐ jīng bú duì
Oh this feeling isn’t right anymore

我最後才了解
wǒ zuì hòu cái liǎo jiě
It wasn’t until afterwards that I finally understood

一頁頁不忍翻閱的情結妳好累
yī yè yè bù rěn fān yuè de qíng jié nǐ hǎo lèi
While flipping through unbearable pages, realizing how tired you were

妳莫背為我掉過幾次淚多憔悴
nǐ mò bēi wèi wǒ diào guò jǐ cì lèi duō qiáo cuì
Burdened, you cried yourself dry because of me so many times

而我心碎妳受罪
ér wǒ xīn suì nǐ shòu zuì
And I was heart broken that you endured so much

妳的美我不配
nǐ de měi wǒ bú pèi
I’m not worthy of your beauty
[---------------------------------------]

End of Jay Chou Wo Bu Pei (I’m Not Worthy) Chinese Lyrics and English Translation

http://dirtyamp.blogspot.com/