School Life - The Process

I decided to wait awhile before talking about school at Tai Da because I figured that it would take me some time to get used to their system. At first you'll hate it, then if you have cool teachers you'll learn to enjoy class time, but definitely not the homework. Here's how it works

When you get to Tai Da, you take a language placement test. There's a written portion and an interview portion.

For the written portion, there's 1) listening comprehension... like tones and short short stories and 2) reading comprehension where you read through long passages and such. This test is hard. Most people leave a portion completely blank, usually the last parts of each sections because the questions get harder as you go along. The 2nd year chinese book definitely doesn't cover everything, but no worries, leaving things blank is expected.

For the interview, they ask your name in chinese, the meaning of your name and a series of questions. In cases where they think you don't speak that well, they will ask you to repeat sentences after them. This part is actually hard because its like 2-3 part sentences and personally I forgot parts of it once she kept saying more and more. hahah.
After all this, you'll find out what 3 classes you got placed in. One for speaking and two for reading/comprehension...usually. They also offer Taiwanese, which this year they had to make 2 classes. Even though we all "supposedly" took 2 years of chinese prior to Tai Da, they still have the ability to place you into level 1 out of 7 which is the very beginning. Most people I know are in level 2 and 3, and you can be placed in different levels for the 3 different classes. If you test well enough, you'll be able to talk Tai Da classes, although a lot of their departments off classes in english...so go look into those. The only problem with Tai Da classes is that they don't take their finals until about the second week of January.

Classes start in the morning at 8am or 9am. The majority of people start at 9am (8am is for the 1st Taiwanese class). You go for 3 hours until noon. You guys, or people from CA, are called the Jia Zhou Ban and pretty much get special classes just for CA and your own floor in the language center.

THE HOMEWORK LOAD
Taiwan's teaching style is definitely different from America's. There's more preparation needed, and more time spent on homework.

First of all, you MUST read the book before you go to class. You aren't allowed to open the book while in class and the teacher asks you questions about the passage expecting you to know what the book said. This definitely takes time to getting used to because you semi memorizing the book's content. Secondly, like the summer chinese intensive class, there is a Ting Xie (vocab quiz) every morning on the vocab words found within the pages you had to read. I heard it's a lot better this year because my classes only test 5 words whereas last year were tested on 10. Depending on the teacher, you might get the word straight up OR she gives you a sentence and you're expected to know what vocab word to put in.

For my speaking class, "Discussions on Chinese Culture," we have daily vocab quizzes, weekly homework, a grammar quiz after each lesson, a speech or debate after every 2 lessons, and a test after every 2 lessons. For my other class "Everyday Chinese III," we have daily vocab quizzes, weekly homework, and a weekly test after every lesson. This class' pace goes at 1 lesson per week, which is about 60-80 vocab words in a week for one class. Yes it's fast, and I guarantee you you'll forget the words after you learn them BUT the midterm will just force it back in your brain.

If you test into a level 3/4 writing class, be prepared for daily essays and tons and tons of homework. Also, movie classes (don't be fulled by the name) take up a lot of time and have a ton of homework too. The movie classes force you to watch the movies on your OWN time, so I know a bunch of students who have switched out of that.

ELECTIVES
They give you 3 electives to choose from (all taught in english). They are seminars so its only once a week for 2.5-3 hrs. This year we have Survey of Chinese Thought, Art in Taiwan, and Chinese Fiction.

Survey of Chinese Thought - I chose this class so I actually know how it works. There's weekly reading, although I don't necessarily do all of it. There's one research paper (6 pages), a presentation on the paper, and take-home short essay questions for the final. You discuss a ton of different people influential to Chinese Philosophy. I fall asleep in the class sometimes, but thats just my habit. If you're interested in it, then its a pretty chill class to take

Art in Taiwan - this is what I've heard. There's opinion papers every so often, which you can probably whip out in an hour or two. And there are class field trips to museums in Taipei (on your own time of course). I'm not exactly sure how the final works, but I know its more work and time than the philosophy class. If you don't choose this class, but want to go to the museums, you can pay to go with them on the bus...so you don't necessarily have to pick this one if you just want to look at the art and not analyze it.

Chinese Fiction - so far I heard that its the most work out of the 3. There are lots of readings (being a fiction class) and you have to do group presentations every so often. Thats all I know about this one.

ATTENDANCE
I don't even know if I spelled attendance right!!! (your english will become very sucky while you're here).

So out of the semester that you're here for... 12-14 weeks depending... you get to miss 4 days of class without penalty. After that they start taking it out of your grade. Here's the unfair part... the regular ICLP (people not from CA) get to miss 40% of class without penalty. That means that if they wanted to, they only have to go to class 3 day a week!!! No matter what EAP tells you, you do get Thanksgiving off because ICLP is nice to you. Apparently they give it to the rest of the students, and the teachers/staff don't want to come in just for the California kids, so we get 2 days off for the US holiday!!! Other than Thanksgiving, you may or may not have 1-2 Taiwan holidays off and thats it. It depends if it falls on a weekday or not (which MidAutumn Festival fell on a sunday for us...big disappointment).

Overall, since each class only has a maximum of 7 students, the teacher will definitely know if you're missing. Choose your missed days wisely, and if you're doing well, then go ahead and miss more than 4 days (although I know of no one who's doing that).

We all pretty much hate class when you first get it. I mean absolutely hate it! People stay up until 2,3,4,5,6 in the morning to do homework. You only have weekends to go and see Taiwan, so make use of your time wisely...