This paper by Erik Harris about his experiences at IUP and ICLP might be useful for you. He’s a Blakemore Fellow who spent a year at each.

Have u studied at ICLP in Taiwan? I suspect that how its different between ICLP in Taiwan and China? And, ICLP is the most expensive tuition fee (studying chinese) in the world?

Thx
Pim

Thank you again for your help. Please have a good day.

Sincerely

John

Oohh… I found that book really tough when I used in a five credit course. I’d say that unless your students already have some Chinese background, there’s no way you can do the whole book in one year. Maybe you could teach one lesson every two weeks, and cover half of the book in the first year.

The pronunciation on the tapes is northern, not Taiwanese.

would you mind send me email to my mailbox as well?

Thank you very much. Please have a good day.

John

Especially in the light of the other post you wrote about the greater financial renumeration at HFRBs who only hire teachers who can communicate in Chinese.

Don’t confuse ICLP with Taida’s own program. Taida’s own program is similar to Shida’s. ICLP is by far the best program in Taiwan. I’ve known many people who studied at ICLP and went from knowing very little Chinese to being able to understand most of what’s on TV and most of what’s in newspapers within a year. As I said above, a year a ICLP is worth at least three years at Shida.

What does “ICLP” stand for?

When I started studying at Shida, it had been a few years since my Chinese class with you and so I’d forgotten most of it. I started on chapter 15 of PAVC 1. Probably due to my previous background, I was the best student in my class in terms of speaking abilities in each semester and in the upper third in terms of 聽寫 grades. All in all, considering how many Japanese classmates I had to compete with, I was really pleased. But my progress was NOTHING like yours was. In three semesters, or almost nine months of study there, I got almost to the end of PAVC2下. Some of my classmates who started from chapter one had already been there for two years. To be honest I’m not sure how I’d do in a third year Chinese class at a top school like UCB even now.

I decided to quit the school and work full time to save up the $20K(USD) it will take for a year of ICLP without working. From the ICLP students I’ve met, one year there is worth at least three at Shida.

——-

1) The Taiwanese accent is a big problem. Most students here have a hard time differentiating between “ang” vs “an”, “eng” vs “en”, “ru” vs “lu”, “shi” vs “si”, “she” vs “se”, “shang” vs “sang”, and all the other similar 捲舌 problems. Even though I’m aware of the problem, I myself can never remember which words are supposed to be “shen” and which ones are supposed to be “sheng”. However, even with those “Taiwanisms” aside, more than half of my classmates had startlingly bad pronunciation.

2) Most of my Japanese classmates hung out exclusively with other Japanese people and me (a Japanese major). A lot of the other students including myself had Taiwanese friends, but those Taiwanese friends talked to us more in English than in Chinese. Sometimes it’s almost like it’s a fight to get people here to use their own language with me.

Next time you’re in Taiwan, I’d love to buy you a drink swap Chinese learning stories!

sure, feel free to post the review here; like I told John, use it any way you see fit, with due acknowledgement of course. I read with interest what you wrote about your friends at Shida, and how their pronunciation isn’t as good as those in the US using the IC series. I started learning Chinese there way back in the day. I have to wonder about that unless you mean: 1) they are picking up too extreme of a Taiwan accent, or 2) they are associating almost solely with other foreigners after class. I studied there three months, and when I got back to the US they put me in 3rd Year.

To be honest, what you did has done my heart good. I always tried to stress to students that in order to really learn Chinese, they had to go live there. I’m glad you did that. I tried to get the department to require a minimum of one year overseas study for Chinese majors, but they nixed it.

To answer your question, I’ve never found a suitable Chinese text that uses the proficiency-based method. The Japanese are LIGHT YEARS ahead. I think that task awaits people like you and John!