Great flexible learning experience in Chengdu

I joined the LTL Mandarin course for an extremely short 3 week program. While I would have loved to have stayed longer, I was lucky to find a program that offered short courses for people with limited vacation time like myself. I have been studying Chinese for 3 years consistently on iTalki, as well as doing 范老师 pronunciation bootcamp, but I have felt that my progress in Chinese had been really slow, so decided to try a 3 week immersion.

For this program, I opted for 2x 1:1 sessions a day (2 hours each, so 4 hours of instruction a day). I also opted for their homestay package. My goal was to improve my everyday Chinese communication. Despite doing multiple lessons a week for 3 years, I found that any Mandarin conversation I would have with a Chinese person that wasn’t a Mandarin teacher would quickly get to a point where we were unable to communicate.

One of the things that is really impressive about the LTL program is the amount of flexibility they offer to what you want to learn. In many ways, I think I am probably one of their “difficult” students, as my goal isn’t to pass the HSK or get a certain proficiency in business Mandarin. People with those goals will have well defined curriculums they can follow. My goal is a lot more vague – being able to communicate with Chinese people in everyday settings, which has probably meant a lot more work for my teachers as they figure out how to design a curriculum around that.

I have been really impressed with what they have done. I have two teachers: Wei and Daniel. Daniel engages me for two hours every afternoon, asking me questions about life, my philosophy, and trying to build my Chinese vocabulary for deep discussions I would have with people. It helps build insight into Chinese culture, as we translate various proverbs from English to Chinese, and discuss how the Chinese wa of thinking differs significantly from a Western style of thinking.

In terms of everyday Chinese, Wei had been an absolute gem. She quickly identified that I had a mid-intermediate level for speaking, but quite a low level for listening. I have really appreciated how strict she has been at not letting me take shortcuts by only picking out keywords and ensuring I can identify each word.

I think in my previous classes, my teacher on iTalki had focussed on encouraging people, and learning Chinese culture. This had allowed me to get away with grasping at keywords and trying to fill in the blanks from context, with the assumption that as I continued working that I would get better at filling in those gaps. Unfortunately I was really reaching the limit of this technique, and the natural listening improvement wasn’t happening. Wei identified this, and really helped me build techniques to improve my ability to listen to Chinese.

Wei is also very connected throughout Chengdu, and will often invite various college friends to the school, giving us opportunities to continue practicing Chinese with native speakers who are also trying to learn English. This has added to the number of “effective hours” of immersion I had during these 3 weeks.

Outside of the class, there are several opportunities for building community.

The first is if your teacher introduces you to their other students. I was fortunate that in addition to meeting Wei’s friends, I also got to meet with two of her other students. We were able to practice Chinese together, as well as enjoy activities around Chengdu like lunches and Karaoke.

The second was the gym / games area attached to one of the teacher areas. On my second day, I was playing pool and table tennis with a small selection of teachers during a study break. One of my teachers, Daniel, is a little bit of a pool shark! Fair warning.

Finally, there are activities that the school organizes themselves. This comes in meetings once a week where the school invites students from around Chengdu, as well as special events on the weekends for students that want to join. While I was here, the school organized a weekend group picnic and a trip to Jinli Street.

I stayed in a homestay with a man about my age (I am 44), and for most of it his parents were visiting. The homestay family was incredibly kind and caring. We did a couple of activities together, the most memorable of which was being a passenger on an electric scooter on the outer rings of Chengdu!

I would say the biggest drawback is that LTL runs a little like a startup, so sometimes things can fall between the cracks. This made my first couple of days a little bit of a bumpy ride as I tried to figure out how things operated in China. But once everything was set up, and I was in classes, everything has gone really smoothly since!

tl,dr;
I would highly recommend LTL in Chengdu. Their program is very flexible, and tailored to what you want to learn. Chengdu is a city that is easy to navigate by rail (even without no Chinese!) and a very pretty part of the country, but also one where it will be hard to find other native English speakers. You end up having to use the Mandarin you’ve learnt for all your everyday activities.