Hello! I am a graduate of Yunnan university, if someone want to learn Mandarin or Chinese culture, you can contact me.Also, I want to learn English from you.

E-mail:hellohimandarin@gmail.com

Hello! I am a graduate of Yunnan university, if someone want to learn Mandarin or Chinese culture, you can contact me.Also, I want to learn English from you.

E-mail:hellohimandarin@gmail.com

Hello! I am a graduate of Yunnan university, if someone want to learn Mandarin or Chinese culture, you can contact me.Also, I want to learn English from you.

E-mail:hellohimandarin@gmail.com

I understand paying to learn a foreign language (Chinese) when you do NOT live in that country (China). But I do NOT understand why anyone would pay money to learn a language that everyone around already speaks. So many people here are looking for langauge exchange and it is free. It is also a means to meet others and network and learn about others and their views on life.

I fully understand the desire and need for Chinese lessons at the early stages.

Language exchange is OK for listening and speaking, but not for reading or writing. I also think you need to have reached/completed beginner level before you can really tackle a language exchange. Otherwise one person may be sending a message and the other person is receiving unintelligible noise.

Most language exchangers are students, and so they can empathise with learners. However, they are not teachers. They have little concept of the standard vocab. and grammar learned and practised at each level, this vocab. and gram. is pretty much prescribed by Beijing and common to most books.
My Chinese wife gave up trying to teach me. She has a large vocab. that she uses. If I said something incorrectly, or did not use exact vocab., she would try to give the equivalent of an advanced lesson. The result was that I just became confused and demoralised.
A language exchanger may not be someone who over corrects, like my wife. They may be someone who does not correct at all, and merely nods when you have given a garbled message, to avoid face issues.

One might also want to learn Putonghua and not Kunminghua, and if you have a view to formal study you may not wish to learn something you will need to unlearn later.

大家好,
I am coming to Kunming this summer and I'm looking for a short term summer Chinese course from mid-July to mid-August.
I've spent weeks corresponding with CUCAS and different universities (sent about 15 emails, got 4 replies) only to find out that (contrary to what they said in the beginning) there will probably be no group classes anywhere in Yunnan this summer, that there is no campus accommodation and that the only thing that could be arranged for me is 1 to 1 classes.
I learn better in groups and would rather take group classes in a language school, but if I have no other option I'll go for 1 to 1.
Does anyone know if by any chance there is a university with group classes and/or campus accomodation during the summer (5 weeks)? If not, can you recommend a decent language school (no self-adverstising please)?
谢谢你们

@liancourt
Forget any promise of a uni course during the summer. As you have already found out, what they say and what they do are not the same.

There are lots of private language centres that would be a much better option for tailored courses. Check out the featured advertisers, and do a search for [study chinese] on this site. There are lots of options.

PS Unis are sometimes not the best places to learn Chinese.

Thanks, tigertiger, although it doesn't sound very encouraging!
I actually took a course in Chengdu 2 years ago (at 西南财经大学) and was very pleased both with the quality of teaching and the accommodation, but it was 1 to 1. The problem with 1 to 1 for me is that if you get friendly with your teacher you end up speaking English with her and then you can forget about learning Chinese for real. It's my fault rather than hers, but our last two weeks were mainly socializing. But in a group you can't monopolize the class:-)
I'll check out the featured language schools.

I've taken a whole lot of one-to-one Chinese classes and I always make it clear with the teacher that we will only speak Chinese. It's not difficult to set the ground rules when you start and then stick to them.

When I've become friends with my teachers and socialized outside of class, we have continued to use only Chinese then as well. Need to just take that responsibility on your own shoulders and then it will work out.