David on Formosa

Now that the summer vacation is over and all the students are going back to school I finally have the time to start going to classes myself.

I was lucky enough to find a teacher living in Banqiao who taught private classes in his home. Although it is not really close to my home, it is much more convenient than having to travel into Taipei City. For the short term I will study two classes per week.

We had the first class today. It was a chance to discuss some learning goals and for the teacher to assess my level. Although I started learning Mandarin way back in 1998, the last time I attended any formal classes was when I was in Taiwan in 1999. I did attend a few Taiwanese (台語) classes when I was in Taiwan in 2002, but I really haven’t done much formal language study for a long time. I really would like to learn Taiwanese, but for the moment I need to fix a few problems in my Mandarin and also improve my reading skills.

My teacher seems a very interesting character. He was originally an engineer. Eight years ago he did a course in Chinese language teaching and started teaching Chinese part-time. After one year he became a full-time language teacher. He was working at a private language school in Taipei City, but last year the government changed its policy about these schools. This was ostensibly to stop students from enrolling in some of these schools to obtain a visa and then teaching English illegally and not actually attending Chinese classes. My teacher now teaches several students privately in his home.

Another very interesting thing I discovered was that my teacher is a Muslim. It was the first time I have ever met a Taiwanese Muslim. His parents came to Taiwan from China in 1948.