David on Formosa

Two articles recently published on culture.tw contain some useful information and advice for foreign students studying in Taiwanese universities. Jeana Jack, a student at NCCU, has written a survival guide for international students that is full of good advice. She discusses choosing a university, learning Mandarin, finding a place to live and other important things. [...]

I have mentioned on this blog a few times before that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd speaks Mandarin and once studied in Taiwan. This interesting little anecdote comes from a Taiwan News article reporting on Lien Chan’s trip to the APEC Conference in Peru. On a side note, Lien mentioned that he noticed Australian Prime [...]

ChinesePod has just published an intermediate lesson about Taipei.  The conversation talks about Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum and night markets. John and Jenny then discuss some key points of the conversation and also point out some differences in usage between Taiwan and China. I don’t subscribe to ChinesePod but occasionally listen to their [...]

I had my last class of the semester at Shi-Da yesterday. The time seems to have passed so quickly. While I did learn some new things during the semester, I don't feel that I achieved my goals.  I think part of the problem was that the curriculum and teaching style didn't really match my goals [...]

On a hot sunny Taipei morning our class from Shi-Da met at Taipei Station. From there we caught the train to Yingge (鶯歌). We joined a number of other classes so there were about forty students and five teachers.  It was a great chance to meet some other students at Shi-Da. Most of the students [...]

I've already been studying at Shi-Da for a week now. My class has had a few students come and go. There are now five students: two Koreans, one Japanese, one Czech and an Australian. During the first few days of class I thought about changing to a different level. However, I came to the conclusion [...]

I had my first class at Shi-Da (NTNU; 國立台灣師範大學) today. There are two Koreans, a Vietnamese and a Taiwanese American in my class. The class I am studying in is Newspaper Readings II (新聞選讀第二本). I have studied this book before in my one-on-one class and written about it on my blog.  I found the pace [...]