ICLP Writing Classes

Two weeks ago, ICLP posted a sign-up sheet for writing classes on the announcement board. I signed up for it because I'm always game for any activities the program offers its students.

The first class was last Tuesday but I was still too dazed from my whirlwind visa run to the Philippines (the visa problem I mentioned earlier) to remember the class. I was pretty disappointed when I realized I had forgotten about it.  The following week, I certainly did not forget about the class. I got to the classroom at 2 pm today and bumped right into the instructor who was about to shut the door.

"No way! (不行!)" she said sternly before I could even utter a word.

She eyed me for a half a second, "Didn't Miss So-and-so tell you that you can't attend?"

I returned a lost stare.

"If you didn't show up for the first class, you are not allowed to attend this class, sorry." With that, she curtly shut the door.

I can't really think of any other way she could have rejected me out of the class, but really, the rudeness was a little uneccessary. The class had 3 students in total and that empty seat I saw was calling my name! If a student is going to make such an effort to remember the class's location and attend it even after the sign is taken down, couldn't the staff be just a little more friendly in light of such diligence? How much more trouble is it really to have one more body in that empty fourth chair? Especially given that I paid $3000 USD to come here?

The class is a beginner's writing class (i.e. learn the 214 radicals and their meanings) and not an essay writing class as I had originally thought. Not to say that learning the radicals more solidly wouldn't have been helpful! I'm always amazed at how many times I fall back on the radicals when learning or recognizing new characters. A refresher course would have been really good.

Fortunately my classmate IS in the class and will be sharing with me his notes.

A Little Bit Tired

Over four weeks of intense Chinese and I'm feeling a little tired. Perhaps I threw myself into my studies with a little too much gusto early on. Language acquisition is lot of studying with no shortcuts. Encounter, memorize, use, internalize, express, rinse, repeat. On the brighter side, I do feel like the learning curve has leveled off even further! I'm finally getting into a groove and it's just too bad that I have to leave in four weeks time; I know if I stayed I would learn so much more.

For students planning to study for a year at ICLP. I would suggest the summer term as the first term because the classes are only 3 hours per day rather than 4. I can't begin to imagine what having 4 hours a day of class at this intensity would be like for a newcomer.

ICLP Class Schedule

The majority of the summer term students have classes in the morning. From the schedules that are posted up on the wall, I noticed that only a few students had class as late as 1pm. My classes are back to back from 8am-11am. This means that all my work has to be prepared the night before. Unfortunately for me, anything I review the night before tends to disappear into oblivion by the time I wake up the next morning. I end up barely squeaking by in my one-on-one class as a result of my hazy memory. Fortunately, a solution has arisen on its own. I wake up at 4 am. Yes, I wake up at 4 am. This ensures two things: 1) that I retain the information I study (and maybe even reinforce it during classes) and 2) that I don't end up being a lazy procrastinator, since I only have about 2.5 hours to complete my assignments during the pre-dawn hours.

Classes at ICLP are actually 50 minutes, but it seems that this is done so that students don't end up being late for their next class. My instructors regularly go overtime by 5 minutes. My one-on-one tutor is really putting a lot of effort on me by keeping me until the next bell rings. She doesn't have to do that, but she does. She also checks my Chinese language learning blog and makes comments, which I really appreciate. My classmate has told me that since her Chinese level is too high for her class, the professor uses 30 minutes of her lunch hour to review a higher level text with her.

On Fridays, the instructors have open office hours for ICLP students until about 1 pm. I haven't taken advantage of those yet. Sometimes, I really feel like I'm not taking advantage of the resources I have. I must keep reminding myself that after ICLP is over, I won't have all of this to take for granted anymore.

ICLP Fieldtrip to Wenshan Tea Farm and Wulai

Yesterday I participated in ICLP's first big fieldtrip to two places, the Wenshan Tea Farm and the merry hotspring town of Wulai. Both of these fantastic spots are south of Taipei and accessible from the Xindian MRT station.

The world's #2 Wulong tea

Our group of 25 students and 5 staff members (our lovely and dedicated secretaries and a young professor) spent the morning being guided about by our Chinese speaking tourguide around the farm. I probably understood about 15% of what he said.

trying our hand at being tea pickers

For lunch, everyone ate BBQ outside, while another girl and I went to the restaurant to share a very delicious vegetarian meal.

i was delighted by the deep-fried tea leaves

After lunch, we learned how tea leaves are processed. At this point, the heat was so pervasive that everything seemed like a haze and I felt the symptoms of heatstroke coming on. Everyone seemed to be on the verge of fainting. Our guide, rivers of sweat streaming down his face, did a great job amidst it all.

step #4 in the tea process

In the end, we finished our whole tour by learning the art of serving tea and sipping several cups of Wulong tea. Maybe someday I will be able to read our guide's notes.


Wulai is a hotspring town not far from the tea farm. It specializes in Atayal culture and of course, the hotspring experience. Many people were also cooling themselves off in the river. I had heard that the 明月 hotel was a great place for hotspring bathing, but I simply did not have enough time to go soak. The price was 450NT all you can bathe...hehe.


Aside from the intolerable heat, I had a great time meeting more of my ICLP classmates and getting closer to those I already knew. For future reference, I think this trip is really more appropriate for wintertime. Who goes to the hotsprings during the summer?

Halfway Point at ICLP Summer Program

Four weeks completed at ICLP and I'm getting my 屁股 whooped yet again. I blame this on the visa issues I had over the last weekend which resulted in me losing my entire weekend plus Monday to straighten it all out. (I ended up taking a one day trip to the Philippines).

I took the trip to Manila because I was sick of going to Hong Kong all the time. However, if you need to make a visa run, please choose Hong Kong unless you have good reason to go to the Philippines. They gave me all kinds of trouble at the Manila airport which I won't go into because it will scare you.

So I've spent this past week trying to catch up with my work and miserably failing at it. ICLP is intense and you've got to keep pace. My one-on-one tutor will not slow down for me; I simply have to do my work...and have been losing a lot of sleep in the process. Kind of like a sink-or-swim scenario.

Four weeks left! I've really got to push myself harder!

ICLP Lecture #4: Pu-Yi

Professor Huang (University of Hawaii, Honolulu, PhD in Psychology) discussed in Chinese to an audience of about 100 people, what exactly happened to Pu-Yi (1906-67), last emperor of China after his abdication of the throne. There were many Taiwanese from the Psychology department there, as well as many kids from the Berkeley Program. I couldn't 100% follow what he was saying, more like 20%, but I did catch words that I had just learned. Apparently, Pu-Yi had an intense fear of the Japanese. The professor recommended his autobiography, "From Emperor to Citizen", translated by W.J.F. Jenner, 1964-65.

ICLP Instructors

I've spent the past three weeks with 3 instructors and I'm positive they and the rest of the ICLP faculty are the reason why tuition is relatively steep at ICLP compared to other language schools. These instructors are simply the best at what they do. They are always prepared and they have a knowledge of the language that goes deeper than I could ever fathom. They are never perfunctory; it always seems as if the class I am in is the first and last class they'll ever teach. They don't need to prove their ability, you can see it in the way they carry themselves, it seems they are relaxed, smiling, and have a natural confidence. They welcome emails and all kinds of out-of-class activities that they think will enhance your learning of the Chinese language. Of course, this could only apply to my instructors, but I have a feeling this is not the case.

I have no complaints. A staff of this caliber justifies the cost. They are not wasting my time, and I hope I won't waste theirs.

ICLP Summer Student Body

I think a rough breakdown of the majority of students who are attending this program this summer are:

1. people recently graduated from university
2. college kids from upper-middle class to upper-class families
3. graduate students (on scholarships and fellowships)
4. employees whose companies have covered tuition

The first week of class, everyone is too busy adjusting to notice the others at school. I'd say it's the second week of classes where people are more relaxed about getting to know their classmates. By the third week, general cliques are formed.

ICLP Movie Time

Today ICLP has turned one of the large classrooms into a movie theater and is showing "A Battle of Wits" this afternoon. I hope they will host one of these every week; it's a great extra-curric activity.

ICLP Lecture #2 - Prof. Shelley Rigger

Professor Shelley Rigger from Davidson College gave us an overview, in English, of Taiwan's political parties, their position on the political "color" spectrum, and their background and evolution. Prof. Shelley also discussed the Taiwanese term "thiau-a-ka" and the underground workings of Taiwan politics, which shed a bit of light on why it is so prone to corruption and votebuying.

Interestingly enough, the professor pointed out that Taiwan's Legislative elections would be held on Jan. 12, 2008 under a completely new system which would shrink total seats in the Legislature down to 113 from over 200 something. According to Prof. Rigger, the move would raise the bar on the quality of the candidates. Another reform for the next Legislative elections is proportional representation, which would cut at the root of the thiau-ak-ka practices and other similarly corrupt practices.

The talk was extraordinarily engaging and broadened my understanding of Taiwan's political structure just that much more. ICLP is doing a great job at bringing in activities which are of interest to graduate students.

7th Day of Class at ICLP Completed - Stealth Vocabulary

By tomorrow I should be rather familiar with about 382 new vocabulary words. Tomorrow only being the 8th day of class, it sounds rather daunting doesn't it?

It's actually somehow not as bad as it sounds because we are always repeatedly encountering the new vocab in our texts and subsequent texts, in our classes, and our conversations (and I'm starting to notice them in my environment as well). The words are just kind of sneaking into my brain. And this is coming from someone who had trouble learning 30 new words every two weeks in a non-Chinese environment.

Now this is an indicator of a great language program.

Taiwan Culture Lecture at ICLP - 台灣文化演講

This morning, a flyer was posted on the bulletin board announcing a lecture about Taiwanese culture. Out of interest and wanting to post something on this blog, I attended.

Our speaker was a western scholar who spoke completely in Chinese with only the smallest hints of a North American accent. Since half of the 50 or so people who attended had never been to Taiwan before, he first provided a overview of Taiwan's demographics and recent history associated with each demographic. The main portion of his talk focused on a general overview of his research subject, Taiwanese authors from the 1950s to the present. Lastly, he spoke highly about the excellent poetry which has been and is being produced by Taiwanese.

Taiwanese authors and works he recommended included:

1950s - Jiang Gui - "The Whirlwind" and "Rival Suns"
1960s - Bai Xianyong - Taipei Residents (台北人）and Crystal Boys
1960s - Wang Wenxing - Family Catastrophe (家變) and Backed Against the Sea (背海的人)
1960s - Chen Ruoxi - The Execution of Mayer Yin
1970s - Huang Chunming - The Taste of Apples
1970s - Chen Yingzhen - Exiles at Home
1970s - Wang Zhenhe - Rose, Rose, I Love You　(玫瑰, 玫瑰, 我愛你)
1980s - Li Qiao - Wintry Nights
1980s - Zheng Qingwen - Three Legged Horse (三腳馬)
1990s - Zhu Tianwen - Notes of a Desolate Man
1990s - Zhu Tianxin - The Old Capital: A Novel of Taipei
1990s - Li Ang - The Mystery Garden

I really enjoy the research and academic focus of ICLP.

Calligraphy Class at ICLP

Last week, ICLP announced they would be offering free calligraphy classes during the summer and had a sign-up sheet up for anyone who was inerested. So many people were interested that they had to open up a second session. The classes are about four or five sessions for 2 hours at a time. This is a great opportunity to do something extra-curricular. I completely didn't expect this from the program. Kudos to them.

















EDIT:
The introduction went very well. During the first hour, our instructor told very humorous and entertaining stories about learning calligraphy. The one point I got (or at least understood) of all his points was that calligraphy was about beauty, translating the beauty of one's soul onto paper. During the second hour he wrote all of our Chinese names in calligraphy (shufa).

In our next class, we are to come prepared to actually write a little. If we don't bring our own brush, we can buy a very good one from him for 400 NT ($12 USD). I remember when I took a calligraphy class in Beijing, we bought our own brushes for about 80 RMB ($10 USD), which for China seemed pretty expensive!

Second Day of Class

The second day of class has seriously kicked my 屁股. I seriously didn't anticipate Chinese being taught at this level of...professionalism, for lack of a better word. Actually, I did anticipate it, but I think I was in denial until now.

Memorization and drudge work is to be done by ourselves. With only 50 minutes for each class, these classes concentrate on actual thinking through Chinese as a language. I'm very impressed.

Second day of class and I need to internalize a total of 180 new words by tomorrow. GAH! I am already behind!

Very First Day of Class at ICLP

I was placed in classes far above what I believed I was capable of.

Interestingly enough, the first class has one instructor with one textbook (Newspaper Readings) and the second class has another instructor with another textbook (Chinese Culture Topics). So it is as though I am taking two entirely different classes.

The third "class" is 1-on-1 tutoring which works in conjunction with one of the group classes (in my case Chinese Culture Topics).

There are a total of 4 students in the Newspaper Readings class and 3 in the Chinese Culture Topics class. Good small numbers.

All of my classmates in both classes are asian, specifically American and of some Chinese background (i.e. Taiwanese, Malaysian/Singaporean, Hong Kong). The instructor pointed out that our needs and our strengths are quite different from the needs and strengths of the non-Asian students. I'm the only student who is mixed. I think I'm doing pretty well holding my own given that neither of my parents ever spoke/speak to me in Chinese or any form of Chinese.

Program Assessment: Peeve #2 - Textbooks

For $3300 tuition for the summer semester, couldn't ICLP have at least given us our books for free? Instead, I have to shell out another $680 NTD ($21 USD) for proprietary books published by ICLP...and published back in the 1990s I might add. My theory for this is that since the IUP program moved to Beijing in the late 1990s, ICLP just hasn't been able to put out anything new. To their credit, the books they are using are tried and true. No nonsense and basically just text and wordlists, text and wordlists.

As if I didn't have enough books from TLI and ShiDa and CUHK. Don't Chinese programs ever overlap their materials?

EDIT:
I was dead wrong. My Newspaper Readings text was published March 2007 (not even 3 months ago) and is extremely current.

EDIT AGAIN: (7/19)
The Newspaper Readings I textbook is published by Taiwan Normal University, not ICLP.