Marc Biedenkapp (Germany)

graduated from faculty of Architecture, Universitat Siegen, Wangen

Period of stay in Shanghai: October 2008 - January 2009

I have to say that this Mandarin Plus Course is a great opportunity to get to know some knowledge about the basic Mandarin language.

The language you learn is exactly the language you need to be able to get around. Since the teacher and the students were thinking about the topics together, all the topics are necessary and none of them is useless.

It also helps to study a language in small groups. As we were six (students), everybody got to participate in all the lessons and had to interact with the teacher and the classmates, which helps a lot to develop your skills of speaking and understanding mandarin. My classmates were really nice and se was the teacher. we all had a lot of fun during and after the lessons.

But if you only want to have fun and meet nice people, Mandarin Plus is not the right choice for you. It is very fast and high maintainance. If you skip or miss a class it takes time to get back on track and without extra effort it is impossible to keep up with the pace. If you do put in extra effort and practice your freshly learned words it is really helpful and you can see the progress you make on a daily base.

I definitely recommend joining Mandarin Plus to everybody who is interested in learning the language of the country he is staying in and willing to communicate with its people.

If I still was here in the beginning of the second class, I would take it to deepen my knowledge and making my stay abroad more meaningful by learning the language.

Mandarin Plus, hen hao ;-)

Marc