Which are the best institutes for learning Chinese?

Standard Chinese is the most widely spoken language in China. China is one of the world’s most linguistically rich nations. In China, more than 70 million people from 55 distinct national minorities live, and although each minority has its own spoken language, many minority groups lack a distinguishable written medium for their languages. Despite the fact that many officials and commoners spoke different Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin became prevalent at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire. Until the mid-twentieth century, the majority of Chinese in southern China did not speak Mandarin. Since the 17th century, several efforts and attempts have been made to make pronunciation adhere to the Beijing style. To accomplish this, the Empire established Orthoepy Academies. These efforts, however, were largely unsuccessful. The Nanjing Mandarin standard was eventually replaced in the imperial court during the last 50 years of the Qing Dynasty in the late nineteenth century.

Beijing Language and Culture University

This is a typical Beijing public university, established in 1962, that firmly secures its place at the top in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language and culture. The school stands proud with a long history of academic excellence and unmatched faculty that has earned it international recognition. The university’s sole purpose is to teach Chinese language and provide you with a rich cultural experience. The courses range in length from a four-week beginner’s course to a semester or year-long proficiency course.

Shanghai International Studies University (SISU)

SISU has a long and illustrious international reputation for teaching Chinese as a second language and producing outstanding results. The school, known for its international standard language training services, interpretation systems, language testing, and an audio-visual resource centre, provides long-term summer and winter courses that last a semester or a school year long! SISU drives these programs through highly skilled and welcoming faculty, who have extensive experience teaching Chinese to familiarise students with their chosen subject. The diverse student body provides learners with an international background to learn Chinese from.

SN Mandarin (Shanghai)

An urban private school in Shanghai’s Jing’an District well-known for providing high-quality Chinese programmes for beginners, Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral students, SN Mandarin takes into account a student’s aim to learn Chinese thereby enabling the teachers to focus on their training in the direction of the student’s goal.

Less teacher to student ratio allows the teachers to provide more personalised attention to each student and use engaging strategies to help learners learn and understand the language quickly. The school offers its own, five-star rated housing, to students taking long-term classes.

LTL Mandarin School (Beijing, Shanghai, Chengde, and Taiwan)

According to LTL Mandarin School, learning the Chinese language and living the Chinese culture go hand in hand. A student can choose from any four campuses to study: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengde, and Taiwan. LTL not only offers one-on-one lessons that are customised to each student’s language level and interests but also provides group classes, which promotes faster learning and better student engagement.

The Chengde campus is the only campus that offers a full immersion programme,  that improves learning and speeds up a comprehension of Chinese culture, in which students speak only in Mandarin and practise Chinese culture while on campus. LTL offers a home-stay programme in which students remain with a local family for a period of time.

Chinese Language Institute (Guilin)

Based in Guilin, the Chinese Language Institute offers a customised immersion programme in which students participate in an intense Mandarin-rich stay in order to optimise language and culture acquisition for a versatile Chinese learning experience on campus. Students can choose to participate in the Pengyou Program (‘Friend Program,’) which is a direct cultural exchange programme facilitated by the school for better Chinese language outcomes. Students can receive credits while studying at Guangxi Normal University through the College Study Abroad programme, which is run in collaboration with the university. Also after your stay in China, dedicated tutors provide online language tutoring.

Most linguists identify all of the varieties of spoken Chinese that comprise the Sinitic branch as the Sino-Tibetan language family (spoken by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China) and claim that there was an initial language, Proto-Sino-Tibetan, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended, close to Proto-Indo-European. The connection between Chinese and the other Sino-Tibetan languages is still unknown and under investigation, as is the effort to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan.

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