David Australia

Recently I retired, and suddenly with so much time on my hands, was wondering what to do with myself. I really love travel and China is my favourite destination.

I have been before and always regretted not being able to communicate with people. I feel you miss out on so much by not being to communicate with the local people.

I was talking to a friend, and he suggested going to China and combining my trip with doing a short-term language course.

The idea was appealing, so I started looking online, and found LTL Beijing. I read the blogs and decided to make contact.

Within a day, we were exchanging emails and we were discussing course options available at LTL. I was a little worried about my age but they assured me I would fit in and they had had older people at the school before. I signed up for a four-week short course.

The school organised my accommodation. I chose a shared apartment, with my own ensuite. Other types of accommodation were home stay, and serviced apartment.

The school sends you an invitation as a student which I submitted with my visa application. LTL organised a driver to pick me up from the airport and take me to my apartment – too easy! The first day of school was great. I met my fellow students, the office staff and of course my teachers.

The class sizes are small, usually no more than six, so you get a lot of one-on-one help when needed. My teachers were patient and explained everything clearly.

Learning Characters was daunting at the start, but I found I loved calligraphy. “So beautiful!”, to quote my teacher.

Lunch time was enjoyable and everybody sat around and shared the great food, and stories. The office staff are more than helpful and can solve any problems you may have. There are excursions to Chinese cultural sites as well, like The Great Wall, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, the markets and of course local restaurants.

LTL stands for Live The Language, and by the end of my four weeks at school, I was confident enough to go the shops and speak, be it a struggle, to people around my building. Being at the school has made me want to become more fluent in Mandarin.

I will continue to study and I definitely want to return to LTL Mandarin School. The whole experience has been super enjoyable … even the Beijing Subways!

My whole holiday was great and has opened new doors. As a retired person, it is brilliant to find new interests and purpose. I will keep traveling, and keep going to China, as long as I don’t fall off my perch.

It is such an amazing country and the people are so nice. For anyone who enjoys travel, and wants to feel a sense of achievement, I cannot recommend LTL highly enough.

Do yourself a favour, you may find a whole new interest and be able to speak a foreign language.

Franziska Germany

Previously, I had studied Chinese as an optional subject at the University for two years back home in Germany.

After graduating, I wanted to go to China to improve my Chinese. In particular I wanted to work on my listening comprehension which was often neglected in my university course as there were more students, around 20 overall.

After my arrival in Beijing, my worst fears came true, I did not understand a word…! The pronunciation of the real Chinese is very different from the perfectly pronounced recordings I had learned at home.

I had chose the intensive course which included four daily lessons in a small group (with four Italians) and then two hours of private lessons.

Looking back, I underestimated how tiring six hours of lessons are in one go (in such a small group or even alone). At the start, for the last few hours I used to be a bit tired and heavy-handed.

Thankfully my teachers adapted to my pace of learning. I really liked that the lessons were entertaining.

I also had decided to take the exam for an official language certificate (HSK3) in Beijing. I feared the “listening comprehension part” of the exam and I toyed several times with the idea of giving up and resigning from the exam.

Luckily, my teachers had a lot of understanding and faith in me. They rebuilt me and systematically prepared me for the exam. Although I walked calmly, but not very self-assured, I took the HSK test.

For me, coping with the test anxiety was a big step forward. Unfortunately, I do not have the result of my test now, but I am confident and feel that it went well.

Working with native speakers has helped my listening skills both at school and in everyday life. I still do not understand everything spoken in Chinese (even if I have to know the vocabulary), but compared to the first day, my understanding has improved a lot.

In everyday life I can make myself understand one way or another. I’m sad that time has gone so fast.

Here I had not only made linguistic progress but also met many nice people and made friends.

I will continue to work on my knowledge of Chinese and, if time permits, I will gladly return to China one day.

Frederic Belgium

At LTL I chose the small group classes. It turned out to be a great choice for me. Before the start of the classes my level in Chinese was very low.

I had some group classes (in very large groups of 20 persons) many years ago in Belgium. At LTL I was in a small group of four people. We were all at a similar level but from different nationalities and ages which provided for a great mix.

There was one German, a Briton and an American. This made it really fun because we could compare how each person would say or do things in their own country, or help each other out when needed.

Each weekday we had a four hour class, two hours in the morning and two more with a lunch break in between.

It’s perfect because you don’t feel too tired after each session. During lunch break we ate together and discussed some of the things we’d just learned.

The teacher follows a handbook to teach us the basics in Chinese which is exactly what I needed compared to my starting level.

Besides that she also did a lot of preparations such as pictures, particular exercises and role-plays.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays we learned about the Chinese characters (structure, strokes, radicals,…). I really liked the stories behind some of them. For example, I’ll never forget the story behind the word ‘lake’.

There’s the ‘water’ radical and the ‘moon’ radical in it referring to the ancient Chinese who went to the lake to watch the moon over the water.
Our teacher also made sure that there was enough room for personal accents and questions.

For me it was definitely the pronunciation (‘b’ and ‘p’) so she made me repeat a lot of times and I finally got it right!

In general she really encouraged us to speak, read and write. After each class she gave us some homework. Most of the time it was to help us review what we’d learned that day.

So in conclusion I would say that I’ve made real progress. A lot faster than I would have in Belgium and on top of that learned a lot about the local culture and habits and met some great people as well. I can’t wait to go back for a second time.

Thank you LTL and xiexie laoshi!

Achille France

LTL’s flexible class times, the homestay program and the fact you could mix up different cities were the defining reasons for choosing them over others.

Everything online was pretty clear so I made the leap!

The accommodation was great and my three teachers were awesome. I had Lucy, Serena and Summer.

The character class was maybe not quite as challenging as I hoped but apart from that they were really great classes.

When I have the budget I will be coming back to LTL to pursue my Chinese studies for sure!

Jean-Paul Texas, USA

My stay in Beijing

11 weeks at LTL have flown by and it’s been a great experience that I’d recommend. If you are on the fence, just make the jump.

I decided to sign up for the Small Group Classes with some individual as well, at LTL Beijing. My Chinese lessons were great fun. I really enjoyed the group ones and the diversity of each teacher was useful for learning the language. Overall I had three different teachers.

They were great and each excelled in their own little areas. The group classes I actually found more fun than an activity or learning.

You build up strong rapports with your teacher and your classmates that it makes it genuine fun.

You learn about more than just the language as well. Culture is a big thing in China and you are taught that accordingly which comes in really handy in real life situations.

This was useful for my homestay, you get to understand the differences between living in China and the west.

It took me some time to figure out if he family were arguing or just conversing with each other!

The lessons and day to day living mean you get to grips with this quickly.

There’s never a dull moment in China and I’ll be looking at coming back to LTL to try and achieve the HSK 6 in the future.

Watch Jean Paul’s story with LTL here.

Theo Switzerland

My experience at LTL

I had a great time at LTL Mandarin School and I feel like my Chinese skills have improved a lot in terms of speaking, writing and understanding others in discussions and also reading.

Classes at LTL are very good. Every lesson we pick up new words and continually use them to help increase our vocabulary.

I also covered all the important grammar structures.

My teacher was also super nice and Jane at the front desk was really happy and friendly. If we needed anything, she would always be there to help.

I also managed to spend some time exploring Beijing. My personal highlight – The Temple of Heaven.

In summary, I think everything went really well at LTL and I’m really happy with my time there.