comments on Andrei Marks Individual Study Program

 Method of drawing money directly from program fee via office very convenient. More convenient than having to use banks, atms, etc.
- Apartment was more than adequate, no problems with any of the facilities. Also located in a good neighborhood and conveniently near the subway, which was my main form of transportation during the summer.

- Jun Cheng was a very good school. It provided the standard classroom experience to offset my self-study. The teachers were friendly and enthusiastic, and interaction with other students of Chinese can be very helpful. Also very useful is the diversity at the Jun Cheng school, because it does not serve only university students, there are a wide range of ages and occupations, as well as nationalities, all helpful in encouraging use of Chinese between students.

- I cannot say whether the textbook was better or worse than other textbooks, having only been exposed to the 301 (which was far better than the other textbook, whose name I don't even remember). But I feel it was a very useful learning tool, and it seemed like a good textbook.

- As for the tutors I had, I very much enjoyed my time with them, though I have one reservation. Neither of them had any experience with teaching Chinese as a second language. I do not feel as if this hindered my progress at all, as I prefer self-study, and probably learned the majority of the grammar on my own, and just using the tutors to exercise my speaking and listening skills, or to go over exercises with, as you cannot do those effectively without a teacher, and any person who speaks Mandarin as their mother tongue is a fairly good gauge at determining whether a sentence is formed correctly or not. So I felt the only problem might have been that they sometimes were unable to answer a question about grammar that might come up during class. This is not so much of a difficulty at my beginning level, where I am still going over the basics, but it could be problematic at later stages, when reading and writing are primary issues. So often I had to spend time figuring those things out on my own from other textual resources when it might have been a relatively easy matter for a trained Chinese teacher. So for me, for my preferred learning style, it was no problem, but other students who use other methods would probably benefit more from a teacher with more experience in teaching Chinese to foreigners.

- I want to thank all the people in the office for being very kind and helpful, I quite enjoyed spending time with them.

- As for weekend activities, though the itinerary was relatively full, I would much rather have visited less. Undoubtedly, learning about Chinese culture through visiting various historical and scenic spots is important, but I feel that at my rudimentary level, going to all these sights is not helpful at all, unless I was accompanied by a knowledgeable tour guide who spoke English. But I would rather be accompanied by a knowledgeable tour guide who spoke putonghua. Of course, at this stage that would be even worse, as I would understa nd nothing, which is why I would rather focus solely on learning the language now, which would allow me to better appreciate the nuances of these sites, rather than just walk around ignorantly. No need to pack in everything within a few weeks, it's not the one and only time I'll be in China.

- Overall, I was very pleased with the program, as it was very open ended and left mostly up to me, which I feel was a very important quality, and the one I was most expecting.