the Price of Chinese Lessons

I took an immersion course in Chinese that met 4 days a week for 2 hours. The cost for one month was a total of $500 and included materials.

I had high expectations for this class and I must say that it simply didn't meet them. The point of immersion lessons is that instead of learning from a book, you simply start listening to people speaking in Chinese and gradually pick up on it. I thought this would be the best way to learn quickly, as I was supposed to be going to a Chinese speaking country for business.

Well, this isn't how the class worked for me at all. I think the main problem was that no one in the class of 20 knew any Chinese. The instructor was speaking Chinese, but we were not able to pick up on enough to really learn much. I also found it frustrating once I was on my business trip, as I didn't learn any chinese writing. I know that it's a hard language to write when you come from an English speaking background, but it would have been helpful to understand some of the common signs there.

I still know people who've had a lot of luck in these types of classes so I wouldn't say to avoid them. Just make sure that the class you choose has a good track record of working for it's students.