Student Testimonials

Carlo Boselli, Italy

“After having received information about several Universities where to study Chinese, I finally chosen BLCU because it offers the possibility to have real time lessons (on-line). At the beginning I was a little bit skeptical, but now I consider this experience very positive. The main reasons are that BLCU allow me to have lessons wherever I am at that time. So it happened while I was in holiday, to the sea, or while I was abroad for business. There is no waste of time – for ex. – to get to the university (imagine the traffic jam of Rome and you understand the difference with local courses).

In addition, the virtual class is productive, we are few student, so the lessons involve each of us immediately, we are requested to participate, speak and answer. There is a virtual blackboard and it’s easy to follow the teacher. Teachers are in Beijing and are obviously mother tongue.

Finally, because lessons can be attended virtually everywhere, my colleagues belongs to different countries, which is agreeable and culturally interesting!”

Jonathan Allen

“Personally I felt that the lessons were very well suited to my type of learning, lots of drilling into the brain, but maybe some more essay writing for the written classes would have been helpful.  This was a lot easier to learn than other chinese learning methods i have tried before and you can get into a learning rhythm very quickly.”

Jouri Grigorenko, Netherlands

“When I learned that Beijing Language and Culture University has on-line courses I was very happy.

At the time I was finishing beginners’ courses at Leiden university and thought that I knew enough to attend the second level courses at BLCU. However it appeared that the teaching method at BLCU is quite different and a lot of attention is paid to learning Chinese characters at the very beginning. In Leiden mostly pinyin is learned at the beginning and the characters are supposed to be given at a later stage, only very few characters are learned first. I do prefer the Chinese way of learning because you have a feeling that you are learning something that you can actually use.

The study requires a lot of self-discipline. Luckily the learning includes also the on-line sessions with the teachers. In total are 5 modules: Comprehensive, Reading, Listening, Talking about the Pictures and Basic Conversation. There are no separate entrances per module. I think it would be easier it there was also one entrance per lesson. Further the optimal method for me is the combination of learning on-line and using textbooks, as you can always open the book on a certain page, to repeat quickly, or just look through the book. At the site you always enter a certain module at a certain entrance point, you see at the time only a part of the whole so it is difficult to get an overview. Further the on-line learning is fine for reading and listening to the text, learning the new words and characters.

In general I do like this method of learning.  It is as if you are visiting China every week, the teachers are very motivated. The on-line sessions do help a lot, especially the Comprehensive course, as it includes communication with the teacher for 2 hours, also the homework needs to be done. This is the best way to activate your knowledge.”