Getting yourself registered is pretty.. tedious. Because everyone is trying to do, the process becomes tres long.
At least they are organised. You arrive, go to step 1 - easy! Pick up your pack of documents, fill in some blanks (don't forget to bring passports and other details).
You head over to step 2 which mainly deals with visas.
Step 3 is insurance, which you are required to get. The price is 300rmb for 6 months or 600rmb for a year. If you're here for two semesters they automatically make you take the year's worth of cover.
Step 5 is materials and tuition - have cash ready, the card processing machines are horrendous. Materials are roughly 200rmb per semester.
Tuition will be according to what you've already been told. I'm an exchange student so pay no fees to the university.
Next you get your photo taken by a webcam and they print you a lovely student card. You'll need the student id number to log in to the campus wi fi, of which the password is the last 6 digits of your registered passport number.
Once you have that they send you off for a placement test.
First an oral where a teacher will make a quick judgement of your language skills. For me it was a small talk and a little bit of reading.
The teacher I had determined I was definitely at intermediate level but should start on the first sub-level. She also really wished I would go into the class where business chinese is taught additionally because she believed in my capabilities.
I wish I could remember who took my oral test because I suspect it is my current teacher, who is also the author of the business chinese textbook. *sigh* you see how they toot their own horn, eh?
Anyhoo, before I digress...
You are then sent to a specific room according to how they have judged you and do a written test. It's mainly comprehension, grammar and character knowledge with no essay writing (thank f*ck).
Once you're done, you have rest of the day, and perhaps even week, off!
Note there is an opening ceremony (long ass speeches from important people you won't see again) on Friday morning and classes will start on the following Monday.
Your class placement will be announced on boards displayed at a designated place. It's useful to know roughly where you placed before arriving. For example, the teacher at my oral exam was determined I should go to 2-1C, which was scarily exact. For others they perhaps knew roughly level 2, maybe 2-1.
So level 1 goes up to 5 and if I'm not mistaken level 2 goes up to 3 or 4. Level 3 only has two levels.
Et voila! You have one week "trial" to get a feel for the level you've been placed and you can try to move about if you don't think it's where you're at.
You can move down with no problems, but to move up you have to do another placement test.
I had classmates where they placed at a level lower than they expected and went for the test again. Some managed to move up a sub-level, another was less fortunate.
There was a bit of a fuss and even discussion to contact our exchanges director to tell the school that we should obviously all be at the same level because we did the exact same course.
They would also tease that I'm excluded because I would be at level 100 etc.
The exaggeration was unnecessary, I have always been open about my easier grasp of mandarin due to already having spoken some before and my mother tongue being cantonese.
But besides that, I disagree that "we should all be at the same level".
Whilst in Newcastle, we all passed the course with different grades, having put different amounts of effort and simply having different levels of comprehension and grasp.
I have classmates elsewhere in China that I know worked extremely hard and got 100% in the first year. Another classmate did considerably less work but also achieved a very high grade due to a natural grasp. My own roommate only learnt half the material in the second year and passed with a decent grade.
Language learning isn't as simple as ABC, and sometimes it can simply just be easier or that you have to put in more work.
The point of being here, in China is to really develop those skills. Not just building vocabulary but to really master the complicated grammar and pronunciation. And on top of that, the teachers here are really keen to teach students to speak like a native, not like a foreigner. And by that I mean chinese expressions, what they mean, when they're used, when they're not. I think for us language learners, this is a really valuable opportunity and there's nothing lost in fortifying what we already know, as long as there's also something new to be learned.
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