Langara Mandarin Adult class. Comments?

[bcedhk]

I am a typical CBC who can speak cantonese but have difficulty reading and writing Chinese.

I am looking to take some Mandarin classes after work and came across the Langara adult program... Has anyone here taken it before and have any comments on it?

Or are there any alternative Mandarin night time programs out there for working professionals?

[Razgriz]

Hey!

I'm not personally taking it, but I do have a few friends who also only know Cantonese and are currently taking classes. They've been taking the class for about 2 months (I think?) and they can now communicate basic sentences in Mandarin (Ex. Hi, do you want to go eat tomorrow).

As for their reading/writing, it's also progressing along slowly, they can write basic things. As for reading, I think they can read characters, but not sentences.

Keep in mind I'm not taking the class myself, this is just what I've gathered from them.

[Spoon]

Unless you're in an environment to use it frequently or if you have the drive to keep learning it, don't waste your money. IMO writing Chinese is a dead art. You're not going to get much use out of it. And once your course is over, you likely won't get to reuse it ever again, so it'll just get forgotten. If you want to read chinese, I suggest just getting some canto-pop and go from there. Reading in chinese is really based on character recognition. Once you have a base, just start reading simple books and go from there. Unless you're planning on writing a book, there's no point in learning things like formal sentence structures.