I just graduated high school from the Stonebrook school, and I will be going to Tufts University next year. I was part of the Intensive Tutoring Program for six weeks. I feel that China is a huge emerging market for business and thousands of career opportunities, and I also wanted to learn a second language. I'm required to learn a second language in university, so I figured my best head start would definitely be studying Chinese in China.
To be honest, my priorities kind of shifted and changed according to my University plans. Since I'm going to be finding myself in international relations most likely, I think that a strong foundation in Chinese will be probably the most helpful thing for me at this point. The Better Business Bureau accreditation was definitely helpful, as well as going online and finding other people's testimonials and other source materials about NextStepChina on the web. That definitely helped bolster my security in my decision. I wanted to study in China for the immersion benefits. Speaking Chinese in America has very limited chances to practice Chinese properly unless it's with your teacher. I have some Chinese friends, but I still wouldn't have been able to apply all the things I've learned. I had no expectations walking into it. I figured, I'll be in China. I don't know anything about China. I pretty much just got here two weeks ago before I started this program.
I stayed in the apartments, and great experience. They're clean. The IE is very helpful. It turned out to be a huge apartment, more than I ever thought it would be. Really well furnished, nice kitchen, nice bathrooms, everything was well taken care of. The tutoring program was the best part of my whole stay in China. I had two incredible teachers. I don't think I could have possibly learned any more than I did from anyone. Definitely had the most knowledgeable staff. Most memorable, probably the way my first teacher would lay out all the vocabulary cards on the table. And with me, fresh off the boat, no knowledge of Chinese, would just start speaking Chinese and whenever I wouldn't know a word, she'd point to the card and I would just kind of internalize it. It worked like that for the first couple of weeks, and that was very memorable. The NSC staff here are very very helpful. Even things that you wouldn't think would be part of the job description, you can bring them any sort of problem you have and they'll take care of it, and that was really helpful. If I didn't know where a subway stop was or I needed directions somewhere, or I needed to do some sort of service, they'd always help me out and that was a really... A very good thing. I would recommend this program to anyone who wants any sort of knowledge of Chinese, or even a good cultural experience. I also recommend it to myself, I'll be back.
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