Photo credit: Gamy Wong (www.gamywong.com)
Mandarin Studies at National Taiwan Normal University
In the summer between the second and third year of my university degree at the University of Sheffield, UK, I decided to join a beginner summer program at the world renowned Mandarin Training Centre at NTNU in Taipei, Taiwan, to learn the most widely spoken language in the world.
It was a lot of fun and I felt like I made good progress, but even so there's only so much you can learn in 7 weeks!
I didn't want to risk staying in Europe and eventually forgetting it all, so I decided to go back for another summer a year later, and eventually moved to Taiwan to study Mandarin full-time after completing my studies in the UK.
I took many classes ranging from basic classes centred around the Practical Audio-Visual Chinese book series to advanced newspaper reading and contemporary literature classes.
After leaving Taiwan in 2014, I took the HSK level 5 (253/300) and level 6 (199/300) exams.
Photo credit: Gamy Wong (www.gamywong.com <- check him out!)