An Experience at LTL Chengdu || My Honest Thoughts

This blog post has been written by LTL student, Mark from Canada. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with everyone.

In the summer of 2024, I came to LTL Chengdu to study Mandarin for 3 weeks.

This is my honest review of LTL Chengdu.

LTL Chengdu Review || My Program

LTL Chengdu Review || The Classes

LTL Chengdu Review || The School

LTL Chengdu Review || Extras

LTL Chengdu Review || Food

LTL Chengdu Review || FAQs

My Experience at LTL Chengdu || Program

To give more background, I studied at the school for 3 weeks and signed up for 30 hours of intensive study.

This equated to 6 hours a day.

I’ll be honest, I was reluctant about this at first.

Originally I’d planned to study for 20 hours a week (4 hours a day), however after speaking to the LTL team, and realising the duration my program wasn’t long, we agreed that a longer program would be most beneficial to achieve me goals.

How I’m glad I made this decision.

Those extra two hours a day, whilst admittedly exhausting, made all the difference.

The progress I made in 3 weeks I cannot put into words.

My teacher (Unicorn) was fantastic and ensured the 6 daily hours remained engaging, fun and productive.

I cannot thank her enough, and the LTL team for their suggestions and help when booking up the course.

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My Experience at LTL Chengdu || Classes

My level of Chinese before the course was roughly HSK3.

While I am not focused or bothered about the HSK, it is a good way to track progress.

During my lessons at LTL Chengdu, we used the HSK 3 and 4 books as a base but veered off on tangents quite often, which I enjoyed.

During these tangents, we’d watch clips from TV, learn lyrics to Chinese songs, and play games with other students like Mahjong.

This set LTL Chengdu apart for me.

There is no rote memorization, or drilling grammar over and over like I’d experienced in other language schools- this was genuine language learning.

Mandy (the school director) and the rest of the team at the school were always supportive around classes and answered my million-and-one questions about Chengdu!

I could see all the students enjoyed the extra support and I really enjoyed getting the extra Chinese small talk practice in between classes.

My Experience at LTL Chengdu || School

The school in Chengdu is new. I believe it opened in early 2024.

Everything has a modern, clean and tidy feel to it.

I loved the location, not least because it was close to my accommodation, but because it included some nice extras which I’ll come to soon.

The school is located inside a big mall on the 9th floor.

I struggled to find it on my first day, but Mandy was very helpful on WeChat. I dropped her a message and within 10 minutes I found my way to the school.

You can take the elevator to the 6th floor and then you need to make your way up the stairs to another elevator to get to floor 9.

The classrooms were a comfortable size and well lit with giant windows at the far end.

All in all, a very calm and cosy location to study.

My Experience at LTL Chengdu || Extras

So, the aforementioned extras.

On floor 6 the school is lucky enough to have a partnership with the local gym which means all LTL Chengdu students seemingly have access to the gym.

It’s a good size and has a lot of equipment.

Alongside the gym, you have a pool table and a ping-pong table. We had a few games between students and teachers which was a lot of fun.

Just down the corridor is a coffee shop.

Whilst the coffee isn’t free it’s another very serene place to study and finish your homework.

The people are few and far between and it’s another opportunity to practice your Mandarin with the staff.

I loved these added extras.

My Experience at LTL Chengdu || Food

There’s no escaping from the fact Chengdu food is spicy.

Even if you love Western spice, Chengdu will put you in your place.

BE CAREFUL!

If you like spicy in North America, don’t go making wild claims, they will make a mockery of you!!

I had some great culinary experiences but my word some of the food is next-level spicy!

Go steady but also don’t panic.

If you hate spice, you can still get by in Chengdu with no issue.

I also went a little rogue and tried the local delicacy spicy rabbit head. Not something I’ll tell my family about!

I will most definitely be coming back to LTL Chengdu.

One thing I’d love to have done, but the budget didn’t allow, was to stay with a homestay family.

I’ll be saving up over the next year and be back in 2025 to stay with a family to dive further still into the culture.

See you soon Mandy and the LTL Chengdu team. Thanks for 3 weeks I’ll never forget.

LTL Chengdu || FAQs