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OPDS (Overseas Personal Development Service) Chinese Study Tour

Professional Qualified Mandarin Teachers and Chinese Partner Students take you through a life long experience of China!

Formed in 1996, the company has over ten years’ experience of doing business in China. Through our well established offices in Beijing and London, OPDS offers you a wide range of programmes in the areas of training and educational tours. The unique experience you will gain will enhance your life tremendously.

The Chinese Study Tour is based in Beijing and has a two week core programme, which you can extend to three weeks. It caters for three levels of Chinese (elementary, intermediate and advanced), to enable students of similar abilities to be grouped together for teaching purposes. A typical three week programme is shown at Appendix 1. Class sizes will be kept to a maximum of 10 students.

Programme

General Chinese

General Chinese lessons are offered four mornings per week in Week 1 and five mornings per week in weeks 2 and 3. Students concentrate on all 4 major components of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Activities are designed to improve fluency, pronunciation and grammatical accuracy.

Academic Chinese

For students who are studying Chinese as an academic course in high school or university, up to three afternoons per week can be devoted specifically to their examination needs, either in a group setting or on a 1:1 basis. These classes incur a small additional charge.

Teachers and Teaching Materials

Only qualified and professionally trained teachers are recruited on to the programme so that maximum benefit can be obtained from the classroom time. Some teachers have experience in teaching GCSE Chinese. Only Chinese is allowed to be spoken while the student is on the school premises.

Each student will receive appropriate teaching materials commensurate with their level of Chinese that will be used for teaching purposes.

Activities

The OPDS Chinese Study Tour specifically contains a wide variety of sporting, social and cultural activities that will appeal to the group at large. On the first day in school every student will give a brief introduction of themselves so that they can identify others in the group with whom they may wish to make friends outside the classroom.

Age Range

The flexible programme can cater for students from age 9 upwards.

Accommodation

Host Family

We strongly believe that you will benefit most from the cultural aspect of the visit if you stay and mix with a host family who have children of the same age as yourself. Every effort is made to match your age, ability and interests with that of a Chinese student. All host families will be personally vetted by OPDS staff to ensure their suitability for the student.

School Residence

Student residence accommodation can be provided in shared rooms for same sex students.

Meals

Students usually have breakfast and evening meal in their chosen accommodation and lunch is taken at school. Some days, however, have allocated visits to restaurants or food markets so that students can appreciate the variety of cuisine on offer in China.

Transport

Where students elect to stay with a Host Family, it is the Host Family's responsibility to ensure they are safely transferred to and from the school every day, according to the programme.

Airport Transfer

From the moment you land in Beijing you will be met by a member of the OPDS team who will transfer you to your chosen accommodation.

Management Control and Communication

The programme is managed on a daily basis by the OPDS Beijing office, who have Chinese staff fluent in English and Mandarin. These staff report to OPDS Head Office which is managed by Sunny Jiang, to whom any questions can be addressed at any time. Sunny can be reached on 00 44 20 8660 8869 or 00 44 7808 400 698 or by e-mail on info@opds.co.uk. Please visit the OPDS website for both the UK and China.

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