Infrequent Nights

I’m in my second term at NTNU’s Chinese Language and Culture Center. As many of you know I originally opted for the intensive classes as I reckon more tutelage must be better. There aren’t many intensive classes as the majority of students choose the two hour/day versions. That said, the school is actively promoting three hour intensive classes. Last term my class had 6 students. I reckon that is a reasonable number of students for a language class. This term I showed up after the break to discover my class had eleven students. Not only was this too many students for the teacher to instruct effectively (ie. it slowed the class down way too much), but we barely fit in the classroom.

The school’s documentation says intensive classes are limited to eight students, so I sent an email to the administration the day after classes started, bringing the issue to their attention. Their response was that I should pay extra to have private lessons. This wasn’t acceptable, so I went in person and stated my case in a kind but firm manner with the head teacher. This began over a week of dealing with the office employees of the CCLC who are infamous with both students and teachers alike as lazy, at times rude, and often bordering upon useless.

They kept telling me that they couldn’t find a teacher for another class. They said they wanted to split the class but we’d have to wait for another teacher. I went every day to hassle them. It got to the point where I had to delegate the hassling to other students as the office staff was becoming exasperated with my perseverance. I’d learned that the best way to get results when dealing with these people is to make it obvious to them that you have an issue and won’t go away until it is resolved. By the end of the week the whole class went to the office en masse to demand that we be split. It was during a class break, and I reckon the office staff knew we were coming as they were nowhere to be found. We waited until after the break ended. About five minutes after we were meant to be back in class the staff came trickling back in, rather surprised to see an entire class of students standing around waiting for them. They acquiesced and agreed to split the class on Monday.

So this week I started with my new class of five students. We’re progressing more quickly, and I am again content at the CCLC. I don’t mean to give the impression that it isn’t a good school. It is. The teachers I’ve met are all well-meaning, well-trained and personable. The facilities are good. The other students are friendly. It just resembles many other Taiwanese institutions in that the level of ‘customer service’ I’ve come to expect as a North American is lacking. That said, we North Americans are spoiled. I remember often feeling a similar way in England, New Zealand, and many other countries. This isn’t to say that these countries don’t have excellent customer service at times. It is just that, overall, North American firms, for numerous reasons, consistently place customer service higher on the list of priorities than firms from many other regions.