Mandarin Experts

I recently had the misfortune of taking an intensive Chinese course offered by Mandarin Experts in conjunction with the Washington Academy of Languages. (Specifically, it was taught by Ms. Tan, the Mandarin Experts founder & instructor. WAL provided the facility and took care of registering students and lending out lab CDs — possibly other administrative tasks as well.)
I had high hopes for the class and for Ms. Tan. Unfortunately, it very quickly became clear that she (a) had no real idea how to run a small classroom or what level to gear the instruction to [this was a «beginner» course, yet she spent most of the time teaching to the one student who already knew Mandarin!], (b) saw herself as more of a babysitter than a teacher [she didn’t usually correct pronunciation or tone errors; rather, she had us perform the same type of sentence translations over and over again, in some cases for four hours straight — and in many cases recycling the same sentences!], © could not explain why you would or wouldn’t say something a certain way [even something as simple as Mandarin sentence order, which turns out to be very simple indeed] and (d) got mad [i.e., scowling, stamping feet and raising her voice — not behavior I expect from a fellow adult in a classroom] whenever we made a mistake or asked a question which she felt was too dumb (which was often).
There were a grand total of three students, and by the end of the class, one of us had withdrawn (despite the course being nonrefundable) because of the toxic classroom environment, one of us (that’s me!) had learned more than was taught in the course by checking out the Michel Thomas Mandarin CDs from the Bellevue library, and one of us had learned nothing (though he had lived in Singapore for four years already and knew Mandarin, so that last bit is not really Ms. Tan’s fault).
By the end of the course it was obvious that she really couldn’t have cared less: she arrived late to our last class session, spent most of it playing with her iPhone, started to administer the final exam, and then cut it short because she «had to» leave early. Supposedly she’ll grade our exams and mail them to us, but I’m not holding my breath.
Maybe Mandarin Experts has managed to hire some better instructors, or maybe Ms. Tan makes more of an effort with her corporate clients, but I can’t imagine that it’s worth the cost to find out. Save your money (and time!) and get some audio CDs from the local library or buy some textbooks with an audio companion. You’ll learn more and be treated with more professionalism.