Why to learn Chinese at a University
November 10, 2007 – 3:51 pmI just stumbled upon a post on the humanaught blog. He is talking about why it’s no good idea to learn Chinese at an university in China. His main argument is, that there are plenty of Japanese and Korean students, who already got the characters down in form of Kanji and Hanja respectively. Because these students are the majority the teachers don’t want to waste spend too much time on the characters. Students from the west are at a loss. But don’t let that put You off.
After this post I thought, if it’s really that bad to study at a Chinese university. No! I think it’s still a good idea. Here are some of my thoughts why it’s still a good idea.
- You will actually learn something, because Your teacher won’t speak English all the time.
- Learning 50% of 200 characters per week (China) is better than 95% of 50 characters per week (West).
- You will learn real world Chinese.
Who cares if Your characters aren’t as good as those from the Japanese/Korean guys? You should know why You are learning You learn for Yourself. For Your career maybe or because of personal interest. You should set Your own goals, a Chinese class is only a tool to reach this goal.
If You think after class the day is over, You’re wrong teachers expect You to spend at least 12 hours a day working with the material. But that’s ok, You can also just go to a bar and get Your conversational Chinese up to a good level as well. In the 4 weeks I took my class at Jiaotong Daxue in Chengdu I learned as much as I learned in 1 semester back at home. Hard and difficult work pays of in a great increase of Your Chinese skill. Then it’s a great experience and should be combined with other ways of learning Chinese. I compiled a list of 16 methods of learning Chinese for Your inspiration.
4 Responses to “Why to learn Chinese at a University”
You have some nice Chinese programs in China universities here:
http://www.chinese-tools.com/study
What do you think?
By Jason on Nov 11, 2007
Hi Jason
Indeed, there is a wide selection of courses on chinese-tools. If You are taking a Chinese course outside China at the moment, then just ask Your teacher for his/her recommendation. This way everything will be easy.
I’ve been to a course in Jiatong Daxue in Chengdu. There was a good drill in class, but the level of the students was very different and the part of the city this course is located at is not so good. So I can’t recommend my course that much.
Overall I think search the web for courses in Your favorite city and then find out if there are recommendations and positive reviews by other people already for a specific course.
By YoLearnChinese on Nov 12, 2007
How many characters did u learn per week? Did u study at the main campus, where they’ve also got the physics faculty and the Wendelstein reactor?
I don’t care if the environment is not that good, but I am very interested in learning a lot, so I hope I’m gonna like jiaotong uni^^
How expensive are the appartments around there?
By Aremonus on Jun 18, 2008
For me as a European, it was quite a lot to learn. A good amount of Chinese characters were introduced, however it was up to the student to learn them. Just to remind You, I took the summer course. So our material also featured pinyin and I could go without learning all the difficult characters.
From what I heard, if You want a really strong drill, join some class where there are Japanese students (none were in my course). Those already know all characters and the number of introduced Hanzi (Chinese characters) is much higher.
The other thing I mentioned, there was quite a variety in learning level of the students. The course level was some kind of average of all students. But a friend told me, during the normal semester time, different levels are offered to suit all kind of learners.
Fridays we Calligraphy classes were scheduled, which reduced the learning speed quite a bit. I wished we had some repetition class at Friday instead. But then this is true for the summer course, don’t know about the semester course. The best thing is to go to their homepage and find a contact address of a current teacher or the director and ask there.
I stayed at the old campus, but I’m not sure what other institutes there are.
By Junjie on Jun 18, 2008