At the beginning of my spring semester I wrote about my Chinese as a foreign/second language undergraduate degree courses. The semester is over and I wanted to do another post to share with you what I learned. I hope this is helpful to anyone who is thinking of doing an undergrad in China. Basic language courses 口语， Spoken Chinese I was least satisfied with my spoken Chinese course. I have a feeling that I didn’t learn much and that is due to the fact that there were too many students in class, over 20. We learned new 表达方式 ways of expression, for example telling a story first and then using…

As most of you know, I’m studying a undergraduate degree in Chinese language at the Sun Yat-Sen University. There isn’t really many full-time Chinese language students in the blogosphere, but perhaps some of you are interested to hear what kind of courses I have. I’m on the third year of my studies and chose Teaching Chinese “major”. The official name of my major is Chinese language, but my degree also includes some courses about teaching Chinese to foreigners. Other option was Business Chinese, but I thought Teaching Chinese is a better pick for me. Let’s take a look at the courses! Basic language courses 口语， Spoken Chinese My teaching-Chinese-group has…

I have been very satisfied with my compulsory courses at the Sun Yat-Sen University, but I can’t say the same about my elective courses. I have to electives this term, Cantonese and Chinese calligraphy. The major problem on both of those courses is that there are way too many students in class. Cantonese course There are about 50 students at the beginner Cantonese course and most of the students seem not to be that interested in learning to speak Cantonese. Or they still haven’t figured out how to close their mouths. Many students are talking casually through out the whole lesson and teacher doesn’t seem to know how to make…

The comprehensive course (综合) or intensive course (精读) in other words is the most information packed course we have at the Sun Yat-Sen University. We have intensive classes three times a week which makes up 27% of our total class time. The course includes new vocabulary, new grammar, reading, exercises and occasionally writing short essays. Our teacher Zhang always comes to class prepared and is an excellent teacher. We first go over the new words, but not all of them at the same time. We usually first cover the words mentioned in the first paragraph of the text, then read the text aloud with our teacher and after that she…