Writing a Thesis in Chinese

This semester I’ve been busy with my thesis writing and the last week of rewriting is about to start. As my major is Chinese language, my thesis is also in Chinese. Writing such a long academic text have been nothing but easy to do in my second foreign language.

The first challenge was back in June when I had to come up with a topic for my thesis. After going back and forth I finally decided to find out why Finns are learning Chinese. More courses are offered in Chinese language in Finland and our country will need more Chinese speakers in the future. But what are really the reasons that young Finnish adults learn Chinese?

Second challenge was to get enough students to answer my survey. For some reason no one from Helsinki University answered, which resulted in having quite a small number of answers for my thesis.

Third challenge was to analyse the date that I got from the survey. It was super difficult to do as it was my first time to do quantitative research. I even lost a day’s work as for some reason the Excel didn’t save what I had done at the end of the day. I also wasted a lot of time by doing all the wrong things instead of taking the time to really learn how to do the analysing correctly.

Fourth challenge is right now when I’m rewriting quite a large part of my thesis. I got feedback from three different teachers and there is still a lot to be done in order to make this thesis better. Luckily I’ve got some great ideas from my boyfriend who also helps me to check the grammar. Besides him, I also have a friend to help me out with grammar and typos too.

This Autumn have brought many changes for me, as I haven’t been taking any classes anymore. Next Spring will be even more different as I don’t have any university responsibilities! That doesn’t mean that the learning is going to stop though, hopefully I’m able to set some new and exciting goals next year.