Going back to my spring semester’s courses

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 that to back up your argument or opinion. There wasn’t many opportunities to be corrected by teacher, basically not at all.

综合， Comprehensive Chinese

I learned a lot of vocabulary and grammar during this course. The teacher was strict which had a good effect on us students working harder. All in all I was very satisfied with this course.

写作，Writing

We learned to write different kind of opinion essays and also essays of a story or a short movie. I learned a lot during this course and we wrote about 8 essays which were graded by the teacher.

Teaching Chinese special courses

对外汉语技能教学， Teaching Chinese for foreigners（teaching different courses）

We learned basic things about teaching different courses to foreigners. We went over comprehensive course, listening course, spoken course and reading course. We made simple lessons plans and got feedback from them. The teacher was very very strict, but she knows what she teaches. I learned a lot during this course, especially that it’s really hard to be a good teacher!

语言学概论， Introduction to linguistics

This course actually made impossible possible, it made Finnish grammar interesting! We had lots of homework where we had to compare Finnish and Chinese, it was very interesting. Some things were quite hard and I perhaps didn’t learn everything that well, but it was just an introductory course, so I was happy with what I learned.

现代汉语， Modern Chinese

This semester we learned about Chinese phonology and vocabulary. The course was really hard and I often felt that my Chinese wasn’t good enough to study that course. I learned a lot of things during that course and came even more interested in this language.

对外汉语教学引论， Teaching Chinese for foreigners

During this course I thought a lot about which topic I could write my bachelor thesis. I learned some methods to use when writing a thesis if the topic is to compare a grammatical function in two languages for example (Chinese and native language).

Selective courses

中国国情，Current situation of China

This course was mainly listening to classmates’ presentations and free talk about the topics. It was an interesting course and topics run from education and health care to compassion and job hunting. A great class to use your Chinese when talking about an important topic.

现代汉语虚词学习，Modern Chinese function words

Absolutely the most boring course of all! Because of the lack of motivation, I didn’t learn that much during this course. I hope there was something that stuck though.

中级粤语，Middle level Cantonese

I learned new words and phrases in Cantonese, get to practice with my classmates and my teacher. I chose way too many courses so in the end I didn’t have enough energy to put into this course.

中国历史, History of China

This was a very interesting course and I learned a lot about China’s history that I didn’t know before. Excellent selective course.

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I haven’t gotten the grades from my courses yet, but all in all I can say that I learned a lot during the spring semester. The most important lessons might be not to take so many courses!