CHIN 1
Elementary Modern Chinese
Description: Lecture, two hours; discussion, three hours. Not open to students who have learned, from whatever source, enough Chinese to qualify for more advanced courses. Introduction to fundamentals of standard Chinese, including pronunciation, grammar, and Chinese characters, with emphasis on all four basic language skills--speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - There's really not much to say about the professor, except that she's really good at teaching and that the grade distribution really is that good. Of course, Chinese is a memorization-heavy language, and there's no getting out of that. That said, the workload isn't too bad: about 4 hours a week of outside study should be more than enough. It's really intimidating at first, but just push through during the first 2 weeks and study for the class. In terms of course logistics, you will need THREE textbooks: the Textbook, the Workbook, and the CHARACTER Workbook. Homework is graded on effort, and in-class assignments are basically graded on effort, although if you repeat the same mistakes you will be docked points. You will have to pick either Simplified or Traditional and stick with it. Lecture and Discussion attendance are MANDATORY, but if you show up to them, they're free points. If you don't, you'll hurt your grade pretty badly. Also, as a heads up, lectures routinely go overtime, so keep that in mind when planning coursework Quizzes form the bulk of your grade, and generally involve you transcribing what Yao Laoshi says into Chinese-both into characters and pinyin. They're graded very generously. Exams are actually decently difficult as they're purely written and you have to memorize many radicals, but they're not worth that much of your grade (like 30% total). By the way, the cutoff for an A appears to range from 93 to 95%. 93% is reasonable, but 95% is actually much harder to get than it seems. Basically, show up, care about the class, do your work (it's really clear what you're assigned to do), and you should do fine
Fall 2020 - There's really not much to say about the professor, except that she's really good at teaching and that the grade distribution really is that good. Of course, Chinese is a memorization-heavy language, and there's no getting out of that. That said, the workload isn't too bad: about 4 hours a week of outside study should be more than enough. It's really intimidating at first, but just push through during the first 2 weeks and study for the class. In terms of course logistics, you will need THREE textbooks: the Textbook, the Workbook, and the CHARACTER Workbook. Homework is graded on effort, and in-class assignments are basically graded on effort, although if you repeat the same mistakes you will be docked points. You will have to pick either Simplified or Traditional and stick with it. Lecture and Discussion attendance are MANDATORY, but if you show up to them, they're free points. If you don't, you'll hurt your grade pretty badly. Also, as a heads up, lectures routinely go overtime, so keep that in mind when planning coursework Quizzes form the bulk of your grade, and generally involve you transcribing what Yao Laoshi says into Chinese-both into characters and pinyin. They're graded very generously. Exams are actually decently difficult as they're purely written and you have to memorize many radicals, but they're not worth that much of your grade (like 30% total). By the way, the cutoff for an A appears to range from 93 to 95%. 93% is reasonable, but 95% is actually much harder to get than it seems. Basically, show up, care about the class, do your work (it's really clear what you're assigned to do), and you should do fine
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