Chinese Instruction

April 10, 2006 11:27 AM

I'm thinking of enrolling in a program at Portland State University called Master's in International Management. The program has a year of five days a week Mandarin instruction. Is this really enough time to become proficient in the language?
posted by josher71 to Education (6 answers total)

It depends on what you consider to be proficient in terms of oral & written reception/production. It also depends on how much work you do outside of classroom, what your motivations are for learning, who is teaching, how they teach, whether you spend or have spent any time in China, whether you speak two or more languages fluently already, what your native language is (assuming English), how well you hear, etc.

Just on an educated hunch, however, I would say probably not. A year of dedicated but not immersive study will give you a good foundation and orientation to a language, but won't allow you to do very much in terms of actually using it productively in real-life unpredicatable situations.
posted by mrmojoflying at 11:52 AM on April 10, 2006

Yes, if you work at it. I took Mandarin courses in Beijing for about 2 months, 20 hours a week, and was quite proficient, although I have had some prior experience. A year of that, provided you're constantly using it and practicing it, would get you to spoken proficiency and functional literacy. You'd probably need much more, though, to master the language beyond that.

That said, living in Beijing probably helped a bit, too. Without almost complete immersion I think it's a lot harder to learn a language -- one person speaking to constantly in the language you're trying to learn is worth millions of scholastic instruction, at least with regard to learning a language.
posted by Big Fat Tycoon at 12:01 PM on April 10, 2006

Learning to read and write Chinese is rote memorization - as long as you devote the time outside of class to learning the characters you can easily learn the vocabulary you need to navigate the language in one year. I took three semesters of college level chinese (four hours/ week, 1 hour of lab) before moving to Shanghai to study the language in- depth. Also, Chinese grammar is very formulaic - once you master the noun verb object sentence structure most things are a variation on that. There are no complex verb tenses to learn, so it's mostly all vocabulary. When I moved to China, I felt comfortable after only a couple weeks of practice- for me, it was mostly learning the little patterns present in spoken, but not written language. If you have the proper dedication to memorize ALL THOSE CHARACTERS, a year of study will give you a decent knowledge of the language.
posted by weiailei at 12:59 PM on April 10, 2006

If it takes someone one year to become proficient in Spanish, times it with 5. That's how many years it will take in Mandarin. Not so much in grammar as it is fairly easy and similar to that of English. Pronunciation and writing are the most challenging for native English speakers.
Here is an interesting survey
link
posted by dy at 1:09 PM on April 10, 2006

If it takes someone one year to become proficient in Spanish, times it with 5. That's how many years it will take in Mandarin. Not so much in grammar as it is fairly easy and similar to that of English. Pronunciation and writing are the most challenging for native English speakers.
Here is an interesting survey
link
posted by dy at 1:10 PM on April 10, 2006

http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/hardest-language.php
posted by dy at 2:50 PM on April 10, 2006