How do I compare progress in different Chinese degrees?

March 12, 2008 11:07 AM

How much Chinese should I be able to study in a Chinese degree?

I'm thinking of studying Chinese at degree level. I'd like to be able to compare the progress that’s expected in different courses. Is there a Chinese equivalent of the JLPT?

Also, I was wondering if anyone knew of a standard that's generally reached by the end of most Chinese degrees (e.g. X000 word vocabularly)?

posted by Tnuocca to Education (1 answer total)

Not terribly helpful, but I imagine it would depend a lot on where you're studying and how intensive they are. The Chinese equivalent of the JLPT would be the 汉语水平考试 Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, but I don't know how many programs in the States actually use the HSK as a benchmark, since like a lot of language tests it's pretty badly flawed. (Though apparently they're revising the HSK to make it more realistic at the Advanced level.)

Cant help you on standards for degrees either -- a lot of the people I know here with good Chinese basically did a lot of their study off the reservation, either in study abroad programs within China or by just coming here and getting lost. That's what I did, at least. For what it's worth, I was first able to read newspapers after about three years of Chinese study, though two of those years were self-study, one of them while living in China. If I had been less halfassed at the start I probably could have done it in a year and a half to two years.
posted by bokane at 12:34 PM on March 12, 2008