CHNS UN2202

Overall Moderate, but it is a 5 credit class, and Xu Laoshi makes every effort to accomodate for students schedules. 1-2 quizes per week that test characters and sentences One homework per week that takes me about an hour. 3 tests during the semester and an cumulative final at the end. If you put in effort and really show her that you're trying, there are many chances to get extra credit and get a good grade even if you do badly on some of the tests/quizes.

Quizzes are all handwritten, but doable, and he allows the class to skip a quiz once in a while if people vote for it. Tests are online and typed. Homework is just the grammar and vocab from the textbook. Essays and oral reports are easy.

Daily preparation and performance (15%) Quizzes (10%) Oral sessions and presentations (5%) Unit Tests (15%) Drill sessions with TA (10%) Final Project (10%) Homework (10%) Final exam (15%) Essays (10%) The homeworks are once every two weeks and probably took me 1-2 hours. There are quizzes once every three days which are pretty easy, but you need to keep up with studying the vocabulary and grammar. There are once per week drill sessions/recitations that are one hour. They are annoying but a part of every chinese class. The essays, exams, and oral presentations were once every couple weeks. The class is a lot of memorization and requires a decent amount of time outside of class studying (probably ~5-8 hours/week + assignments + in class time = 10-15hrs). That being said, you can definitely get by doing less if you just finesse. The grading is very generous; on quizzes, pretty substantial errors would get very tiny deductions (-0.1-1pts/100), so I think the lowest scores one would end up with would be a 90%. The exams are a little harder, but they're all on the computer, so you just need to be able to type and read characters for them. We also had the opportunity to earn up to 7% extra credit added to your total grade which definitely helped a lot.

The workload was never superfluous. It never felt tedious. The homework wa

Xu LaoShi is by far one of the best teachers I've ever had. She comes to every class very enthusiastic and passionate about the material and makes a big effort to give every student attention. She truly cares about her students and will go out of her way to make sure we actually understand the material. She is also extremely accommodating and understanding to individual situations, I've had times where I needed to submit a homework late, or times where I wanted to take quizes on other days and she always tries her best to accommodate. Learning a language is always a hard process and takes confidence to get things wrong. Xu Lao Shi truly understands this and gives you every opportunity to make mistakes and learn, and encourages students to try things out and learn for themselves. She also ties in real world examples, and makes classes fun by introducing interesting concepts related to the material. She's also extremely knowledgeable about Chinese culture, and youth culture and loves to share little bits of information throughout the classes. This really helps in creating a sense of community in the classroom and I've made many friends in the class because of this as well. I originally took chinese as a language requirement and almost resented Columbia for having this requirement, but with her as a teacher, Chinese is genuinely one of my favorite classes. I'm even considering ta…

The class structure is just where he goes over vocabulary and grammar structures from the slideshow and calls on students to give answers. It was kind of scary at first, but he's actually very chill and students have fun with their answers. Super nice guy.

Wu laoshi is very sweet and pretty accomodating. She uses the textbook's dialogues and essays pretty faithfully. She tries to introduce you to Chinese culture and keep class more dynamic with youtube videos, listening comprehension exercises, and talking to the people next to you instead of the monotony of just going through grammar patterns. I would say the actual content was more varied and interesting than the other Chinese classes I've been in. She is sort of flexible, moving back deadlines when we asked her to on a more stressful week. The one unhinged moment is our final project was done completely in the course of three days as she kept forgetting to talk about it. Shen then expected us to pretty much memorize 4+ minutes of dialogue in one night... The repercussions of that though were pretty light as even those who didn't really memorize it ended up with a 90%. Overall, Wu laoshi's class is definitely not the easiest/lightest workload ever, but I learned a fair amount of Chinese. I think I also learned the most about the culture and more practical/authentic knowledge than in previous classes. I would definitely recommend her class if you are willing to take the time to study on your own and are really interested in the class!

I really enjoyed going through the book in this class. I enjoyed the sections that covered key places in China, the section on the minority groups in China, and the simulation of being interviewed for a job. I found those sections both interesting and useful. I have a lot of good memories of the class. I enjoyed listening to my classmates' perspectives. I really enjoyed when Professor Meng shared her perspectives, insights, and experiences (how students have changed throughout her years of teaching, the double standard between empresses and emperors, an image of a dragon circling a pillar in Taiwan). Professor Meng is a teacher who's diligent (often grading/looking over HW after hours and leaving thorough comments), very receptive to feedback, and works very hard in ensuring that all her students are comfortable and bonding (shared lunch and potluck). We went through a Chinese textbook (that she co-authored), and I remember enjoying almost every section with the exception of the dating section/dating show/marriage/passive aggressive in-law sections. I would have preferred a longer section or more time on exploring more of China or Taiwan (especially) of (thinking more practically job-wise, more material centering on navigating China or Taiwan's industries). The daily quizzes on writing and the readings really did help level up my Chinese in both reading and writing. I liked th…