Lening Liu

He is one of the most knowledgeable professors I've ever met! If you want or need to learn about Classical Chinese or Chinese Linguistics, take it! Seriously, he really knows how to teach Classical Chinese.

Hey, he is a really nice guy! Why so many bad reviews? It's unfair. He is a nice grader! At least give you an A-.

I love the texts read in this class. I finally get a glimpse of modern Chinese literature read in Chinese and taught in Chinese. This is no longer just a language class. It's more like a language class that helps you transition into real Chinese literature classes at Columbia. Professor Liu is very insightful, but sometimes his lecture feels long. It's a challenge for me to focus sometimes, but he really explains the cultural nuances and literary allusions in the text. Hearing his lectures do make the texts much more interesting. I definitely recommend this class to people interested in Chinese literature.

The guy works hard to make the material interesting. A young guy quite popular with the ladies, dresses the hip urban uniform of all-black chic, and parties with famous Chinese movie directors. However, be forewarned. The class textbook was written by another Columbia prof, and it's boring.

I learned more about the collocations and etymologies of many characters!

chinese vocabularly, new grammatical structures, how to express time and talk about our daily schedules, and to be comfortable making mistakes when learning new languages.

Almost daily dictation, bi-weekly test and take-home assignment (same format as test), final translation project, and final exam You will be fine as long as you take grammar notes and translations provided by Dr. Liu during class.

I agree with the last review. Though Liu does give you the impression that he's not entirely emotionally invested in the class, he is a professional and does a pretty good job teaching the material. This isn't to say that the pedagogy is perfect. In my eyes there are a lot of things that could be changed about the way that Chinese is taught at Columbia, but that's more of an institutional critique than anything against the man himself (though he is department head, so these issues still may bear mentioning). He operates well in the system that has been set up. I really appreciated Liu's formal treatment of Classical Chinese grammar. Being able to parse a CC sentence and understand all of the stuff that's going on underneath the hood is awesome. I wish that they had this sort of thing for the Modern Chinese courses. It might have something to do with the fact that this is taught in English. Whatever it is, the guy knows his stuff. I know much more now than I did in September. Liu also seems to be an active member in the academic community, for what it's worth. If you have questions about Chinese literary culture or linguistics, he's your guy. He also has a kick-ass reading voice that I am determined to master. As a person, Liu seems like a pretty nice guy. I didn't pick up any of the mystique (either good or bad) that gets attributed to him in some of these reviews. Part of thi…

This is a terrible, terrible class. It's perhaps the only class where I truly felt that I was wasting my tuition money and time. I don't recommend that anyone take it for the following reasons: -the instructor, Lening Liu, is incredibly lazy. Half the class time is spent with him reading the chapter or story aloud; the other half is him reciting rambling anecdotes about his personal life. Sometimes a few sexual innuendos are thrown in, making some of the female classmates squeamish (myself included). -the coursework was confusing and unstructured. I could not discern any pedagogical direction. The texts vacillated between hard-to-read 15th century Chinese literature and modern texts. Mostly, it was there to showcase Liu's learning and "excellent" reading voice. The class size dwindled from 15 students to 7. And not because it was difficult. The ones who were stuck either had requirements to fulfill or wanted an easy A, which he dispenses with ease because it quiets down complaints. But easy As are not what academia is about, is it? It's about learning. You will do very little--if any--learning in this class.

In my opinion, Liu laoshi is the best instructor in the Chinese department. He's actually interested in teaching students, and he listens to student input. Also, he tries to make the class interesting, and you end up learning things that are actually useful. He's written books and scholarly articles about Chinese language, so he's definitely an expert, and you will learn a lot from this course.