Zhirong Wang

Professor Wang is amazing! She is very laid-back and I had a wonderful time in this class. I came in with very little formal linguistics knowledge—the first half of the semester is dedicated to learning the basics of phonology and historical linguistic methods; the second half is more dedicated to various topics that stem from these inquiries. I learned a lot about the history of the Chinese language. I will say, most of the time, the readings are not necessary. Professor Wang goes over them in the lectures, and because your classmates are also presenting on these chapters, you really only need to read for review, or if you are doing your presentation on that passage. Grading is really easy—homeworks are guaranteed 100s, unless you mess up in a silly way. Grades for presentations and papers are generally pretty high, but you should put in the work for those. Professor Wang is super kind—would totally recommend this class with her if you are interested in Chinese, linguistics, history, or anthropology!

Wang Laoshi is by far the best Chinese teacher I have ever had. Though she does not cover a lot of grammar in class, she is more than willing to meet for office hours and is extremely helpful. She does go through all the words and word usage very throughly, and will make sure in class that everyone understands what is going on with the text. Make sure to participate at least once!! She genuinely wants her students to improve their language abilities, given they put in the effort, but in office hours will also make an effort to get to know you better. If you are ok with going to office hours once in a while and putting in the work for this class, you will love Wang Laoshi - definitely deserves the silver nugget

I took Wang Laoshi for Third Year Chinese N and it was the worst decision of my life. She spends the whole time talking about the dialogue and stories in the textbook that she wrote, and then does not teach any of the grammar that constitutes a huge portion of the test. She assigns homework on grammar that she'll go over the next day after everyone says they are confused. Oh, and just FYI the Third Year Chinese N course that she teaches is not the same as any of the others but is "Chinese for Humanities," which entails reading experts from classic Chinese stories and learning words like "claw" and "concubine." She's cold to students who ask questions, and is very impatient when people ask for clarification. She consistently will shame students who are struggling with the material in front of the class and will point out which students are doing better. She's very obvious about her preference for which students and will make reference to those students' lives (particularly if you studied with her in Columbia in Beijing). All in all, she does not care about her students, is impatient and puts students down for basic questions with the response "you should already know that, why are you asking."

She is a gem of a language teacher. She makes it almost impossible not to understand the concepts, and she brings cultural aspects to the language. I would definitely recommend her to anyone who wants to take Chinese.

An extremely fair teacher, Wang Zhirong brings the syllabus to life. She offers much insight into Chinese literature and culture, making the class ten times more interesting than it could be. She speaks rather decent English, so one should not have problems understanding her translations. There is a quiz every day (but this applies to all Chinese W classes), which forces you to keep up with the work (and I have to admit it helps). And yes, she's very nice.

She is a fair professor and she does follow the requirements to the T. If you do the work and participate in class you can do very well. She brings in cultural aspects and logically explains the reason for the "look" of the characters

I really learned a lot - introduction to many concepts of Chinese history, philosophy, the development of language, etc. This course introduced a new set of vocabulary to me that enriched my ability to communicate abstract ideas and convey my thoughts more eloquently.

Definitely take this course if you are interested in Chinese and linguistics. As stated below, the ratio of what you put in and what you learn is incredibly favorable (i.e. little effort for pretty large amount of stuff you learn). I took this class to take a break from Chinese classes, which are super time consuming, while still being able to learn Chinese. Also, I agree with the review below and really just want to fill in the gaps a bit more. This class is basically split into two halves. The first half is essentially a crash course on linguistics with Chinese as a case study. Topics in the first half are more linguistic focused: phonology, morphology, script, etc. I found this incredibly helpful and interesting, especially since I'm interested in linguistics but did not have the opportunity to take the introductory class. If you have taken the intro, then the first few weeks might be slow. A typical class will consist of Professor Wang lecturing intermixed with class discussion, which she really enjoys having. Some days discussion was really good while other days it was just okay. Usually, this will depend on your classmates and how knowledgeable/enthusiastic they are about the day's topic. Our class was primarily composed of Chinese grad students, linguistics majors/concentrators, and Chinese engineering undergrads. The second half of the course could be called "Special T…

Wang Laoshi is an amazing, dedicated professor. I took her for Third Year Chinese for Non-Heritage Speakers and my reading, writing, speaking and vocab skills improved dramatically. She is super sweet and practical and does demand a lot from her students, but if you do the work and have enthusiasm about coming to class every morning, it will pay off :)

Wang laoshi is amazing! Sweet, funny, intelligent, and flexible when it comes to class conversations. She wants you to enjoy chinese AND college. And she most definately cares about you and your well-being. At the end of the semester she took us all out to faculty house to eat together and talk. In other words, she's the kind of teacher you'd stop by to see on your free time, just because you actually enjoy seeing her! For those of you who "came up" learning chinese at columbia, congratulations. This is what you have been waiting for, the gold ring of chinese teachers: highly educated, highly talented teacher, high expectations of her students, and great rewards for those who strive to meet those expectations. If you're serious about chinese - she'll do EVERYTHING she can to get you where you need to be. She has "infinite" office hours for her students. And if you run into a work wall or strange disease, she'll be much more understanding than many who come from China's strict schooling environment. If you're not serious...what are you doing there? The language requirement is over!