CHIN 100A
Advanced Modern Chinese
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Enforced requisite: course 6 or 10 with grade of C or better or Chinese placement test. Course 100A with grade of C or better or Chinese placement test is enforced requisite to 100B; course 100B with grade of C or better or Chinese placement test is enforced requisite to 100C. Third-year Chinese. Not open to students who have learned, from whatever source, enough Chinese to qualify for more advanced courses. Materials selected from contemporary Chinese publications, with emphasis on social sciences. Texts analyzed for their linguistic features and social and cultural background. Readings, compositions, informal debates on topical issues, and oral presentations. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Pros: Shen Laoshi is an overall friendly teacher, who is ALWAYS available at her office hours anytime during the day to help you out with any concerns or time conflicts. She's always smiling and really passionate in what she does. And, she grades each individual student on a different scale, depending on their background and which Chinese series they took. Cons: I felt that she asked way too much out of us. Coming from Fu Laoshi's class, I was not used to this amount of workload. Every week there were 2 quizzes, and every other week there was an assigned essay of increasing length from 350-600 characters (5 essays in total for the whole quarter). Having taken Chinese for 2 years at UCLA, I understand that this subject requires a lot of time input and effort. I honestly found her way of teaching Chinese not effective. You can't expect some students to learn more Chinese by asking them to write and write and write.. It was unfortunate that she didn't put more time on teaching grammar because that would have helped a whole lot with our essays' grammatical structures. Half the time, I wasn't even sure if my sentences made sense. I did go to her office hours to have her look at one of my essays, but she only spent a few minutes glancing at it and gave me pointers on the "bigger picture" of my paper and nothing about my grammar was mentioned. Writing is a major emphasis in this class and because of that, I rarely had time to go back to old chapters to review since I was so caught up in preparing for the next paper. Last but not least, there seemed to be no consistency in her lectures. Each and every day of each week, I came to class not knowing what subject areas she would focus on. Some days she would teach random parts from the textbook and on other days she would teach off some PowerPoint slides. I like Shen Laoshi and all. But, I'm simply not a fan of how she teaches Chinese. After 10 weeks with her, I felt that I forgot how to speak and write basic Chinese as the weeks progressed on.
Pros: Shen Laoshi is an overall friendly teacher, who is ALWAYS available at her office hours anytime during the day to help you out with any concerns or time conflicts. She's always smiling and really passionate in what she does. And, she grades each individual student on a different scale, depending on their background and which Chinese series they took. Cons: I felt that she asked way too much out of us. Coming from Fu Laoshi's class, I was not used to this amount of workload. Every week there were 2 quizzes, and every other week there was an assigned essay of increasing length from 350-600 characters (5 essays in total for the whole quarter). Having taken Chinese for 2 years at UCLA, I understand that this subject requires a lot of time input and effort. I honestly found her way of teaching Chinese not effective. You can't expect some students to learn more Chinese by asking them to write and write and write.. It was unfortunate that she didn't put more time on teaching grammar because that would have helped a whole lot with our essays' grammatical structures. Half the time, I wasn't even sure if my sentences made sense. I did go to her office hours to have her look at one of my essays, but she only spent a few minutes glancing at it and gave me pointers on the "bigger picture" of my paper and nothing about my grammar was mentioned. Writing is a major emphasis in this class and because of that, I rarely had time to go back to old chapters to review since I was so caught up in preparing for the next paper. Last but not least, there seemed to be no consistency in her lectures. Each and every day of each week, I came to class not knowing what subject areas she would focus on. Some days she would teach random parts from the textbook and on other days she would teach off some PowerPoint slides. I like Shen Laoshi and all. But, I'm simply not a fan of how she teaches Chinese. After 10 weeks with her, I felt that I forgot how to speak and write basic Chinese as the weeks progressed on.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - To be honest, this class is a total 180 from the way classes are conducted in the 1-6 series. There is no true lecture and most of the goal of the class seems to be memorization and regurgitation. Although not terrible it is hard to adjust to at first and kind of feels like the rug is swept out from under you but near the end of the quarter it feels like you have your feet under you and better understand how the course operates. Professor Smith is kind and definitely concerned with student learning so she is always available to and wants to help us with our comprehension of the material.
Fall 2021 - To be honest, this class is a total 180 from the way classes are conducted in the 1-6 series. There is no true lecture and most of the goal of the class seems to be memorization and regurgitation. Although not terrible it is hard to adjust to at first and kind of feels like the rug is swept out from under you but near the end of the quarter it feels like you have your feet under you and better understand how the course operates. Professor Smith is kind and definitely concerned with student learning so she is always available to and wants to help us with our comprehension of the material.
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