CHIN 4
Intermediate Modern Chinese
Description: Lecture, five hours. Enforced requisite: course 3 or 8 with grade of C or better or Chinese placement test. Second-year Chinese. Not open to students who have learned, from whatever source, enough Chinese to qualify for more advanced courses. Designed to strengthen communicative skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Grammar reviews, knowledge of idiomatic expressions, and both traditional and simplified characters. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fu laoshi is a great teacher and is dedicated to her students. She certainly doesn't dislike students who know how to speak a little Chinese already, as a matter of fact she seems to encourage those students to ask more questions. She knows that most of her students have other classes to take and have different majors than Chinese, so she is very understanding. The only thing I didn't like about the class was that we had almost no speaking practice, other than that the class was great!
Fu laoshi is a great teacher and is dedicated to her students. She certainly doesn't dislike students who know how to speak a little Chinese already, as a matter of fact she seems to encourage those students to ask more questions. She knows that most of her students have other classes to take and have different majors than Chinese, so she is very understanding. The only thing I didn't like about the class was that we had almost no speaking practice, other than that the class was great!
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - Shen Laoshi was a very great professor, definitely caring about student learning and having very engaging lectures. She was definitely flexible, and has adapted well to online learning. She also gave personal feedback for homework assignments and essays. --- The class is significantly different compared to the Chinese 1 to 3 series. While reviews from a decade or so ago indicate this class was an easy A, it appears that the Chinese series was overhauled a few years ago and made more difficult. All the homework and powerpoint slides were labeled “Chin 100A,” for example. Several chapters were skipped, and while not major, it helps to finish off the book from Chin 3 before starting this class. --- Regardless, the class was still not difficult, but the class did require quite a bit of work and studying. If you took Chinese 1-3 series, the following are the biggest changes: --- First would be essays. Two were take-home essays and one was in-class. Since the topics are given beforehand, including for the in-class essay’s topic, one can prepare for them. --- Second difference would be quizzes. One quiz is given per chapter, with 7 total and the lowest 2 dropped. These quizzes were quite long, around 45 minutes each, and felt quite a bit like the AP Exam style questions. They were all multiple choice, with listening and reading comprehension sections. --- Third difference would be text recordings, where you read the text dialogue by yourself or with a partner. Fortunately, this was graded based on completion only. I have mixed feelings about this; this was good speaking practice but sometimes felt like busy work. --- Last difference would be the final video project. This was a decent amount of work that should take 3 days to do, or about 12 hours total including subtitles and practice. --- Other than that, it didn’t feel too much different from the 1-3 series. Homework was based on completion and grade cutoffs were fixed. The written exams were open note (and actually not proctored whatsoever). Finally, two big logistics notes: First, Shen Laoshi gives you everything you need to do the homework assignments. The Workbook is NOT NEEDED. But, the textbook is highly helpful, and you SHOULD buy the textbook, but not the workbook. Second, the lectures are NOT recorded, but the slides are given out. That said, the slides themselves don’t have too much on them, so lectures are basically mandatory. Students are also graded on attendance.
Fall 2021 - Shen Laoshi was a very great professor, definitely caring about student learning and having very engaging lectures. She was definitely flexible, and has adapted well to online learning. She also gave personal feedback for homework assignments and essays. --- The class is significantly different compared to the Chinese 1 to 3 series. While reviews from a decade or so ago indicate this class was an easy A, it appears that the Chinese series was overhauled a few years ago and made more difficult. All the homework and powerpoint slides were labeled “Chin 100A,” for example. Several chapters were skipped, and while not major, it helps to finish off the book from Chin 3 before starting this class. --- Regardless, the class was still not difficult, but the class did require quite a bit of work and studying. If you took Chinese 1-3 series, the following are the biggest changes: --- First would be essays. Two were take-home essays and one was in-class. Since the topics are given beforehand, including for the in-class essay’s topic, one can prepare for them. --- Second difference would be quizzes. One quiz is given per chapter, with 7 total and the lowest 2 dropped. These quizzes were quite long, around 45 minutes each, and felt quite a bit like the AP Exam style questions. They were all multiple choice, with listening and reading comprehension sections. --- Third difference would be text recordings, where you read the text dialogue by yourself or with a partner. Fortunately, this was graded based on completion only. I have mixed feelings about this; this was good speaking practice but sometimes felt like busy work. --- Last difference would be the final video project. This was a decent amount of work that should take 3 days to do, or about 12 hours total including subtitles and practice. --- Other than that, it didn’t feel too much different from the 1-3 series. Homework was based on completion and grade cutoffs were fixed. The written exams were open note (and actually not proctored whatsoever). Finally, two big logistics notes: First, Shen Laoshi gives you everything you need to do the homework assignments. The Workbook is NOT NEEDED. But, the textbook is highly helpful, and you SHOULD buy the textbook, but not the workbook. Second, the lectures are NOT recorded, but the slides are given out. That said, the slides themselves don’t have too much on them, so lectures are basically mandatory. Students are also graded on attendance.
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Most Helpful Review
Unfortunately, some of the negative comments about Professor Xu are true. It was his first quarter at UCLA and it was as much a learning experience for him as for the students; he experimented with test and quiz lengths and difficulty (I was still able to finish), and his lectures were often irrelevant to learning Chinese grammar. A lot of students in class were already fluent in Mandarin, but keep in mind that this was not Prof Xu's fault. His error may have been in relying too heavily upon inexperienced TA's. However, he is a kind-hearted person and I believe that he genuinely wanted the students to learn. He was excellent when teaching on a smaller scale--he led our discussion section twice and I learned a lot from him. I think that if given a chance, he will be a better teacher in future quarters. Give him a chance.
Unfortunately, some of the negative comments about Professor Xu are true. It was his first quarter at UCLA and it was as much a learning experience for him as for the students; he experimented with test and quiz lengths and difficulty (I was still able to finish), and his lectures were often irrelevant to learning Chinese grammar. A lot of students in class were already fluent in Mandarin, but keep in mind that this was not Prof Xu's fault. His error may have been in relying too heavily upon inexperienced TA's. However, he is a kind-hearted person and I believe that he genuinely wanted the students to learn. He was excellent when teaching on a smaller scale--he led our discussion section twice and I learned a lot from him. I think that if given a chance, he will be a better teacher in future quarters. Give him a chance.
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