laurendankie

I want to major/minor in Chinese at UCB or UCLA...does anyone have any information about how competitive/well-taught the classes are? (I am white by the way...and i have taken a year of Chinese at my local community college...but i am apprehensive about learning a language in a college environment. Especially a difficult one like Chinese)

DRab

I know someone in chinese classes here who is very happy with them. He is white as well, if that matters.

im_blue

I took Chinese 1AB at Berkeley over the 8-week summer session, and I would say it's a very well-taught class. Much better than the one I'm taking at Stanford now.

CalX

I took that same class 10 years ago, back when it was a 10-week 10-unit session. A good part of the class was white. They put us in a different section at the start (we thought of our section as the "remedial" one -lol-) The intro series is excellent at Cal. Of course the Asian Studies dept is tops too, like just about all of the depts on campus.

Once you develop some proficiency, you're put back in the same group. It's actually pretty cool that there are so many Chinese and Chinese-American speakers around in this sense, because it helps you practice.

eiffelguy87

The great advantage Cal has is the new East Asian Studies Center and East Asian Studies Librarby. It's huge!

Also, the Intsiste of East Asian Studies has guests come in and speak, including the Mayor of Taipei (prospective Taiwanese presidential candidate, and head of the Kuomintang (aka Guomindang aka Nationalist's Party) come in and speak to us.