<p>veggiestop,</p>
<p>It is a hard language to learn from scratch with no background. My son is efficient with his studies (this has been the case throughout H.S.), but long hours of study, 3-5 hours a day for several days or more a week was not uncommon for this one language class. Even so, he struggled with the quizzes. They put him in a heritage class, which was not the right placement for him. </p>
<p>Last summer, before school started, I argued on his behalf after he tried to unsuccessfully straighten it out himself through the advisor and faculty. I was told there was not much difference between the two and urged to let him try out the heritage class. That is not true. Much more writing of characters and then Chinese speaking students may be praised for knowing characters not learned in class. So if you do not have any Chinese language background, make sure you get into the non-heritage Chinese class.</p>
<p>To be honest, I felt bad when he was studying over the Thanksgiving weekend, writing pages and pages of characters and telling me he had to keep the pace up or he would not complete the assigned chapters in time. Grading was not easy since he was likely competing with students who had some Chinese language background.</p>
<p>The good thing is he did learn a lot and his pronunciation of Chinese words and speaking showed very good progress. However, there is no doubt the language is hard and is time-intensive. He plans to go to Shanghai for study abroad, so it will be useful for him.</p>