Chinese

Been doing quite a bit of searching on the Leeds forum and still can't find anything about the Chinese (Modern) degree at Leeds. So I thought I'd start this thread.

Does anyone here have any knowledge of the course? Reputation of it? Teaching? Resources? etc..

I know league tables can give you an indication but since on TSR I've managed to see people's experiences of Chinese at Oxbridge, SOAS and Newcastle I was really hoping someone could give more insight into the Leeds course, which, on paper, looks to be my favourite.

So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Reply 1

willsimpson

Dear Tax Man

My name is Will, I've ben studying chinese at Leeds for nearly a year now.

All of our teachers except one (which is just aural practice so it doesnt matter) are chinese, which helps with pronounciation, and they are all very helpfull and keen for you to learn alot of chinese! the teachers often explain things in the language which also explain aspects of the culture, and tell little stories. One of our teachers taught us a few songs in chinese, which was a good laugh!

The course is really intense, the pace is quite fast, so it needs a lot of effort to keep on top of things, but the teachers will always help you, and theres loads of chinese students looking for language partners who will help you with chinese.

We do conversational work, work listening from tapes, do written work, and grammatical work. You will learn a huge amount of chinese by the end of the year (especially if you start from scratch like me!).

I study music aswell as chinese, but i prefer the chinese classes usually. Alot of the classes are in really small groups, sometimes about 10, so you get to know people really quick. Almost everyone is into really cool stuff too, theres alot of travelers around on the course.

Also chinese is alot of fun making stupid sentences and stuff. Maybe im just a bit immature! The biggest thing for me is that everything you learn has a really practical application, which isn't the case with some of my other music lectures which waffle on for hours about obscure useless points in music!!!

Hope this has helped, if you wanna get hold of me, my e-mail is [email protected]

All the best, Will

University of Leeds

Leeds

Reply 2

tax.man

Cheers Will that's really helpful. I really do think Leeds is where I wanna study Chinese. To me the other options (Oxford - too boring a city, London - too expensive and too big a city, Sheffield - slightly less prestigious course) aren't as good so I only really wanna go to Leeds - great city, great reputation from Chinese and from what you've said great teaching.

Thanks again.