The Sunday Times-calling overseas students

I'm not yet there and I'm not international in any sense but a technical one (I'm from Guernsey!), but I think the high dropout rates at SOAS are due to the fact that languages have high dropout rates at every university and SOAS specialises in languages.

Reply 1

yeung3939

I am an international student from Hong Kong.

I do want to know the answers of the questions you asked.

School of Oriental and African Studies

London

Reply 2

Eien

I'm not an international student, but I know that every student mentions that the SOAS language courses are extremely intense, yet the entrance requirements are often BBC/BCC, meaning that many find the courses too intense - e.g. in the first year of Chinese, one has to learn 1000 characters.

Reply 3

yeung3939

1000 characters?

Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese!

Being a local Hong Kong citizen, I can read both traditional and simplified Chinese. Also, I can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin.

I sincerely think Chinese is one of the most difficult language in the world, although I often find it difficult to write good English.

I got an offer from SOAS (BA politics). Perhaps, I will go to UK to study what happened and is happening in my homeland. I guess it is common in SOAS.

Reply 4

Né Stig

Eien

Its not a bad thing that SOAS are offering BBC/BCC for languages. The amount of people that apply for Languages is very low, hence greater competition. QM, also one of the best in the Country in regards to languages and linguistics and they also offer BBC (not sure about BCC) entry requirements.

As a few of the students are International, their grasp for English is quite poor even meeting the requirements set by the Uni, and you always need English even to pass a language course. :smile: