How hard is GCSE Mandarin Chinese to learn in one year (for Westerners)

I would assume it's a bit late, but I've done 4 MFL GCSE's (Spanish, Chinese, German and Italian) and I would definitely say that Chinese has been the most useless to me. In terms of content, Chinese is by far the least rigorous and I don't feel I know any of the language (I got A*'s in all of them, so I'm 'meant' to be equally good at them all). The other three languages gave me a solid grounding to learn more, while in itself offering enough content for me to be able to hold a albeit basic conversation with a person who can speak that language. I guess it depends on what you want though, if you want an A* easily... Chinese is the most attainable as the exams are pretty much multiple choice (Y)

Chinese GCSE, multiple choice? Wha?

Did you do the foundation paper?

Hi Luke,
I'm sulaimanali writing again after 2 years! Its way late for the reply, but oh well - I'll still be writing. Ah - there's been a lot of difference. I have improved massively in my Mandarin GCSE. I am currently a Year 10 pupil, heading into year 11 in September. School just finished today! At the beginning of Year 9 I began at an E+ and I got my report yesterday and I have landed on an A- in just 2 years of the course! I am super-duper happy. As an English native speaker, I think mandarin GCSE is easy! Everyone thinks it is hard, but trust me, its not. My school is Upton Court Grammar and we follow the Edexcel GCSE Chinese course. I was surprised at how easy the course is made for us! At first, it may seem difficult, but it gets easier and easier. With tuition, anyone should be fine. I was thinking about getting tuition but I didn't. I did everything by myself and achieved a lot of high grades in Mandarin. With that said, part of the reason is due to my efforts, but also due to the strategies by my class teacher, Puchan Liao, by providing revision sheets for the vocabulary and giving tips/hints/resources that aided me a lot.
If you are genuinely interested, go for it! of course there are many advantages to taking it, but if you're one that doesn't have an extremely good memory or patience, then it may be somewhat difficult. Over time, you'll be able to develop different skills and tricks to tackle problems that crop up. Obviously an A* or even an A and perhaps in the worst case, a B will look impressive on your CV/marksheet for GCSE.
I even got the subject hero award for Chinese several times for improvement and effort in the subject! I recently had a few exams for it. In my first writing controlled assessment I achieved 24/30 = 80%, equivalent to an A. I then got (24/25)/30 which is also equivalent to an A. If you double the 24 mark (as for your final grade, 2 controlled assessments of writing go forward and 2 controlled assessments of speaking go forward) then the mark is 80% overall, equivalent to an A*. In my mock exam (end of year 10), I got 33/40 = 82.5% which was an A* in my listening and I got 26/40 = 65% in my reading which was a B. The overall average for my mock was then 59/80 = 74% which was an A. Continuing with this approach, I am guaranteed and estimated an A/A* in my final.
As you can see, its not that hard - all it needs is patience, practice, commitment, effort and interest. The writing and speaking controlled assessments are not difficult - the writing only needs 100-150 Hanzi characters correctly written to get an A or A*. If you just want to pass it atleast, to get a C you need 100-150 with it being dodgy with tons of mistakes! 30 Hanzi/words are allowed with a dictionary! Now it can't get any easier/harder. The speaking needs to be 6 minutes long, 3 minutes for speaking yourself and 3 minutes of questions, if your task will be a presentation and discussion based. All this applies to the Edexcel GCSE Chinese course. Then the listening and reading are on the final GCSE day and they together make up 40% of the total marks whereas the speaking and writing make up a total of 60% together. Listening = 20%, Reading = 20%, Speaking (2 exams) = 30%, Listening (2 exams) = 30%. And the listening and reading are 80% multiple choice!
I hope all this long information and data helps a lot to you and other people who are interested in pursuing GCSE Mandarin.

Hi Luke,
I'm sulaimanali writing again after 2 years! Its way late for the reply, but oh well - I'll still be writing. Ah - there's been a lot of difference. I have improved massively in my Mandarin GCSE. I am currently a Year 10 pupil, heading into year 11 in September. School just finished today! At the beginning of Year 9 I began at an E+ and I got my report yesterday and I have landed on an A- in just 2 years of the course! I am super-duper happy. As an English native speaker, I think mandarin GCSE is easy! Everyone thinks it is hard, but trust me, its not. My school is Upton Court Grammar and we follow the Edexcel GCSE Chinese course. I was surprised at how easy the course is made for us! At first, it may seem difficult, but it gets easier and easier. With tuition, anyone should be fine. I was thinking about getting tuition but I didn't. I did everything by myself and achieved a lot of high grades in Mandarin. With that said, part of the reason is due to my efforts, but also due to the strategies by my class teacher, Puchan Liao, by providing revision sheets for the vocabulary and giving tips/hints/resources that aided me a lot.
If you are genuinely interested, go for it! of course there are many advantages to taking it, but if you're one that doesn't have an extremely good memory or patience, then it may be somewhat difficult. Over time, you'll be able to develop different skills and tricks to tackle problems that crop up. Obviously an A* or even an A and perhaps in the worst case, a B will look impressive on your CV/marksheet for GCSE.
I even got the subject hero award for Chinese several times for improvement and effort in the subject! I recently had a few exams for it. In my first writing controlled assessment I achieved 24/30 = 80%, equivalent to an A. I then got (24/25)/30 which is also equivalent to an A. If you double the 24 mark (as for your final grade, 2 controlled assessments of writing go forward and 2 controlled assessments of speaking go forward) then the mark is 80% overall, equivalent to an A*. In my mock exam (end of year 10), I got 33/40 = 82.5% which was an A* in my listening and I got 26/40 = 65% in my reading which was a B. The overall average for my mock was then 59/80 = 74% which was an A. Continuing with this approach, I am guaranteed and estimated an A/A* in my final.
As you can see, its not that hard - all it needs is patience, practice, commitment, effort and interest. The writing and speaking controlled assessments are not difficult - the writing only needs 100-150 Hanzi characters correctly written to get an A or A*. If you just want to pass it atleast, to get a C you need 100-150 with it being dodgy with tons of mistakes! 30 Hanzi/words are allowed with a dictionary! Now it can't get any easier/harder. The speaking needs to be 6 minutes long, 3 minutes for speaking yourself and 3 minutes of questions, if your task will be a presentation and discussion based. All this applies to the Edexcel GCSE Chinese course. Then the listening and reading are on the final GCSE day and they together make up 40% of the total marks whereas the speaking and writing make up a total of 60% together. Listening = 20%, Reading = 20%, Speaking (2 exams) = 30%, Listening (2 exams) = 30%. And the listening and reading are 80% multiple choice!
I hope all this long information and data helps a lot to you and other people who are interested in pursuing GCSE Mandarin.

Hi Luke,
I'm sulaimanali writing again after 2 years! Its way late for the reply, but oh well - I'll still be writing. Ah - there's been a lot of difference. I have improved massively in my Mandarin GCSE. I am currently a Year 10 pupil, heading into year 11 in September. School just finished today! At the beginning of Year 9 I began at an E+ and I got my report yesterday and I have landed on an A- in just 2 years of the course! I am super-duper happy. As an English native speaker, I think mandarin GCSE is easy! Everyone thinks it is hard, but trust me, its not. My school is Upton Court Grammar and we follow the Edexcel GCSE Chinese course. I was surprised at how easy the course is made for us! At first, it may seem difficult, but it gets easier and easier. With tuition, anyone should be fine. I was thinking about getting tuition but I didn't. I did everything by myself and achieved a lot of high grades in Mandarin. With that said, part of the reason is due to my efforts, but also due to the strategies by my class teacher, Puchan Liao, by providing revision sheets for the vocabulary and giving tips/hints/resources that aided me a lot.
If you are genuinely interested, go for it! of course there are many advantages to taking it, but if you're one that doesn't have an extremely good memory or patience, then it may be somewhat difficult. Over time, you'll be able to develop different skills and tricks to tackle problems that crop up. Obviously an A* or even an A and perhaps in the worst case, a B will look impressive on your CV/marksheet for GCSE.
I even got the subject hero award for Chinese several times for improvement and effort in the subject! I recently had a few exams for it. In my first writing controlled assessment I achieved 24/30 = 80%, equivalent to an A. I then got (24/25)/30 which is also equivalent to an A. If you double the 24 mark (as for your final grade, 2 controlled assessments of writing go forward and 2 controlled assessments of speaking go forward) then the mark is 80% overall, equivalent to an A*. In my mock exam (end of year 10), I got 33/40 = 82.5% which was an A* in my listening and I got 26/40 = 65% in my reading which was a B. The overall average for my mock was then 59/80 = 74% which was an A. Continuing with this approach, I am guaranteed and estimated an A/A* in my final.
As you can see, its not that hard - all it needs is patience, practice, commitment, effort and interest. The writing and speaking controlled assessments are not difficult - the writing only needs 100-150 Hanzi characters correctly written to get an A or A*. If you just want to pass it atleast, to get a C you need 100-150 with it being dodgy with tons of mistakes! 30 Hanzi/words are allowed with a dictionary! Now it can't get any easier/harder. The speaking needs to be 6 minutes long, 3 minutes for speaking yourself and 3 minutes of questions, if your task will be a presentation and discussion based. All this applies to the Edexcel GCSE Chinese course. Then the listening and reading are on the final GCSE day and they together make up 40% of the total marks whereas the speaking and writing make up a total of 60% together. Listening = 20%, Reading = 20%, Speaking (2 exams) = 30%, Listening (2 exams) = 30%. And the listening and reading are 80% multiple choice!
I hope all this long information and data helps a lot to you and other people who are interested in pursuing GCSE Mandarin.

Thank you so much! I know it's a bit late for the asker to reply as s/he is probably in college now (I'm assuming) but that honestly helped me so much! I'm currently in year 9 and I'm going to be doing my Mandarin GCSE's early in year 10, and I was horrified! Was I going to fail, will I get an A, I was all over the place haha. But thank you so much for that.