Chinese GCSE - Is it hard? Help

I'm thinking of taking chinese gcse as an extra subject but im scared of failing. I go to chinese school on sundays but its not very good so id like to know how advanced i am expected to be to do well in the exam. I would appreciate any advice from people in the same situation or people who have already done the exam. Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

Excalibur

15

When you say you go to Chinese school, does that mean you are fluent in Chinese? Or are you a beginner learner? I don't know about Chinese particularly well, but I'm guessing it will be similar to the GCSE Japanese exam I took. Since I'm a fluent speaker it was obviously not very hard... but even if you were starting from scratch, I don't think it's too demanding. I see that you already have lots of uni offers already, so surely it doesn't matter too much if you fail it? In any case, if you are interested in taking it I don't see why not.... :smile:

Reply 2

linka1

OP

10

Thats my sister with all of the uni offers (I'm just using this because I'm not a proper member). Not me. Im just 14. I guess you could say I'm a fluent speaker as both of my parents are chinese, but im in year 6 now at this chinese school. I wouldn't say I'm a beginner but I'm not an expert. It would still be helpful to get a little advice on the exam.

Reply 3

Dilute

15

If you're chinese and have a chinese upbringing like I do, then it should be quite easy. The reading is multiple choice and as long as you can write a paragraph of about 100-150 words about a given topic with opinions included then you'll be fine.

Reply 4

Excalibur

15

Ah, OK.

Can you write Chinese? Unlike western languages, you would need to practice writing all the Chinese characters - being able to speak it would be quite different from just being able to speak it (I presume). But if you do have a reasonable grasp of the writing and reading of Chinese, I think you should go for it! From my GCSE Japanese experience, it really wasn't that hard (even looking at it objectively). Perhaps you could purchase some past papers, so that you can really see what standard is required... also, I would think that there will be some people at your Chinese school who would've done the GCSE, so you could try and get some more info that way. :smile:

Reply 5

graveyarddreams

13

Chinese is **** easy!! don't worry about it, if you can speak it a bit and have a vocab of more than a dozen words you will get A*. Trust mem, (if you do Edexel that is, but i reckon the rest can't be that much harder.)
I did it last year with no revision, and i barely speak it and got an A*!

--------------

linka1

Thats my sister with all of the uni offers (I'm just using this because I'm not a proper member). Not me. Im just 14. I guess you could say I'm a fluent speaker as both of my parents are chinese, but im in year 6 now at this chinese school. I wouldn't say I'm a beginner but I'm not an expert. It would still be helpful to get a little advice on the exam.

year 6 is a level standard :wink:

. (or above :eek:

)

Reply 6

Champagne Breakfast

16

I agree with the above, it's piss easy and even if you're not very good it's very possible to get an A* with a minimum knowledge, a bit of preparation, and a brain. I imagine the Oral and Listening sections will be easy for you, as well as probably the Reading (and if not common sense helps here). The Writing I found hard but you can prepare it - the first question will always ask for 5 things, the last question is always a letter, postcard or short essay (so prepare beginnings and endings), and there is a section which only gives you marks for accuracy (so just use really basic Chinese) and one which tests how good your Chinese is (so use one/two impressive structures and some impressive vocab which you can learn the day before). I'm crap at Chinese and scraped an A*, and I wouldn't have been able to do it had my teacher not taught us how to play the system. You've been to Chinese school for 6 years and are probably better - I would say ask your teachers about the GCSE and then do a bit of vocab learning.

P.S. I would say it's easier than Japanese GCSE

Chinese GCSE - Is it hard? Help

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