SOAS Chinese Year Abroad

Thinking about going to SOAS to do Chinese and was wondering what the year abroad is like. Whats Beijing normal university like? What do you do for fun there? How much does it cost? How long is it exactly? etc etc

Reply 1

Piers-

2

Hi,

It seemed to end up costing roughly the same as a year in London, but with about double the quality of living :smile:

. You can spend as much as you like, to be honest. If you're willing to live in a hutong and cheap Chinese food everyday then you can live very cheaply indeed!

There are lots of things to do for fun. We played football once a week at BNU with Koreans, that was always fun; there was a gym with a swimming pool and pingpong tables, and we got, err, pretty into pingpong. There's also plenty of cheap snooker/pool halls which are great fun. Night life over there is pretty good, and there's loads of clubs to choose from. The most popular were called "MIX" and "VICS" which were right opposite each other :P We also had a lot of fun near the end playing big lan games in PC cafes. There's also touristy type stuff you can do, too; there's a LOT of sights to see around Beijing. In general, I'd say it was a lot more fun than london because 1) you don't have to study *all the time*, and 2) you can actually afford to do cool stuff.

You can go over for as long as you want/can secure a visa for.

Reply 2

stewe

10

The year abroad is pretty good, BNU isn't that great in terms of teaching and the material is really quite boring but you get to meet a lot of other people studying Chinese, especially Korean people who are loads of fun and really friendly.

Other than that, yep it's much much cheaper than London, and if you spend wisely your student loan will last you comfortably throughout the year. Most of the people on my course got a bit conned in terms of rent money, and I should tell you that if you are paying any more than 2000 RMB per person you really are being conned, you should probably really be paying about 1,500 but because you're a foreigner it's almost impossible not to get conned!

The only thing really is that SOAS are not very helpful at all when it comes to giving information about the year abroad. We had to wait until well into the second term before we were given a talk about it. And they neglect to tell you very important things like how to organise your visa and that kind of thing when you get to China, so there were a hell of a lot of things to work out ourselves when we got here, which was really difficult when you don't understand the weird ass systems they have going on here and the language barrier is still pretty big.

But once you're going it's great. As long as you do study then everything is piss-easy. Not saying you have to lock yourself away or anything but you will have to spend a fair amount of time learning characters (duh). The exams are a breeze too, my flatmate just got 100% on one of hers.

If you need cash it's very easy to find students who will be willing to pay about £20 an hour for your services! :biggrin:

.

So all in all everything is pretty good. Obviously there are times when it really all gets to you cos things can be very frustrating here, but the pros massively outweigh the cons.

Reply 3

newbie06

My friend failed her first year exam and is unable to progress to 2nd year and go to BNU. She's having to take a year out to retake the modules next May/June. (Seems a c**p system that she has to wait one year to retake the exam modules!) Is it worthwhile for her to go to BNU as an independent student anyway, as she has no other plan for this forced "gap year"? Or would it be a waste of time going there twice?

Reply 4

UserXYZ

She probably should yeah.
Beijing year abroad is a great experience but unfortunately its too easy too forget you're there to study Chinese. Quite a few people slack off way too much on the year abroad and don't mingle enough with Chinese people and end up speaking English 95% of the time. So as well as having fun make sure you actually do do the work so you won't end up with an embarrassing level of Chinese like many second years do.

Thanks UserXYZ!

Just wondering how long you actually spend in China. How many months I mean...what kind of hours are you guys doing out there in class as well?

Reply 7

Le Récamier

Original post by hainan07

Just wondering how long you actually spend in China. How many months I mean...what kind of hours are you guys doing out there in class as well?

Hey,
I'm studying in Beijing right now. We start classes in September, have about one week of holidays in October for Chinese National day or something like that, and then continue until Chinese New year when we have a month off (that's right - no Christmas Holidays or much time for the New Year. It can be enervating, and most of us took a few days off.)
Now we're starting again on the 20th I believe, and we'll go up to June. We have 5 classes, of which we choose 4. They include:
- Classical (mandatory for full BA Chinese students, not for 2 subject degree students) - 1.5 hours a week
- Reading (mandatory) - about 4.5 hours a week
- Newspaper Reading (mandatory) - about 3 hours a week
- Conversation - 3 hours a week
- Listening - 3 hours a week

We do not spend much time in class to be honest. And honestly, the courses at BNU are far from challenging. It's a lot of memorization of words and sentence patterns, and getting accustomed to the Chinese propaganda. The Newspaper Reading course is basically only propaganda. The tests in themselves are mostly grammar based, and do not ask for much reflection or analytical thinking.

I hope this helps.

Reply 8

time4science

Original post by Le Récamier

Hey,
I'm studying in Beijing right now. We start classes in September, have about one week of holidays in October for Chinese National day or something like that, and then continue until Chinese New year when we have a month off (that's right - no Christmas Holidays or much time for the New Year. It can be enervating, and most of us took a few days off.)
Now we're starting again on the 20th I believe, and we'll go up to June. We have 5 classes, of which we choose 4. They include:
- Classical (mandatory for full BA Chinese students, not for 2 subject degree students) - 1.5 hours a week
- Reading (mandatory) - about 4.5 hours a week
- Newspaper Reading (mandatory) - about 3 hours a week
- Conversation - 3 hours a week
- Listening - 3 hours a week

We do not spend much time in class to be honest. And honestly, the courses at BNU are far from challenging. It's a lot of memorization of words and sentence patterns, and getting accustomed to the Chinese propaganda. The Newspaper Reading course is basically only propaganda. The tests in themselves are mostly grammar based, and do not ask for much reflection or analytical thinking.

I hope this helps.

I've heard that you have to pass some sort of exam to be able to go abroad during third year? And that a lot of people failed it last year and so weren't able to go :/

Is this true? And do you know if it's the HSK test that they use?

Reply 9

miniteen

2

Original post by time4science

I've heard that you have to pass some sort of exam to be able to go abroad during third year? And that a lot of people failed it last year and so weren't able to go :/

Is this true? And do you know if it's the HSK test that they use?

That's more the case of the Japanese department. For Chinese, you go abroad in your second year, and all you have to pass are the exams at the end of the year. For Japanese, you also have the entrance examinations to the Japanese universities. And yes, many people fail in the Japanese department. I find the Chinese department a lot easier in that sense. In any case, for both departments if you fail you can always switch to the "... studies courses" that have sort of become the language degrees' safety nets. But afterwards yes, you cannot go abroad.

SOAS Chinese Year Abroad

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