<p>Firstly, I am going to write this exam, and am fairly confident that I will get a 5, because I immigrated after finishing grade two (eight years old), am still fluent, and can read both simplified and traditional well. BUT. I am worried about the writing, as should everyone who is thinking of writing it and who had not finished what should be considered elementary school Chinese writing.</p>
<p>Frankly, I don't think it's a good idea to write the AP Chinese if you don't have at least some semblance of a background in the language (by which I mean Mandarin or putonghua, the official language of PRoC) and/or culture. It's not like one of the Romance languages or even German, where at least the vocabulary or the grammar partially resembles that of English. And then, it's extremely difficult to learn.</p>
<p>Firstly, do not assume that the exam will be a piece of cake for all native speakers. Learning Chinese is not like learning how to ride a bicycle; even adults who have known the language for all their lives may get rather "rusty" and forget what a certain character or phrase means. The best way to get ahead in Chinese is to keep using it, over and over again, preferably in an environment where you have no choice but to use only Chinese.</p>
<p>Secondly, Chinese writing is going to be a problem for most non-native learners and indeed, many native speakers who'd emigrated away from China at a young age as well. The problem is that while linguistic skills and to a certain extent, reading skills, are comparatively easy to preserve, writing is not. And according to CB, the exam is going to occur completely on a computer -- speak into the computer's microphone, listen via its headphones, read the passages from its screen, and type using either pinyin or zhouyin on the keyboard. This means that fortunately, you do not have to be able to write every Chinese character that you need to use in a given essay, but you have to know a). how to "spell" it using one of the two given methods, and b). when given a list of characters all with the same pronunciation, know which one is the one you need.</p>
<p>Thirdly, it's a completely different concept from most, if not all, Western languages. And honestly? For most of grade one in China, kids are learning pinyin -- the characters don't even start until later. </p>
<p>Fourthly, there is going to be a really drastic curve and a 5 will actually probably take very solid knowledge that is beyond the level of what the SAT Subject Test might suggest, given the number of Chinese students who will probably take this exam.</p>