<p>I just saw that the chinese placement test is a written test, consisting of: " (1) translation of designated passages from English into Chinese for all the levels, and (2) an essay of 300-400 characters based on a provided article, which is only required for the third-year and higher levels.". That sounds really hard for someone who can barely write. Is it really that hard?</p>
<p>if you can barely write, you'll definitely have trouble with the essay.</p>
<p>maguo, my soph friend can also barely write, and she wrote the whole essay in pinyin, but was placed into 304 on the heritage track</p>
<p>lol i think i'm going to try that too (even though you aren't allowed to use pinyin . . .)</p>
<p>Is Pinyin like Japanese Romanji where everything is romanized? How many characters do you know so far? In two semesters of Japanese we learned the 46 hiragana, the 46 katakana, and 90 kanji. I don't think I could do well with writing in Chinese. I have a hard time just memorizing the strokes for the kanji.</p>
<p>So basically, if you can only speak, you're in Chinese 101?</p>
<p>I can only speak . . . and from my soph friend told me she can only speak and she got placed into 304 . . .</p>
<p>Are you trying to place out of it? I know I'll get a max of 8 credits for doing well on the test. Anyone else signing up to take the test? Is it in October? I haven't studied Chinese in 6 years, hopefully I won't fail. </p>
<p>Also 90 kanji aren't nearly enough. You need to know at least 300 to survive in China (or Japan I guess?). Pinyin or romaji is lame. The native speakers don't even use it.</p>
<p>My Japanese teacher from high school was planning on eliminating the use of romanji this year. Romanji totally sucks. It totally hurts pronunciation for English speakers. As far as kanji, give me a break, I've only studied it a year. I plan to take a lot more in college.</p>
<p>kmatzen, you're planning to take more Japanese, right? Which level? I've taken only two years of Japanese back in HS but know a bunch of kanji because I had six years of Chinese before. I'm worried that I'm too old to return to Japanese now.</p>
<p>Mr100%, how old are you? I took two semesters of Japanese at a local college and they transfered as ASIANLAN 125/126. I couldn't get into 225 this semester since they didn't transfer before the class closed. So, I either have to wait until next year for 225, or take 126 next semester to review. I don't want to wait a whole year in between courses.</p>
<p>Is Ann Arbor a popular site for Japanese tourists? I got to AA a day early with my parents and am staying at a Hampton Inn. They have not one, but two channels in Japanese and some of the newspapers are in Japanese. The odd thing is that is the only foreign language displayed.</p>
<p>It would be cool if we could either form a Japanese study group or join an existing one.</p>
<p>kmatzen, I'm 18, gonna be a freshman at CoE this Fall. I was gonna dual enroll in Japanese last year but it didn't fit into my schedule. I might start all over again with Japanese next semester since I've forgotten pretty much everything. </p>
<p>I think the reason that Japanese is popular in Ann Arbor is because of Toyota's tech center. Also Ann Arbor has a fairly large Asian population compared to rest of Michigan. </p>
<p>Forming a study group sounds cool. By the way, are you Japanese or Chinese descent by any chance?</p>
<p>Not of any asian descent at all. I'm a combo of Danish, French Canadian, Irish, German, Bohemian, and some other European nationalities.</p>
<p>I know it's late but I wanna switch to Japanese 1 (ASIANLAN 125) from a HU class. All the sections are closed and they don't offer the class in winter. Am I pretty much screwed now? Is there a waitlist or something? I'm in Engineering so I don't know who to ask about LSA classes. Please enlighten this poor little freshman.</p>