<p>How many years of Chinese does a non-native speaker need? What about a year at the college level??</p>
<p>Personally, i would say that a non-native speaker would need 3 or 4 years minimum to prepare for the test.</p>
<p>I believe that the chinese test is meant to test a 4th semester college chinese level (where as french and spanish test 6th semester i believe). and this shows. ive taken both the chinese and the spanish test, and relative to the mastery that youre required to have in each language, chinese is an absolute joke. </p>
<p>this does not mean, however, that chinese would be easier to learn (if youre trying to get to ap level) by any means, for obvious reasons. so, id say mainly that for most people youd be looking at the same time frame that you would have for another ap language test (which is typically 3 or 4 years). if you go to a school that offers chinese as a language, then take that and go through your school’s normal progression. if not, then i would suggest putting chinese off (at least in terms of learning it rigorously) until you reach college.</p>
<p>if youre a native speaker like me though, and you dont know how to read or write (i didnt for the longest time in my life, so i can relate), then its a lot easier. id say that with adequate preparation, if you can speak it well enough, you can learn enough characters to get a 5 easily within about 8 or 9 months. it would, however, lots of memorization, which for some people could be harder and for some people easier. regardless, once you have things like sentence structure down it becomes a lot easier.</p>