does it look bad for an ethnic Chinese to be taking Chinese 101?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I mean, I already completed the highest French course the spring semester of first year...I didn't feel like doing lit so I didn't take any upper division French courses (400 level +). I also have French phonetics credit.</p>

<p>I've had this "rediscovering my cultural heritage" phase recently and I could never speak Mandarin, but does this look bad to med schools, grad schools, Teach for America, etc. who might skip the FREN 3340 and the test-based French exemption (I took it even though I was already exempted from language requirements) at the top and bottom of my transcript and just concentrate on the fact that I'm a Chinese taking Chinese 101? </p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

2

<p>I’m ethnic chinese and can say hello in chinese and that’s about it. I can’t read, write or understand the spoken version. I’m sure that there are tons of ethnic chinese that don’t know chinese. BTW, when I’m in an asian area, I just get my wife or my kids to read or translate for me.</p>

<p>I don’t think that you have a problem.</p>

3

<p>Well I took a Swedish class once and I’m part Swedish, do you think they would care? </p>

<p>No, of course not. Med and Grad schools primarily look at GPA, MCAT/GRE, grades in your major, research, etc. They probably won’t care about your foreign language classes at all, to be honest. Although Chinese is a difficult language so it might seem impressive, I don’t know. </p>

<p>If you were an International student from China it would be different, but I’m assuming most Chinese-American college students don’t read, write or speak Mandarin/Cantonese. It seems mostly 1st and 2nd gen Americans are raised bilingual with their language of ancestry, after 3rd generation it’s more common for them to be just English-speakers.</p>

4

<p>Yes, definitely.</p>

5

<p>I’m a 1.5 gen’er from Singapore…</p>

<p>what I’m saying is that does it look to schools that I’m taking an “easy class”?</p>

6

<p>Yes it does.</p>

7

<p>No it doesn’t. Just because you come from a cultural background that is not Caucasian does not mean you aren’t allowed to learn the language of your heritage. While some idiots might look down on you, grad school and employers certainly won’t. It’s not like they really pay attention to the race checklist and then match up your courses and say - wait a minute, if this person is ethnically Asian, shouldn’t they already know the Chinese language? No. False assumption. Seriously, don’t worry about it.</p>

8

<p>Even if someone were to scrutinize (highly doubtful I think), how would they know if you spoke Hokkien, Cantonese or Mandarin beforehand?</p>

9

<p>Well Abercrombie and Fitch discriminates against Asians, so I don’t know how it is for other companies or employers…I just get the feeling that the attitude doesn’t change much at the top.</p>

10

<p>If you have a stereotypically Chinese sounding name then yes if not then no.</p>

11

<p>I have Riemann as a middle name, though I’m trying to change my first name to Evariste-Galois.</p>