<p>I am set to begin at Emory this Fall as a prospective Comparative Literature major. I have a fascination and predisposition for learning languages, and would like to pursue at least two while there.
My current career goals are to pursue law or finance, which will be determined after a few economics courses. </p>
<p>I hope to study French as one of the two languages no matter what, but my problem is in that I do not know what I should do for the second, or, indeed, even if I should attempt a second. A great part of me would like to study Chinese, but I do not know if it would be worth it -what degree of proficiency could a college student expect from four years of Chinese? Would it be enough of a foundation that being abroad would get someone near the European C1 level? </p>
<p>I am conflicted, and am just hoping for some discussion on this issue. As parents, what would you advice your child to do?</p>
<p>It’s always easier if you’ve had at least some exposure before college. Being able to spend some time immersed in the language is immensely helpful. I can tell you that my college boyfriend started Chinese in college and spent his junior year abroad in Taiwan. He came back pretty nearly fluent and ended up marrying a woman he met that year. </p>
<p>My son spent last year in Jordan, the first half of the year in an immersion program with a language pledge that he felt was very valuable and the second half in a different program which he said he probably went somewhat backwards in terms of his ability to speak Arabic. I was impressed with ability to make small talk when we visited him in December. Arabic presents special issues because not only do you learn a new alphabet, but you have to learn both the Modern Standard Arabic that no one speaks, but is used on TV and in newspapers and the colloquial Arabic of whatever country you are in. These dialects can vary quite a bit from each other and from standard Arabic. BTW he also attended a summer program in Jordan after Freshman year which helped keep him from flunking Arabic as a sophomore, but in no way was enough for fluency.</p>
<p>Anyway, a lot of how fluent you become will depend on your natural facility for languages. For me (no natural ability) it took about 6 months of immersion - where I spoke no English whatsoever to achieve that level (and that’s after several years of study of the language first). How’s your ear? I took a semester of Chinese when I lived in Germany. I could read about 200 characters and say “The red car is bigger than the blue car” by the end of it, but I had a really, really hard time producing and hearing the different tones. For that reason I advised my younger son not to take Chinese. Of course, it turns out Arabic has sounds that it may be even harder for a western ear to hear!</p>
<p>My son had 8 years of Japanese through his junior year in HS. He took Chinese (Mandarin) in college. He got a dual degree in 2011 with one in mathematical economics. He has worked for 6 months in Taiwan. He has traveled throughout Malaysia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia since he graduated. He just took the June LSAT. </p>
<p>According to him Chinese is not something that comes quickly. He also noted that English is spoken in almost every country within business/finance. </p>
<p>If you love languages, why not? But, on a cost-benefit basis I suggest you keep trying to get more input.</p>
<p>Our kids found Mandarin VERY difficult. S said it was harder than all 14 of his APs put together and D found German MUCH easier than Mandarin. The kids had excellent pronunciation, but found it just very tough since it involves so much memorization–the written caligraphy, the romanization, and the tones for pronunciation. Of course, YMMV. My niece has taken to it and likes French and Mandarin.</p>
<p>German is actually the “other” language currently competing with Mandarin -I’m an opera fiend and have a Wagner-addiction, so it’d be more of a “for pleasure” thing, as I do not know that knowing German (or French, for that matter) give much of a leg-up, especially with English being the lingua franca of sorts.
I’ve been flip-flopping so much with potential schedules, and would really like to feel more confident about a decision.</p>
<p>EDIT: With my musical background, I have a pretty good ear for pitch/tone. Whether that would translate into the ability to function in a practical conversation is an entirely different story, though!</p>
<p>I went on craigslist and there was a $15 hour Mandarin tutor in Pensacola. Take a look and you might see if he would discuss it with you if you paid for an hour.</p>
<p>My son reached C1 (HSK5) after 1 year of immersion and Chinese for foreigners instruction despite very little previous background (3 week summer class). That said, he was very driven and had a Chinese host family.</p>
<p>I studied little bits of German, French, Spanish during middle and high school, reaching no level of comfort in those languages. The constant verb conjugations, feminine and masculine…blablabla required drove me insane. On the other hand, I studied Chinese for one yr in college, took a 3 wk summer course and then went abroad for a yr to China. Chinese was actually very easy for me to pick up - the spoken much more so than the written but I could get around really easily in China and was easily understood by Chinese. People go on about how complex the characters are, how difficult it is to “get” 4 tones but so much of the grammar is EASY - for example to make a verb past tense - add “le” to the end of a sentence. Now that was something I could do!!</p>
<p>In the end how easy or hard it is for you will depend on how much you enjoy it and how into it you are. If it interests you, do it.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus, to be quite honest, utility is not EVERYTHING to me. For instance, I am one of the most advanced students in reading and writing in Spanish at my high school, but I personally don’t have an interest to continue the language.
Chinese, on the other hand, intrigues me -but, at the same time, so does German. It just kind of comes back to is the potential additional effort/struggle worth it. </p>
<p>The concept of tone personally really excites me, and I think I would enjoy it.</p>
<p>Just to play devil’s advocate - if you learn two new languages in college, approximately half of your clases will be language learning courses. Between that and the requirements for your major, you won’t have room for much else. Since college is a time to explore subjects you might not otherwise encounter, you might want to confine yourself to one new language in college and study a second one later. (Another potential problem is that if you learn two new languages at the same time, it’s much easier to mix them up. )</p>
<p>BTW the State Department funds study abroad for some languages, including Mandarin, Russian, and Arabic.</p>
<p>One thing also to consider is how available the various languages are outside of four year schools. Courses in some common languages are widely available at community colleges, so you may be able to take them during summers or after graduation, saving schedule space at your four year school for other courses (perhaps including less common languages).</p>
<p>You could take a couple of month Mandarin immersion program in summer to see if the language suits you, and to have a base for further study during your regular academic year.</p>
<p>UCB, the only time Emory accepts credits from non Emory courses is during freshman year summer, on study abroad programs, and for transfers. Courses in the former two must be preapproved if a student hopes to get credit. </p>
<p>Pruneface, I know German minors and Chinese minors at Emory and though German is by no means easy, students seem to have a much easier time than do the ones studying Chinese. This is mostly due to how similar German is to English, both alphabetically and grammatically. There are however far more opportunities to practice Chinese on Emory’s campus as many of the internationals (most of whom hail from either China or South Korea) delight in helping domestic students with their Chinese.</p>
<p>I should note that pursing a business degree with two languages will be nearly impossible owing to Goizueta’s prerequisites, scheduling conflicts, and differences in the study abroad philosophy of the general College versus Goizueta.</p>
<p>However, if the student simply wants to learn the language, but does not care about getting transfer credit, then taking the courses at any time anywhere could be an option for courses in commonly offered languages.</p>
<p>I can only speak for myself. I’m of Chinese descent so prior to college, I had about 8 years of Saturday morning Chinese school. I ended up taking Intensive Chinese I during my freshman year in college to satisfy the foreign language requirement because it was easier for me than continuing high school French. There was one student who just did not do very well in that class - he would move his head in the direction of the tones.</p>
<p>Fastforward four years. I’m at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai and I heard this very distinctive voice speaking Chinese fluently. It was that not very good student from freshman year! So, I would say any student, through hard work, can become very fluent (he also could read and write) from four years in college.</p>
<p>I suppose tangible benefits must also be considered -are Chinese speakers valued in the finance or business world?
As someone said before, most businesspeople use English as their international language, but I would think there must be some boost given to fluent speakers -does this bear with anyone else’s experience?</p>
<p>That boyfriend of mine ended up working in an International Law firm based in Hong Kong. Even if you don’t need it for work, I think the connections you make by being able to converse in the local language makes a huge difference. That at least was my experience living in Germany for five years. (I spoke German at my job 100% of the time, but dh as a scientist could theoretically have conducted all lab business in English.)</p>
<p>Learn as many languages as you can. Americans tend to have an illogical fear of learning new languages which sets them back, I think, when they try. There’s no harm in trying–if it’s too hard for you or you can’t fit it into your schedule, you’ll discontinue it. Seriously, it’s not a marriage proposal. Don’t overthink it.</p>
<p>Just for the record, Chinese is hard but not <em>that</em> hard if you’re motivated.</p>
<p>By the way, saying, “Everyone in finance speaks English anyway,” is both wrong and short-sighted. One, not everyone does and the Asian financial markets are notoriously frustrating to navigate for Western workers–the corporate culture in China is completely different from what Europeans and Americans are used to, and they get screwed over again and again because of their gullibility and the cultural barriers reinforced by the lack of effective communication. Being able to speak Chinese would make a lot of people’s lives and business dealings far easier if they didn’t approach their work with the colonialist attitude espoused in this thread.</p>
<p>Secondly, even if you don’t need to use Chinese at your work, living in China without learning the language would limit your social life and cultural exposure to an untold degree. Sure, there would be other American/British ex-pats who haven’t bothered to learn the language of the country they’re living in, and you’d spend every waking hour in their company, hopping from ex-pat bar to ex-pat bar in some sort of impenetrable English-speaking, alcohol-soaked bubble and *****ing about how much you dislike the locals all the while. That’s the life thousands of Westerners living in China lead, and, honestly, it’s not great.</p>
<p>Alternatively, you can go there armed with an open mind and some basic language skills and meet people and visit places you’d never meet/see anywhere else in the world.</p>
<p>Learning a language is always a good idea and you can always put it to good use. The mentality that everyone in the world speaks English anyway so you might as well not bother is based on a false assumption and will close many doors for you before you’ve even realized they exist.</p>
<p>I disagree. It’s not particularly illogical to not want to spend a lot of time on foreign language learning if you are the native speaker of the hegemonic world language (“lingua franca”) of the age and have less practical need to learn a foreign language than citizens of non-English speaking countries. Therefore, when you go abroad and try to “immerse” yourself in a non-English speaking environment, you find that everyone else wants to practice their English on you. There are structural reasons why Americans, British, Australian etc. are among the least likely to speak another language. They also live in a vast global popular culture that is mostly English speaking. I’m sure I’d find it easier to learn Mandarin if most of the films I saw and most of the songs on the radio I heard were in it.</p>
<p>I think that learning foreign languages is a fine, fine thing and the mark of an educated person, but I don’t think it’s some unique cultural failure on the part of Americans that they just tend not to do it. We all tend not to do things we don’t have to do unless we like them and are interested in them. The best non-Anglo speakers of English are citizens from countries where the language is only spoken by a few million: the Netherlands, Sweden etc. It’s not because these people are super bright compared to the doltish British and Americans. It’s because it is much more in their interest to learn the lingua franca of their day as a window on the world. So they do it.</p>
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<p>Which attitudes were those? I’m sure it would be great if we all spoke 4 or 5 languages, but the reality is that time and energy are limited, and people study the language that proves most useful to them per their ambitions. What’s colonialist about that?</p>