<p>Does anyone know any universities with a good (Mandarin) Chinese program? I've heard good things about Middlebury (of course), JHU, and UMaryland-College Park. Any other suggestions?</p>
<p>Yale, Princeton, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio State, Columbia, Cornell, Washington U, U Washington, Harvard, Wisconsin, Oregon, Penn, Stanford, USC, Berkeley, UCLA, Trinity U (TX), to name but a few</p>
<p>Among LACs, Hamilton, Amherst, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Furman, to name a few more</p>
<p>I did my own research on this last year and ended up applying to Ohio State University, UW-Madison, Miami University, Middlebury, Beloit, Hamilton, Vassar, and Grinnell. I ended up at Grinnell and I’m definitely happy with the quality of the Chinese program here.</p>
<p>Thanks so much to you both! Exactly what I was looking for. Madison’s definitely up there on my list, especially because of the in-state tuition for me.</p>
<p>I am wondering if there is such thing as at least two years overseas exchange program for Chinese study. I am not sure how effective of a Chinese program with most of it taught in USA.</p>
<p>^You can study a year abroad and then go back for more immersion after graduation. Besides, it’s not like being in China is going to help you memorize hanzi any faster. Even if you see them all over, you can’t learn hanzi through immersion. Learn all those stateside if you can and then work on your oral and aural skills, composition, and comprehension when you’re actually in the country.</p>
<p>^^ take my DW for example, she was an English major from “China”, after 30 years being in the USA, she still could not grasp all English connotations. Conversely, I couldn’t imagine how effective an American study Chinese in USA with so little overseas experiences will be.</p>
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<p>The summer school immersion at Middlebury is very effective. Immediately after the beginner’s course, a good student is ready to benefit from overseas immersion. Consider doing a Middlebury summer term, followed by a year abroad, then another summer term at Middlebury (by then at level 3 or 4). That should give you something close to the benefit of a 2 year exchange. Expenses can be offset by earnings from English teaching in Taiwan (a great way to make Chinese friends.)</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the natural foundation of language learning is speaking. The focus at the beginner’s level should be on accurate pronunciation and listening comprehension. This is really critical for Chinese. If you don’t get the tone system down in that first year, you may never learn to speak Chinese properly. If you do learn to speak fluently, with good pronunciation (entirely possible within a 1-year immersion program), you will get in the habit of associating every hanzi with a precisely correct sound. This is a broader foundation for literacy than if you forever recognize characters only as abstract symbols (which is how a couple generations of Americans approached the language).</p>
<p>I went to the syllabus of Middlebury College and here is a course description of Chinese Classic II(perhaps the highest level they offered):
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<p>The classics I and II is a one year program in Middlebury, while in Chinese Native HS, these equivalent subjects have been taught for more than 4 or 5 years. Nevermind a Chinese Major in Chinese college has to go through. Obviously, there is no comparison between a non-native speaking student from a native Chinese. But, I believe you can get a lot of immersion in the USA by join the Chinese community in a large city like NY or SF. For example, if you are religious, you can join a church group and start to mingle with the natives there and ultimately, if you can understand the preaching or even do the preaching you’ve learned the language well. This can be applied to any language programs, not only in Chinese.</p>
<p>I can’t see to study a language in the boondocks without daily interaction with native speakers.</p>
<p>Check out the FALCON program at Cornell.
[-</a> Home](<a href=“http://lrc.cornell.edu/falcon/Home]-”>http://lrc.cornell.edu/falcon/Home)</p>
<p>Once you’ve had some Chinese, the gold standard for language programs is IUP in Beijing. [Inter-University</a> Program for Chinese Language Studies, UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://ieas.berkeley.edu/iup/]Inter-University”>IUP - CHINESE CENTER at TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY)</p>