Chinese Language + Lit bachelors degree question

[elliotts4]

Hello,

First post from a forum lurker. I did a search but I guess I didn't search well enough!

Anyway this might be a silly question but I wanted to know if most chinese language degrees require you to learn from scratch without having any prior knowledge of the language or if you're required to have a basic knowledge of the language beforehand. I don't know any chinese right now except a few words so having no experience with it it'd be easier to find one without such requirements. I'm guessing it might depend on which university you choose but if I was certain I wouldn't ask

Thanks.

[chinadude2006]

From my understanding if you are planning on doing a uni degree at a Chinese university, you need to get a minimum of HSK 6.

[Artem]

Unless you are studying Chinese, then you can start at nothing and work up.

[elliotts4]

I want to study the chinese language itself. one university told me i can start from scratch knowing nothing or take a language course and jump onto a degree. any other people experience anything like this?

[chinadude2006]

What they meant from starting from scratch is you would first need to enrol in their Chinese language program and study the language itself for a year or so until your language ability is good enough to enter the degree program.

[zhouhaochen]

if you take a university degree that is conducted in Chinese, it will have a minimum HSK requirement (6-8 depending on the subject). You can either learn that at that university first or wherever you choose.

To get up to that level will take you at least one year of intensive study I would guess.

It would be interesting which of the two "rival" HSKs they would use now for admission criteria. I guess the Hanban one, but not sure.

[zhouhaochen]

ah, I think there was a misunderstanding. I was under the impression that you wanted to study a degree in China, but when I read your post again, it more sounded like you want to study Chinese somewhere else? Is this correct? Or not? Please clarify what exactely we are talking about...

[Daan]

If you're planning to pursue a bachelor's degree in Chinese Studies in a Western country, you would generally not need any prior knowledge of Chinese. However, if you want to study in China, you have two choices: either you enrol in a language course aimed at foreigners, or you enrol in a degree programme intended for native speakers of Chinese. In the latter case, you would need a pretty good command of Chinese (at least HSK 6), which you could of course acquire by taking aforementioned language courses. So yes, you would have to provide some more details

[elliotts4]

Hi thanks for your replies. What I want to do is actually take a degree in China studying Chinese language. Not studying any other subject but the language itself in China as a degree.

Thanks.

[zhouhaochen]

I had friends at BLCU who studied Chinese as a BSc there. It was a three year program and they started from zero. Sounds like that would suit your needs. Check their website.

[blandmc]

Hi elliotts4.

Kind of a bit off the topic for you, but a but of advice I wish I had had when I got my bachelor's degree.

I got a degree in East Asian Languages about 15 years ago. I concentrated on Japanese and only took one Mandarin course and one linguistics survey course on several asian languages... funnily enough somehow my degree was in EAL and not in Japanese.

Anyway... depending on what you want to do when once you graduate, you may want to also study something else. In other words, unless you want to become a teacher of Chinese, I would highly recommend that you double-major, or at least minor in a pratical discipline that translates into a field in which you would like to work in the future.

I did not do so as I was initially interested in either teaching (requires 7-10 years of university study in Masters and Ph.D programs during which time you are generally pretty poor) but my professors all discouraged me from doing so, or in translaton/interpretation. As it turns out, translation and interpretation generally require a great deal of domain knowledge, as well as language knowledge.

In any case... the one thing I kept running up against when I looked for jobs was the attitude of "Great, you are fluent in Japanese... but what else do you know? What do you know about our business? How are you qualified to work here?"

Really I have found that in the corporate world the language skills you have are viewed as secondary or lower compared to the functional domain knowledge they expect you to have from a technical degree or business degree.

I since went back and got several technical certification since I worked in technology companies and that helped a little, but is still not as good as having an engineering degree on my resume. I also since went back and got an MBA in International Business and that helps, as well.

Looking back, it would have been much less painless for me to have double-majored... even despite my complete and utter lack of interest in subjects outside the study of language... which is my true passion.

I doubt I could go back and convince my former self to do this... so likely not much luck in conving you, I know... but I thought I would offer my unsolicited advice anyway. Certainly best of luck in your studies either way!

[zhouhaochen]

I think that is some very good advice from Blandmc. Of course I do not want to discourage anyone from studying Chinese only, which I personally think is one of the most fascinating things you can do on this planet and has become the passion of my life.

However, when companies look for people, fluency in how many ever languages will at best be a strong support argument for your application. It will not get you the job itself. Being fluent Chinese is a very good way to give your CV the extra spice needed to get a job or might even be a requirement for certain jobs (more and more these days), but you need knowledge relevant to the job itself. So unless you want to do translation or teaching, I think a double degree would be a good idea. Same goes for acquiring work experience while studying (internships etc.).