Fudan books and classes

[fritz]

Hi!

I wrote a similar post in another thread but didn't get any replies. Does anyone know which books they use at the higher levels of Fudan's short-term mandarin program?

Also, does anyone know what is needed to qualify for the jingji or wenhua classes?

Many thanks!

[Xiwang]

Hi Fritz:

Sorry that I did not respond to your earlier post. I sometimes don't remember to follow up on reading a thread if it has fallen off of the first page of chinese-forums.com..

Regarding the textbooks, attached is a photograph taken in November 2009 of the textbook list for all levels in the Fudan University language program. Typically, students will advance by one level midway through the semester. This photo was taken at that midpoint. (If you have trouble reading the photo after enlarging it, please let me know. The original picture is 3.55 megabytes in size so I can send that to you by email if you need it.)

This list may not include all of the available supplemental materials so you can check the publishers' websites and order those materials if you wish. For example, a few books have supporting audio CDs or a teacher's manual containing the tingli transcripts. It all depends on what methodology works best for you in studying. (The bookstore that handles the sales for Fudan seems to have a very incomplete stock so I wound up just ordering a couple of items directly from the publisher in Beijing.)

Jingji and wenhua classes are not offered through the International Cultural Exchange School program that teaches Chinese to foreign students. If you want to enroll in a regular class at Fudan, you will need to contact the relevant department to find out its requirements.

A friend of mine who has a high level of spoken Chinese arranged in January to take classes in the economics department (I think) next semester. Apparently, it was not a pleasant process since she was in a pretty bad mood about it for a few weeks. Nonetheless, she eventually got it done. Unfortunately, she is traveling through Thailand at the moment so I won't be able to follow up with her for more details right now.

Good luck! See you in a few weeks.

Edited February 12, 2010 at 11:16 AM by Xiwang

[yaritai]

A few negative experiences based on feedback I have heard from others.

Maybe you should reconsider Fudan.

Either get a private tutor to go through the books.

Or another university.

Or Beijing. Honestly Beijing is a pretty good environment to study PutongHua

[ruirui87]

The books we used were 发展汉语 for intermediate. Down side about this is that for some reason these books dont come with cd's (except for the 精读　ones which was a major letdown. I would have hoped that the spoken ones would have had them :angry:

And yeh as everyone says, Fudan isnt a great uni to study chinese.... PM me if you want the full story as I just finished a semester there and am looking to go somewhere else for september

[anonymoose]

Why don't you post the details here for the benefit of everybody?

[ruirui87]

@ anonymoose : Fine. From my experience (level E) it seemed that most people who went to fudan went to party and smoke pot rather than focus on learning mandarin and it was unforunate that they would bring this attitude into the classroom and ruin the learning environment for everyone. Everyone would speak english in class or try to practice their english with you and would try to engage the teacher in what would be considered here as 'controversial topics' to create havoc in the classroom. Spoken chinese class was a waste of time as we did very little conversational work and the teacher spent most of the time chatting up the americans in my class (apparently she is moving to the US next semester??). Also finding a language partner can be quite difficult at fudan for two reasons 1) most fudan students are insanely busy with their coursework 2) Most of them "think" their english is fantastic and therefore feel that they dont need to do an exchange with you. Oh yeh and dont forget the admin ladys! They only seem to act nice when youre about hand over money otherwise they are really horrible and dont offer much help at all..Oh and if youre not hanging with the potheads youre hanging with the christians, who spend alot of time badmouthing china which makes me wonder what they are doing here in the firstplace...

[anonymoose]

ruirui87

I'm sorry you found your time at Fudan so unsatisfying. As for the issues you mentioned which are specific to Fudan, I can't comment, but what I would say is that the pot-smoking partying attitude is fairly typical of China newbies. As your Chinese level improves and you move into more advanced classes, I think you'll find fewer people like this. I haven't been in a language programme at Fudan, but I did attend Jiaotong Uni for a while and it did seem as though the beginner level students fit your description to some extent, but my classmates in the advanced classes were definitely not like this at all, or at least very few were.

And as for language exchange, I think you could try advertising on enjoyshanghai.com. The majority of the adverts there seem to be scams or have dubious agendas, but if you are looking for a genuine language exchange, then I think you should be able to find one.