Most rigorous high school Chinese course?

[missbrokensmile]

In your opinion, what is the hardest/most rigorous Chinese course for high schoolers (not background speakers, but learning Chinese courses)? ie. IB, A-levels, AP, etc...

I was looking through my old high school books, and was just curious at how other countries and their learning Chinese courses rate.

[edelweis]

How to compare?

Perhaps you could give the number of characters students are supposed to know at exam time and the course hours...

For instance, in French schools: (data from afpc.asso.fr and education.gouv.fr)

Students who started studying Chinese in the 6th grade (LV1 = Modern Language 1) are supposed to be able to write 505 characters and read 805 characters at the end of the 12th grade when they take the Baccalauréat.

Students who started in the 8th grade (LV2 = Modern Language 2) are supposed to be able to write 355 characters and read 505 characters.

Students who started in the 10th grade (LV3 = Modern Language 3) are supposed to be able to write 255 characters and read 405 characters.

(if students need to write a character that they have learnt how to read, but are not expected to know how to write, they are supposed to use pinyin).

Class hours are 3 or 4 hours per week for the whole duration of the school year (no off semesters).

[xiaotao]

What are the titles of your old high school books? I heard the advanced Chinese course at some public and private high schools in San Francisco are challenging. They use advanced chinese text books. These are not the IB program.

[Meng Lelan]

In the US, I know that some high schools are using college level texts to teach Chinese, but the pace is slower. For example Volume One of NPCR covers one semester of college Chinese but here it takes one year to cover in a first year high school Chinese course.

[pancake]

I did the International Baccalaureate. Though I have no idea about Chinese, I did take "English A2 HL" as one of my subjects. I found it reasonably challenging, even though I had been learning English for around 10 years by that point.

I know that people who took "English B" (a lower level class) also found it difficult, and have heard that their beginner courses (called 'ab initio') are not easy at all.

So I think I can infer that IB Chinese is probably rigorous enough. There's a reason sites like www.ibsurvival.com exist, it's a demanding programme.

[creamyhorror]

Chinese-wise, I doubt there's any way the IB's standard will match the Singapore O-level Chinese standard (age 16/grade 10), given that students start from grade 1 and often before. But that's natural, given that we're a country with a bilingual educational policy and the exam caters to our population. We're naturally far behind Taiwan and China in the Chinese department, since they're Chinese-as-first-language nations.

Off-topic: One of the best secondary schools in Singapore (ACS, ranked in the top 15 or so) switched to IB recently, and the first batch (graduating 2007) achieved scores that put the school at #3 out of 2,200 schools worldwide. Of the mere 20 candidates internationally who obtained a perfect score, 9 were from that school. Given that the students would likely not have ranked at the very top if they had continued in the traditional A-levels we use here, I gather that IB isn't actually that hard. Not as demanding as the Singapore-Cambridge A-levels, anyway.

edit2: ignore all the above, since the IB session that that school participates in mostly includes students from Singapore, Argentina, Chile and Australia.

Edited March 9, 2010 at 05:04 AM by creamyhorror

[pancake]

creamyhorror: Right, IB Chinese would only be a 2-year course so if starting as a beginner one would presumably not reach a very high standard. But it might be a good foundation for continuing in China later. Personally, I shudder at the thought of having to grapple with Chinese with simultaneously fulfilling the other IB demands.

Off-topic: I saw your edit, but just wanted to make a few more points. UCAS (the agency responsible for university admissions in the UK) seems to think highly of the IB. I also heard some people petitioning for the adoption of IB instead of the traditional A-levels. The argument is that it is less susceptible to the grade inflation which allegedly plagues the A-level system as of late. Also, for the class of 2008, only 74 people out of 31285 reached the highest level of 45 points. So obviously, the vast majority of students find it very difficult (myself included) to do really well.

But from what you have written, I must say that the Singaporean high school system seems impressive. The opposite can be said of the Swedish school system. It used to be that teaching was a respected and well-paid vocation. Now it's mostly a dumping ground for people who just aren't that bright. The result is that, for example, engineering universities must now spend a large part of their first year on remedial maths. It does not bode well for the future of Sweden, as surely it will take us some time to fully "reap the whirlwind" on this one...

[missbrokensmile]

Thanks for the responses They were very interesting. It's always interesting to hear about other countries and their education system XD

Though, the Singapore O-levels sound really impressive. I have met a few people from Singapore and their English is as fluent as their Chinese, and I always wondered why, so I guess I know!

Oh, and during high school, I used the Chinese Made Easy series (http://www.jointpublishing.com/cheasy/)... The textbooks were full of colour XD I quite liked them, though now that I look at them, I kind of can't believe I found it so hard....

[edelweis]

Here is a French Baccalauréat (end of high school exam, 12th grade) sample paper.

L series, LV1

The L series is for students who specialise in Litterature, Languages and Arts. LV1 means they started to study Chinese in the 6th grade. So basically this is the "hardest" possible written Chinese language exam in the French Baccalauréat.

The test duration is 3h. Dictionaries and electronic devices are not allowed. Students can write either simplified or traditional characters.

Here are the instructions from page 4:

1. Text understanding (6 points out of 20)

(Read the text and) answer the following questions (4 questions in Chinese)

2. Personal expression (8 points)

There are two essay subjects in Chinese. Both must be answered (4 points each), about 200 characters for each essay.

3. Translation (6 points)

Translate the 1st and 2nd paragraphs (into French).

There is no audio component in this test.

However students can optionally pass a 20 minute oral test in which they are supposed to read part of a prepared test (selected by the examiner in a teacher-approved list of about 20 text) and discuss it with the examiner.

(please note, the current govt is making change in 2ndary education. Not necessarily for the better.)

[Hofmann]

Well, having experienced IB French, I don't think IB Mandarin could be the most rigorous if it is comparable to IB French.

[daofeishi]

For my IB Arabic ab initio, I had to learn about 3000 words and reached a pretty high level in terms of grammatical complexity. It's easily one of the most demanding language courses I've taken, and I've been through language courses in 4 different languages in 4 different countries. (Well, at least when taken at the same time as 6 other, equally demanding courses.) I'm not sure how it compares to Chinese, but I would say the IB does a good job of getting people up to speed, no matter what course. The diploma program is very rigorous. Our further maths syllabus included group theory, series and differential equations and discrete math, things not ordinarily seen in European and American syllabi at least. If you were looking for a whole new high school, trying to get into an international IB school in China would be a good choice