Question for UK BA students (Chinese BA students!)

[thechamp]

Hi,

I have a couple of questions about BAs in the UK, specifically SOAS. Has anyone on these forums started into the 3rd year of a BA here? Or know about it? I have been studying chinese for a year and a half in China, and am making an application to join a UK uni either placing straight into the 3rd year, or as an affiliate student.

More specifically, how much will a third year be expected to know? Looking at the 3rd year courses at SOAS it seems people know between 1500-2000 characters by their third year...can anyone confirm this?

Also, could anyone confirm how much classical chinese is expected at this point? What classical textbooks do undergrads study from? I need to catch up as right now I only know a few Li Bai poems!

Thanks

[jiangping]

Hi there,

I'm sure you'll manage fine with the modern units if you've had a year and a half in China already. 1500-2000 characters sounds about right I think.

You'll definitely need to brush up on a bit of classical, but I wouldn't worry about memorising poems or anything like that. Just read up on some of the common grammar patterns and characters and you'll be ready to go! The classical teachers are SOAS are really awesome.

One other thing is that SOAS likes to use both simplified and traditional characters for texts (though you won't have to write any trad). In practice the modern Chinese units (especially 302) won't use much, if any, traditional. 301 will probably have a couple of texts in traditional, but again it'll almost all be in simplified. I didn't take 303 myself but I heard it had quite a lot of traditional. Classical Chinese will probably be almost entirely in traditional. But this all really depends on which teachers are taking which units.

You can look up more about the courses here if you haven't found it already: http://www.soas.ac.uk/cia/degrees/bachinese/

[thechamp]

Hi!

Thanks loads. The 'Introduction to Classical Chinese' course mentions that it follows 'the textbook' through the classical chinese course. Could you tell me what textbook this is?! Thanks!

I'm also applying for (and Song Laoshi seems to think I can do) the Chinese Literature MA....I already have my BA from down the road at UCL (Eng Lit)...do you know anyone who did the MA? Or what the Chinese MAs are like at SOAS? The Chinese Lit MA looks quite theory heavy....and I've had enough of lit theory!

[jiangping]

They don't use any textbooks for any of the Classical courses (that I know of, anyway!). I think that's actually referring to the textbook they use for modern Chinese in the first year, but it's just worded weirdly. The only exception is for the classical course they take during the year abroad at BNU, though I can't remember the name of that book off the top of my head.

If you want to start brushing up on a bit of classical on your own, then then your best bet by far is to get hold of An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael Fuller and read the first few chapters. Everyone's roughly in the same boat at the start of 3rd year classical, because you generally won't get given much (or any) vocabulary with the texts, so you'll have to go to the library and start using the classical dictionaries there. If you're still in China it might be worth picking up a basic classical dictionary since they're quite cheap. A great one for basic stuff which I found very helpful is the 古汉语常用字字典 by 王力:

http://www.amazon.cn...26769085&sr=8-5

In the first year we also got given some unpublished notes on classical Chinese grammar by Angus Graham (an old sinologist at SOAS) which I found myself referring to right throughout my degree. It would definitely be worth asking if you could get hold of them.

As for the MA in Chinese Lit I have to say I don't know a great deal. I guess it really depends what you want out of the degree, but if you've had enough of literary theory then it might not be the best option:P I was always much more interested in the Classical side of things so I can probably be more help with that.