Is a course syllabus an alien concept in Chinese education?

[jiacheng]

One thing that I have found exceedingly annoying with my academic experience in China is that not one teacher that I have encountered has ever provided a course syllabus. I personally like to start previewing the vocabulary for a lesson in Pleco a couple of weeks before we actually go over that lesson in class. By the time class comes, I am able to get much more out of the class discussion, but without it, I am always having ask the teacher what we will be studying next. Maybe I was spoiled back at college in the States, but every teacher that I recall provided a syllabus. It may have even been a requirement.

Of those of you who have been in school in China, did you get a syllabus? Was it just slackness on the part of teachers at my school? or is this pretty much universal in China?

[lukoktonos]

I've only taken a couple of Chinese classes and joined late, but I don't think the class had a syllabus.

I gave my first semester of students a syllabus and they were confused, but they were also freshmen students in college.

That being said, I don't think they're used here. My school didn't even know when the final exams were to be scheduled until about a week before the exams.

[Meng Lelan]

Now that I think of it, I never had a syllabus the whole time I ever was in China as a student. I guess because I would get a textbook, and we would do a chapter a week, so that was the "syllabus".

[Daan]

I've never seen one at NTNU in Taiwan either, both in Mandarin courses and in the linguistics department. I think the main problem with not using a syllabus is that things will start getting slower and slower very quickly, until you end up reading like, one text per week, whereas the idea behind the textbook was that students should read one text per day. Without a syllabus, there's nothing to set the pace. I was generally quite happy with my teachers, but the slowing down of the pace as the term progressed really bothered me.

[WestTexas]

I've worked at 2 different Chinese colleges and have never given out a syllabus.