This was one of my favorite classes I've taken so far. There is a fair amount of work, but the material was fairly easy, and class was enjoyable to go to. If you attend xu laoshi's class, study on your own, and attend office hours, you should do well.

Content is almost entirely based around the Integrated Chinese textbooks. Beginning 2 finishes up the last few lessons of Book 1, and works through Lesson 14 of Book 2. The general structure is as follows: -Review each new lesson's vocabulary. Xu laoshi often will reduce the number of words you have to know, as well. -Read through the lesson's dialogue itself (each lesson has 2 dialogues, which are basically written conversations between the textbook's characters) -Couple days after this, you will have a quiz consisting of (likely) 5 of the vocab words you learned -Soon after, the corresponding workbook section will be due After this is repeated for a few lessons, there will be a multi-part test to review what you've learned. This consists of: -A listening section, in which you listen t...read more

Xu laoshi is an ideal professor for this class. She is enthusiastic about the course material, as well as understanding. If you are diligent in learning the material, you will likely find the class to be a fun experience. For comparison, I took ai laoshi for Beginning 1, and although she was knowledgeable, she was much less engaging than xu laoshi for me personally.

The course may focus mostly on reading and writing, but if your goal is to pursue fluency, put your most effort into listening. Good listening skills/ability to mimic the sounds you hear will make your speaking much easier and accurate. If you don't do this early on, you risk building bad habits in tones and pronunciation, which are a nightmare to try and unlearn later down the line. When it comes to reading: do not be reliant on Pinyin. Your goal should be to see a character, word or phrase and know its pronunciation instinctively. Repetition is the main way to do this. You can try and learn individual characters with flashcards or something, but it's probably best to learn them in the context of full phrases or sentences. And in regards to writing: my advice is, don't wear yourself out...read more

Great class! The workload is heavy since its a 5-credit language course. If you want to continue learning Chinese, then I would definitely recommend this.

You're going through the second half of Integrated Chinese: Volume 1 and the first half of Integrated Chinese: Volume 2. There's usually a quiz and assignment due every 2-4 days with the occasional group project and exam.

The professor is very sweet and nice. She's understanding and will sometimes push due dates back. She likes to do everything through OneNote instead of canvas; the OneNote page is pretty organized and its easy to find the assigned homework for the week.

Make sure to get started early. For projects, she will check over your script before you present if you can get it in early. For exams, there's a writing portion. She will give out questions beforehand and you can have her check over your answers.