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Ab inito Mandarin or Ab inito French?


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I need your opinion on whether I should learn Mandarin or French. I want to learn Mandarin more than I want to learn French, because it is way more useful, but French is way easier. The problem with Mandarin is the difficulty, especially the letters/script/characters, when I look at Chinese letters it just looks ridiculously hard, memorizing them is basically like looking into the night sky and trying to memorize specific patterns of stars, and freaking hundreds of them!?!?!?

So what do you guys think? Take an easier language, and probably get a better grade, but waste two years that I could have spent learning a more useful language? Or take a harder language, probably get a worse grade, but learn something useful?

And another question; do any of you have any idea if people who take chinese/japanese/hindi/korean etc. (hard languages, because of the script, among other reasons) will learn less - cover less material - than people who take easier languages? That would make sense right..?

Thanks for any amswers

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I'm probably not the best person to ask, because I went all the way and picked subjects I really wanted to do, even though it wasn't technically very "smart" :P I am, however, very happy with my choices - the workload is greater, sure, but you've got to enjoy what you do, or it's going to be two difficult years. I'm probably going to get a worse grade in Math HL than I would in SL, but I wanted a challenge more than I wanted great grades (I'm stupid that way). It's up to you - what do you think is more important, your grades or your interests?

Sorry for the rambling post haha :P

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I need your opinion on whether I should learn Mandarin or French. I want to learn Mandarin more than I want to learn French, because it is way more useful, but French is way easier. The problem with Mandarin is the difficulty, especially the letters/script/characters, when I look at Chinese letters it just looks ridiculously hard, memorizing them is basically like looking into the night sky and trying to memorize specific patterns of stars, and freaking hundreds of them!?!?!?

So what do you guys think? Take an easier language, and probably get a better grade, but waste two years that I could have spent learning a more useful language? Or take a harder language, probably get a worse grade, but learn something useful?

And another question; do any of you have any idea if people who take chinese/japanese/hindi/korean etc. (hard languages, because of the script, among other reasons) will learn less - cover less material - than people who take easier languages? That would make sense right..?

Thanks for any amswers

You will get more credit for knowing mandarin than french, also you will have use for it your whole life(depends mostly on what jobs you will have in the future) and it is in my opinion a "cooler" language to know (no hate french people I study french in school and I enjoy it very much). If i were you I would absolutely choose mandarin but french is definitely not a bad language to choose either. Choose the language you feel that you would like to learn the most and choose that, in this case that would be mandarin :)

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As a person who has learned both mandarin and french, and later chose french for IGCSE and IB, I can confirm that the difficulty you highlighted with learning mandarin is correct. English and French aren't tonal languages and so pronunciation will be another problem you will face later on.

To decide which language to pick, you must consider these questions:
1. What are my university requirements?
2. What do I want my future career to be like?

For #1, if the overall points are 38-45, I'd go with French because it is the easier option and you're not sure if you'll meet your predicted grades for your other subjects (at least that's how I felt during exams). For #2, if you want to go into hotel management, marketing or other service industry-related job, then it'd be good to know basic mandarin. Be warned though that you'll need to have a higher comprehension of mandarin than ab initio level if you want to use it in your career. Schools don't teach business mandarin, which is what you may need later. If so, you may want to take it as a side course in your university, and have ab initio as a base for you.

If you choose mandarin, don't worry too much about it because there is a specific way to learn it (at least from my experience), so if you have a good teacher, you'll be fine. Grasping the concept of pinyin, the 4 different tones, and how to correctly write characters would be the first things you'll learn, followed by character recognition. Mandarin is derived from little pictures and so each component (or the majority of the components) of a character will help in the word's overall meaning. The good thing about mandarin is that there are no tenses, whilst for french, there are loads (just like english)!

I also don't understand your last question, what do you mean by 'cover less material'?

If you have any more questions about learning either language, don't hesitate to PM me :)

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As a person who is both fluent in French and Mandarin, I can definitely tell you that French is much easier (what with the same alphabet), especially if you already know a Latin-based language (e.g. Spanish, Italian etc.) But if Mandarin is what you really want to do I suggest you take it! I have a few friends who are taking Mandarin ab initio and yes it is inevitably harder as the 'script' is entirely different as it is based on characters, they are doing just fine -- the majority of them are getting 6/7.

Obviously, don't expect to have amazing grades if you don't do anything, with Mandarin you'll have to work at it, practice writing out the characters loads of times (my friends have vocab books where they write down the vocab they need and look over it for 5 minutes each day), really pay attention to your intonation (this is super important, although certain people don't pay enough attention to it)

I don't really know if they cover less material, but if you search online for Mandarin ab initio material/syllabus then it'll probably tell you what is needed to be covered for the course and exam.

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French is very useful! To be honest it depends on what you want to do when you leave high school, or even university. Do you want to go live in China or work for a Chinese company?You can use french in Africa, France, Canada... I think French is wayyy more useful. Well that's just my opinion. And yes I guess it's also easier.

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First of all, thanks for the answers guys, I appreciate it! :)

I took Mandarin last year and i've really enjoy it until i saw the "paper 1" of the subject. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET A 4, the clases are fun, and you learn a new language, which it is always good for your future, but if you want to get good results on your exams, I recommend to you not taking Mandarin.

Roughly, what does the mandarin exam look like? Is it "send a letter to a friend and tell him about your trip to China" or something like that? What question(s) did you get?

1."Grasping the concept of pinyin, the 4 different tones, and how to correctly write characters would be the first things you'll learn, followed by character recognition."

2."I also don't understand your last question, what do you mean by 'cover less material'?"

1. When you take chinese IB, do you use pinyin? Or do you use a combination of pinyin and Chinese letters?

2. Let me explain: Because Mandarin is harder than French, the school can`t expect Mandarin students to memorize as many words for example as the French students. So the exam for french would be harder, it would require more words to do well than the mandarin exam would, but the Mandarin exam would still be as hard or harder, because it is a harder language to learn. Another example; if the Mandarin students converted all their Mandarin into French they would probably do worse than the french students...? Do you understand?

And another thing: Can you use a dictionary on the exam?

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French is very useful! To be honest it depends on what you want to do when you leave high school, or even university. Do you want to go live in China or work for a Chinese company?You can use french in Africa, France, Canada... I think French is wayyy more useful. Well that's just my opinion. And yes I guess it's also easier.

Ludicrous. Absolutely Ludicrous. Mandarin is the largest language by speaker in the world. Yes, French may be more widely spoken, however, the percentage of global economy which comes from Francophone countries is minuscule compared to that which comes from the Chinese economy.

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1."Grasping the concept of pinyin, the 4 different tones, and how to correctly write characters would be the first things you'll learn, followed by character recognition."

2."I also don't understand your last question, what do you mean by 'cover less material'?"

1. When you take chinese IB, do you use pinyin? Or do you use a combination of pinyin and Chinese letters?

2. Let me explain: Because Mandarin is harder than French, the school can`t expect Mandarin students to memorize as many words for example as the French students. So the exam for french would be harder, it would require more words to do well than the mandarin exam would, but the Mandarin exam would still be as hard or harder, because it is a harder language to learn. Another example; if the Mandarin students converted all their Mandarin into French they would probably do worse than the french students...? Do you understand?

And another thing: Can you use a dictionary on the exam?

1. I am not sure for Mandrin ab initio; I'm sorry. Maybe someone else here can answer this question.

2. Ah okay I understand your point. Perhaps that is true, but both languages have their own advantages and difficulties, so I don't think you can just compare them on the basis of how many words and characters are required to do well on the exam. As I said before, there are things like differences in grammar, tenses, and so on. The conversion is 1 english word = 1.2 chinese characters; I'd assume that goes for french as well.

No, you can't use a dictionary in Paper 1 and 2. You are permitted to use one for the written task, though.

These sites may be useful if you want to know more about the mandarin ab syllabus:

http://wiki.dulwich-suzhou.cn/groups/ibchineseabinitioy12/

http://www.tauntonschool.co.uk/downloads/99_ib-mandarin-ab-initio-sl-pdf.pdf

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I am taking Mandarin ab initio right now and its going ok. I studied chinese for three years before IB though (although my classes were not that challenging) and i got an A in IGCSE chinese 2nd language. But when i went to ib ab initio i found it HARD. Im currently getting high 5/6s.

Anyways my recommendation: if you have never studied mandarin before, i wouldn't suggest taking it unless you are prepared to work extremely hard and do your own work outside of class. However, if you are familiar with another asian language such as korean or japanese it MAY be a bit easier because there are lots of links.

Some info about Chinese ab:

-you will need to have a general vocabulary, a few hundred words at least

-basic speaking ability to have conversations about a variety of things (e.g. describing a picture)

-Good tones when speaking

-Write essays, diaries, letters, emails etc.

-Read sometimes very difficult texts and answer questions

-Some key grammatical structures (the good thing about chinese is that the grammar isnt that difficult)

Good luck!

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First of all, thanks for the answers guys, I appreciate it!  :)

I took Mandarin last year and i've really enjoy it until i saw the "paper 1" of the subject. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET A 4, the clases are fun, and you learn a new language, which it is always good for your future, but if you want to get good results on your exams, I recommend to you not taking Mandarin. 

Roughly, what does the mandarin exam look like? Is it "send a letter to a friend and tell him about your trip to China" or something like that? What question(s) did you get?

 

1."Grasping the concept of pinyin, the 4 different tones, and how to correctly write characters would be the first things you'll learn, followed by character recognition." 

 

2."I also don't understand your last question, what do you mean by 'cover less material'?"

 

1. When you take chinese IB, do you use pinyin? Or do you use a combination of pinyin and Chinese letters?

 

2. Let me explain: Because Mandarin is harder than French, the school can`t expect Mandarin students to memorize as many words for example as the French students. So the exam for french would be harder, it would require more words to do well than the mandarin exam would, but the Mandarin exam would still be as hard or harder, because it is a harder language to learn. Another example; if the Mandarin students converted all their Mandarin into French they would probably do worse than the french students...? Do you understand?

 

And another thing: Can you use a dictionary on the exam?

 

1. For Mandarin ab initio, the teacher may use pinyin as part of the learning process (to make things easier at the beginning), but in the final exam you are expected to use Chinese characters in both papers 1 and 2. No pinyin will appear on the paper and you can't use pinyin in your compositions...

 

2. I understand your point but sadly that won't be the case. The level of proficiency required across different languages at the same level would be the same. That is, a student studying Mandarin ab initio is required to be as competent in Mandarin as a student studying French ab initio is competent in French. The Mandarin paper won't be set easier simply because it's a difficult language...

 

And, as a native Chinese speaker, I can tell you that even native Chinese have to spend much effort to master the Chinese characters: we have to practice copying lots and lots of characters in primary school, so as to memorise and write them correctly. (To be fair, we use the traditional characters in Hong Kong. The simplified characters should be easier as they are simplified.) 

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Personally, I would choose Mandarin ( I can speak a Little bit French ) just because I would love to learn the language and because it would be an interesting challenge forme. But as it is not the same for everyone you will have to decide for yourself which choice you expect yourself to be happiest with, whether to Play safe or to get an entirely new experience.

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The difficulty is actually the least of your problems. Tons of people take Arabic/Russian/Japanese/Korean ab initio which look just about the same meaningless and they do fine, because

1. You have 2 years

2. The IB examiners aren't crazy and they know what to expect from a beginner

If I were you I would do French and learn Mandarin when I have time or later in university (see reason below), but if you are significantly more interested in Mandarin and are just worried about the difficulty, then I can tell you it's not that difficult, at least in ab initio level because of the reasons given.

 

I took French ab initio as an actual ab initio student (ie have never learned it before), and I've looked at ab initio papers/syllabi in other languages I know, and I'd say the Mandarin paper is of a similar standard as the other ones. They are definitely doable for someone who's been paying sufficient attention in class over two years, and very easy for someone who knows a similar language (Korean or Japanese).

 

The problem with Mandarin ab initio and Mandarin B is that there are so many Asian students with their parents speaking mandarin (although they've never formally taken a course in it, they would still understand the language better than actual ab initio students, especially orally) taking the course that it skews the grade boundaries, so although I'd recommend learning Chinese someday, I would choose French ab initio over Mandarin ab initio.

 

EDIT: Hey, they are both important and I'd like to learn both of them if I didn't know them/have been learning them already. It's not a problem of which one is more useful.

Unlike the other groups and levels, it's just a beginner course. When you finish a 2-year ab initio course the other language isn't falling "behind" too much anyways.

Edited by ssy
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