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Mandarin B SL or Spanish AB Initio


Wolfie

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Hello, as of right now I am taking Mandarin B SL in the IB diploma and I am in my first year of IB. I have taken Mandarin in international schools for about 5 years passing with mostly As. As I started my first year of IB and in my first few classes, I felt extremely out of place as many students were extremely capable in the language and throughout most of the text that we studied I literally knew nothing. I did not understand most of the questions and/or full texts, even though I haven't taken a test yet, I feel like I might be extremely horrible in the subject. On the other hand there is Spanish AB initio, which I have no prior knowledge in and am just thinking about it, in case learning Chinese becomes too hard. I am looking for top colleges and I am wondering if colleges would look down upon taking Mandarin for such a long amount of time and then dropping it. Or does it matter? Languages are not going to play a role in my college as I want to study sciences. I would like to know if I should persevere in the subject although I may not get a good grade or take Spanish AB which probably would be easier but I am not quite sure. 

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  • 3 months later...

Hi there!

I speak both English and Cantonese (with English being my first language) and I still find Mandarin B SL very hard! (NB: Cantonese is a dialect spoken in China) 
The only reason which I think I am just getting by is because the structures and (some) words are both very similar in Cantonese and Mandarin. I find reading particularly hard, and even my parents were taken back after seeing my paper 1 mock papers. 
I have heard that the reason why Mandarin B can be hard is because students who take it are mostly from a Mandarin speaking background or migrated at a young age- examiners/whoever makes the papers then makes it harder in order to make it fair. 
If I were to choose my subjects again, I would do Spanish AB Initio. Be warned, I have been told that it requires a lot of work but in comparison, it should be much easier than Mandarin B SL. 

Also, I don't think you need to worry about colleges looking down on you. I was in a similar situation and the teacher in charge said that depending on where you want to study, colleges usually look at your overall score (do check though!!). Therefore, I think it's better to worry about your overall score than to worry about your language subjects. 

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Honestly, go with Spanish AB initio, since it is an easy 7 in my opinion. Mandarin B isn't too hard for those who are really active in that language, like myself, but I know people who switched to Spanish or Italian after just 1 month of taking the class. You discuss about various topics, and so your vocabulary must be according to that. 

Do your research and decide based on that, that's all. 

(Actually, looking at the date, you've probably made your decision but oh well..)

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