IB Chinese

[plattsk14]

So, at the moment, I'm a Junior in IB. My freshman year, our school finally got a new language. Now our students could break away from the drab, dull, cookie cutter languages like Spanish and French and take Chinese. Since I pretty much despise both of the former languages, I finally convinced my parents to let me take Chinese, but since I'm totally getting off topic here, lets get down to the point. My question is, can/how can I Standard Level in Chinese?

I DID go to china for over a month for an intensive language trip with a school from another town and was granted the option of skipping a year and going into Chinese 4 as an Independent Studies student (seeing as, obviously, we weren't going to have a Chinese 4 if there was only one student taking said course). So, I'm going to be in Chinese 5 next year, and I was told that, if an IB student were to take Spanish 5, they would test in it as a SL.

First off, is that rumor true? and secondly, would Chinese have the same benefits?

Well, I'm off to read Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko for English class tomorrow (more like today). So I pre-say please and thank you for your feed back. It is all much appreciated.

谢谢你们

Sarah Platt (张珊亮)

Edited September 27, 2010 by plattsk14

[ppincus]

Hey Sarah,

I'm in IB Y1 and my language B is Mandarin SL. Prior to taking this course, however, I had two years experience with the language (making this year my third year altogether). What happened with me, was the first year in taking Mandarin, I studied two books alongside each other: 1) Chinese for Youth, and 2) Chinese Made Easy I. Both books were great, but our school chose to focus more on Chinese for Youth. Because I had progressed pretty rapidly within my first year, the second year I was bumped up to Mandarin III. In this, I again had studied two books alongside each other: 1) Chinese for Youth III, and 2) Chinese Made Easy III. (I also had to take a self-study course over the summer in learning the characters provided in Chinese for Youth II just so I could prep myself for the oncoming year). Now, with IB, I feel that I have enough of a basis to get through class, and to understand the texts that are given to us daily. A normal day in class for us, would be as follows: 1) Reading comprehension (reading through the essays, I would say I understand about 70%) 2) Analytical questions regarding the texts 3) Dialogue and speaking (we have this almost every time. The IB really emphasizes on the speaking, as one of the assessments is a three-minute speaking exercise). I mean, if you feel that you can carry out a more than basic conversation with a fellow Mandarin speaker, then go ahead and take Mandarin SL. But remember, there are a ton of new words for you to learn, with a ton of new grammar and reading excerpts.

Hope that helped. If you have anymore questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Phil.

[plattsk14]

That did help a bit. My Chinese teacher is... kind of... disorganized... in nice terms...

We don't do any speaking of any sort. We barely do any listening (and if we do, she pauses it and repeats at the speed you'd talk to a baby in) so that doesn't help at all. Also, I have few options to progress in sentence comprehension beyond what's given to us in our books (which often times is very minimalistic, and I feel like I don't always know the full meaning of the different sentences or how many different ways they can be used). Do you have any suggestions on how I could possible get these kinds of material? Or am I just going to be complete screwed for the test and just never graduate =.=... such a scary though...

Please and Thank You

Sarah

P.S. Speaking is what I'm the worst at. Oh joy!

Oh, and a normal class for me,

1) Frantically attempting to understand what is going on in my book and trying my hardest to memorize the 30ish characters I try to memorize every week.

2) Sitting and muddling through the work book that's about as, if not more, repetitive as a broke record.

3) Waiting for the millisecond that my teacher isn't with someone else to race over to ask a question which here usual answer is 'It's in the book"...

Wonderful, no?