How do you feel about your Chinese language ability? Listening, speaking, reading, and writing, which one of these is better?

A lot of western country students consider writing Chinese characters is hard, thus, they think that their listening and speaking abilities are better than readings and writings. Yet, if you should ask Japanese students, most of them will tell you it’s the other way around. Therefore, for Chinese language learners, the L/S/R/W skills are rather difficult to develop equally. Considering all these, CLC deliberately arranged its core curricula as a 15-hour weekly program, mainly divided into 9+6 parts. There are 9 hours ‘Integrated’ course focused mainly on comprehensive L/S/R/W skills, and 6-hour ‘Intensive’ course under entirely Target Language-Chinese Learning environment which concentrated on listening and speaking skills to improve students’ conversation ability, or reading and writing skills. Therefore, for those who are better in listening and speaking skills, they will be assigned to first-level ‘Integrated’ course to sharpen the overall language abilities, and second or third level ‘Intensive’ conversation course to refine the communication skills. In other words, depending on everyone’s language ability, we assign student to the most appropriate level.

So, by this time, we hope you could understand the philosophy behind the CLC’s curriculum plans. Should you have limited time in Chinese language learning, and your priority is to communicate with locals on daily basis, the best choice is the 6-hour per week ‘Intensive’ conversation course. On the other hand, if you determined to learn comprehensive Chinese, then, the ‘Integrated plus the Intensive’ 15-hour weekly programs shall be your best option.