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How many years of language do you recommend for UC schools?


Syndaz

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Doing some research it says the minimum is 2, recommended is 3, but then some people say 4. This is my second year of Chinese and I REALLY don't want to continue because the teacher is quite terrifying. I wouldn't mind doing up to the 4 year mark if there was another teacher but alas no. So what would you recommend? 2 years or 3(4)? Answers that I've seen vary with some saying that doing 3-4 doesn't really help and some saying it helps to be more competitive. Thanks for the answers.

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3 is good, but 4 is even better. Colleges want to see that you are continuous in doing something and don't drop out. It's better to do one thing really well than 50 things mediocre. 

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3 is good, but 4 is even better. Colleges want to see that you are continuous in doing something and don't drop out. It's better to do one thing really well than 50 things mediocre. 

I agree but the teacher expects alot when the topic hasn't even been taught yet or reviewed. Example: Second week of school after no review of the characters, we were expected to write a almost full page essay. And then she piled it on with making groups and giving us a project of make mini essays by making sentences with words we didn't know/remember and combine then with other members in the group.

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I agree but the teacher expects alot when the topic hasn't even been taught yet or reviewed. Example: Second week of school after no review of the characters, we were expected to write a almost full page essay. And then she piled it on with making groups and giving us a project of make mini essays by making sentences with words we didn't know/remember and combine then with other members in the group.

She's likely just trying to see how much you know and what the class needs to improve on. Try talking to her perhaps, all teachers love that. 

 

This is all coming from personal experience. When I took Spanish 3, I thought it was the most boring class ever. Literally all we did was read crappy articles about useless culture that we would never need to worry about ever again. The articles were so pointless and most didn't even relate to whatever we were doing. I still took Spanish 4, and that was so much better and fun. I didn't do Spanish AP because I didn't want my Spanish 3 teacher again

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She's likely just trying to see how much you know and what the class needs to improve on. Try talking to her perhaps, all teachers love that.

It's the third week, we haven't touched those essays we made with the groups yet, and now we've moved on to this year's characters. Did I mention the best students in the class were natural Chinese speaking students, IE 3/4 of the class so the bar is raised unusually high.

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I agree but the teacher expects alot when the topic hasn't even been taught yet or reviewed. Example: Second week of school after no review of the characters, we were expected to write a almost full page essay. And then she piled it on with making groups and giving us a project of make mini essays by making sentences with words we didn't know/remember and combine then with other members in the group.

My recommendation; talk to the teacher in private and see her reasoning behind it. Most teachers have a valid reason to do what they do, talking about it might help solve the issue. That's not to say they all do, of course, but if you feel like you're getting too much work, talk to them about it.

 

And if nothing else, talk to the principal or whoever manages the curriculum and see if you can take an equivalent course elsewhere to earn credit. 3 years in whatever language is ideal, and often required, but more is always better.

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My recommendation; talk to the teacher in private and see her reasoning behind it. Most teachers have a valid reason to do what they do, talking about it might help solve the issue. That's not to say they all do, of course, but if you feel like you're getting too much work, talk to them about it.

 

And if nothing else, talk to the principal or whoever manages the curriculum and see if you can take an equivalent course elsewhere to earn credit. 3 years in whatever language is ideal, and often required, but more is always better.

I would love the do the second option but I know for sure I can't take another equivalent course. It wouldn't look good too if I only took a year (I'm on my second one rn I took chinese 1 in middle school) and then dropped it for another. As for the first option I believe she expects more out of my class because our class are natural Chinese speakers? There's 5-6 people in Chinese 2 that aren't Chinese in a class that's roughly 25 students. Most of the 19 Chinese speakers are transfers from Taiwan. 

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My recommendation; talk to the teacher in private and see her reasoning behind it. Most teachers have a valid reason to do what they do, talking about it might help solve the issue. That's not to say they all do, of course, but if you feel like you're getting too much work, talk to them about it.

 

And if nothing else, talk to the principal or whoever manages the curriculum and see if you can take an equivalent course elsewhere to earn credit. 3 years in whatever language is ideal, and often required, but more is always better.

And it's a minimum of 2 years for UC schools I believe. 

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In my school, you can skip language lvls depending on your prior knowledge and whatnot.

 

If you are taking the first 2 years of a language, I would recommend taking a third or even fourth year.

 

But if you skipped 1 or 2 years of language, you should be fine, unless you want to do it for yourself

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I took french cuz english characters r ez. im for sure going to take another year next year (thatll be 3), but still deciding whether or not i will do the fourth.

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I had a different school system, the Dutch one. But I had 2 years of German and 3 of French and I know fuck all of those languages so my recommendation to you would be to take them as long as you can if you actually want to become fluent in them. I took English classes for 6 years and am still not satisfied with my level of English. Oh and I took Greek for 2 and Latin for 5 years but I'm fucking awful at those. Really, languages take a lot of time to learn.

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If you're not looking to get into the top school in your state, I don't think you should worry about it. In retrospect, getting into college was far easier than anyone ever made it out to be. I was terrified I wouldn't be accepted anywhere, but I'm enrolled in one of the best universities in my state. 

 

Just do what you can, if the chinese class is too much for you, don't do something that tortures you. I think you'll find that if you just do well on everything else, and do well on your college entry tests (ACT, SAT) you'll be fine. 

 

Take this with a grain of salt of course.

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