First Day at IUP

IUP is located in the center of Qinghua University, on the 5th, 6th and 7th floors of the North Humanities Building. When they say Qinghua is the biggest campus in China, they're not kidding. It's about the distance from Yale med school to the top of science hill, and just as wide. So far, I've just been walking (I walk to the med school and up science hill quite frequently, so I'm a pro), but if it gets too hot in the summer, I just might buy a bike. I'm not a great biker. I tried biking at Yale last semester (Chinese 133 was next to the Af-Am house and I had 10 minutes to get to the very top of science hill), but on day 2, in trying to dodge a pedestrian, I managed to become buddy-buddy with a very large tree. After that, I decided the shuttle was a better option. I'm also quite petrified of the cars in China...The good news is part of Qinghua campus is closed to motorized traffic. In any case, I will be getting my exercise this summer since, like my apartment, IUP doesn't have an elevator.

We had two placement tests: one 15-minute oral interview with 3 teachers (although one asked most of the questions), and one 2-hour written test. My Chinese experience is typical of many Chinese-Americans. I speak a dialect at home, so my Mandarin pronunciation isn't exactly standard, but it means my speaking and listening skills are such that I can get by conversationally in China and most people probably wouldn't suspect anything. But speaking Chinese at home also means my reading and writing abilities are way behind my conversational abilities. Formally (and fortunately), I've taken 4 years of Chinese school in high school and Chinese 133 at Yale, so I'm no longer illiterate.

The oral interview started out very casually, with the teachers asking about your Chinese background, what you think your strengths and weaknesses are, etc. They did ask some advanced questions to probe your vocabulary, though (eg. what do you think is unique of the Chinese-American situation?). There was also a part where you read a list of vocab words (in increasing level of difficulty), and then they ask you to 造句, or use them in sentences. They correct you immediately if you're wrong.

After the oral, the teachers tell you what your weaknesses are. I knew exactly what my problems are (my vocabulary isn't advanced enough to carry out sophisticated conversations and I don't distinguish s/sh, z/zh or c/ch when speaking). Nonetheless, hearing them flat-out say "You use very simple words to get around difficult questions" and "your pronuncation isn't accurate" still struck me as harsh. Of course, it's all in my best interest. The vocabulary is a definite thing to work on this summer. Surprisingly, though, they asked me if I wanted to correct my pronunciation. Since many native Chinese from southern provinces have the same problem, they said I would be just fine in China as is. I told them I wanted to correct it, to which they immediately replied, "we're going to ask your teachers to be very very strict about it." Eeks.

The written test was okay. 30 minutes of listening: identify the tones (spoken very quickly!), identify the words that are the same (3 very similar-sounding phrases, differing only by one tone or one consonant, 2 of which are the same - unfortunately, the audio system wasn't very clear, so some of the consonants were very hard to tell apart), listening comprehension (sentences/passages with accompanying questions). 90 minutes of grammar, vocab and reading comprehension: grammar basically tested sentence structure in a variety of ways - inserting specific words and phrases into sentences, correcting sentences, fill-in-the-blank, etc. vocab tested 成语 (Chinese proverbs) and vocab. quite literally, they give you the proverb/phrase and you choose the synonym. reading comprehension is as you would expect.

Everything was in increasing level of difficulty (for instance, the last reading comprehension was in Old Chinese). We were asked to leave questions blank if we didn't know them, otherwise we might get in over our heads. At the end of the summer, we'll take the same exam again and see how much we've improved.

Course assignments come out Friday. In the meantime, it's meet-and-greet, campus tours, and hammering out living details. So far, it's been very easy to introduce myself and strike up conversations with other IUPers, but since this week is all administrative stuff and people are in and out, I haven't met very many other students. Classes start on Monday - I'll be sure to meet them then!