Chinese is the language used by the most people in the world. One fifth of the global population speaks Chinese. Chinese is one of the oldest languages in the world, used in an unbroken tradition back to the second millennium BC. Knowledge of Chinese opens up one of the world's richest historical and cultural heritages.
Chinese is the official language of China, which has the largest population (1.2 billion) in the world, accounting for approximately 22 percent of the world's total.
Chinese is also the standard language of other countries or areas, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, as well as Chinese communities around the world.
Chinese is a language of major international importance. It is one of the five official languages at the United Nations and in many international organizations. The popularity of Chinese in the past decade has been dramatically increasing. More and more people in the world are now studying Chinese because they believe that China will play a major role in world affairs in the future.
For over a decade, China has achieved the fastest economic growth in the world, about 8.5% on average for the past 10 consecutive years. The economic boom in China has created many employment opportunities for those with knowledge of Chinese, not only in China, but also in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and many other countries or areas that have relationships with China. Nowadays, students with business and Chinese skills combined are in great demand for import and export businesses, international banking, tourism, teaching, multinational corporations, and public services such as foreign affairs and immigration.
All in all, Chinese is a fascinating language to study. The study of Chinese is mentally stimulating, interesting, and fun! The Chinese writing system is ideographic rather than alphabetic. This means that each of its original character is a picture itself. You see traces of these pictorial origins throughout your study. Chinese words are artistically formed by putting meaningful characters together. Chinese has a relatively uncomplicated grammar. Unlike English, French or German, it does not have verb conjugation (i.e., tense inflection) and no noun declension (e.g., gender and number distinctions). The structure is simple. The majority of Chinese sentences are like English ones in the format of subject + predicate + object.
Summer Courses
Click below to download a list of Chinese Studies summer courses available through the Department of Modern Languages.
Requirements
Students seeking to complete a major in Chinese Studies must complete 52 quarter hour credits of coursework, distributed as follows:
Students may need as few as 24 and as many as 32 credits of advanced language study in order to attain the goal of proficiency in Mandarin at the ACTFL "Advanced Low" level. Depending on their level of prior expertise with Mandarin, students may need to complete courses at the Basic and Intermediate levels before enrolling in 200 or 300 level language courses.
The Chinese Studies minor consists of one year of college level Chinese language (101/102/103 or equivalent) and five additional courses focusing on China chosen from at least two different disciplines in consultation with an advisor from the approved Chinese Studies minor courses list. Currently there are offerings in Art, Communications, Geography, History, International Studies, Political Science, Religious Studies, etc.
Approved Chinese Studies courses
The list of approved courses in Chinese studies from participating departments currently includes the following. An asterisk denotes courses that are not offered every year.