A semester in Nanjing

I’m now in Nanjing, living in a dormitory room on the Nanjing Normal University campus. Earlier this week I registered, took a placement test, and walked around to find the essentials like cheap street food, wireless internet, and the nearest Wal-Mart and Carrefour. I also showed a couple students with limited Chinese who just stepped off the plane around and helped them pick up all kinds of stuff.

I thought the placement test was pretty easy. Each section – grammar, vocabulary, and reading – got progressively more difficult but I was pretty confident of my answers on even the most difficult questions. And I skipped ahead to do the last section, an essay, first to make sure I had time to write a lot.

I was shocked to learn the next day that I was placed into a class at the low end of year three; in other words, a fifth semester course for students who have taken two years of Chinese. I was pretty surprised because I have only spent three semesters teaching in China while studying on my own (studying only year one level books). I took a Chinese class last year for all of one and a half months.

It turns out the placement test isn’t very good at measuring anything beyond the very beginner level and somehow my exam was interpreted as that of a third year student. I’m pretty good at taking language exams now and I prepared and tried as hard as I could. As soon as I bought the books for that level (advanced writing, ancient Chinese, modern literature) I realized it was way beyond my level and I switched to year two. The course involves eight classes a week of speaking, five classes of listening, and three classes of writing, all at the intermediate level. There’s also four classes of newspaper reading, two classes of business Chinese, and three classes of Chinese for tourism each week. The level of the textbooks and the coursework still seem pretty challenging, but doable. Certainly a better fit than fifth semester ancient Chinese.