Jane H.
First-year Chinese, Summer 2007
High School Student

"I'd forgotten how great it is to get to really focus on one goal for weeks at a time. I really enjoyed spending time with my classmates and with other students in the Chinese program. The language tables were a wonderful way to practice all kinds of conversation, and all of the teachers were great conversation partners. I was surprised at how well the upper level Chinese teachers worked with us at meals. They weren't at all put off by the fact that at first we could only make very basic sentences. Talking to them about how much I love fruit or my recent trip to Chicago gave me a lot of conversational practice. I stopped worrying about saying the wrong thing.

I am currently studying in Beijing, and even though I only studied Chinese for one month at CLS I have been placed in a class with students who have been studying Chinese for one or two years. I received excellent instruction in speaking, grammar, reading, and listening, and all of those skills have really helped me here. My current Chinese teacher often praises my pronunciation, and I know that without the individual attention I received in my CLS class and the unfailing patience of my teachers I wouldn't be able to pronounce anything correctly. I thought that CLS would be a nice crash-course before my year abroad, but it turned out to be much more than that.

I can't imagine a better way to start studying a language, or continue studying one. I know I want to go back to CLS to improve my Japanese and Chinese, and I entertain hopes of someday learning Russian. I expected my time at CLS to be a rather dull crash-course in Mandarin, but it was truly a wonderful experience."