As some of you may know, I’m enrolled at Suzhou University (or Soochow University, SuDa) studying Mandarin. Having just completed my mid-terms, I want to give a bit of a summary on the problems I see studying in this way.

First, the title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, as overall I really like studying Chinese, think my teachers are great, and I really like SuDa’s environment. However…

Having lived in China now for a few years, I have a rather messy Chinese “level” in that my speaking and listing are pretty good, but my reading and…