A recent study conducted by the College Board recognized one of Washington University’s Chinese courses as among the best in foreign language and literature.

The class, third-level Modern Chinese I, is divided into multiple sections, taught by Fengtao Wu, senior lecturer in Chinese, and Ke Nie, visiting lecturer in Chinese.

The Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC), the institution that conducted the study, examined university practice courses across the U.S. to select 10 that best fit the study’s criteria.

Those 10 courses will be used as models to redesign equivalent Advanced Placement (AP) courses in high school. Therefore, a future student who has received credit from the redesigned Chinese AP test could skip third-level modern Chinese.

“It was an extensive nomination process across the country,” explained Terri Ward, senior lead research at EPIC. “The courses were nominated by people in their field, as courses equivalent of their AP course. So when a student comes to an institution with AP credit, the question is, ‘which course do they not have to take?’”

The eight AP courses examined by the EPIC study were the six foreign language courses-Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, German and Italian-and the two foreign literature courses-Spanish and French literature.

Third-level modern Chinese, as a 300-level class, expects a degree of fluency when students enroll.

Heritage students-students who have been raised in Chinese-speaking households in the U.S.-require one year of study before taking it, while non-heritage students require two.

“After two years of Chinese, they [students] are supposed to survive in a new environment like China or Taiwan,” explained Wu, who has taught Chinese for 25 years. “They shouldn’t have much trouble communicating with local people about daily needs, such as shopping, buying food, eating in restaurants, living in dorms, talking about everyday life. They should be able to basically communicate with local people.”

However, students at this level still have impediments to overcome.

“They still have quite a lot of problems in pronunciation-accents, grammar, but that does not prevent them from expressing themselves,” said Wu. “When it comes to a discussion relating to economy, tradition, politics, environmental issues or whatever specific topics, they probably cannot go very deep. The most difficult part is their vocabulary, their lack of understanding in differences between words-the shades of meaning, the appropriateness.”

Wu noted that a significant change in future third-level Modern Chinese courses would involve the separation of heritage and non-heritage speakers. The mixing of the two types of students, he said, did not provide for the ideal class.

“We are not very happy with this kind of situation, and the students don’t like it either. We plan to start two tracks beginning next fall. Ideally, we’d put all heritage speakers on one track and the others without any background at all on the other.”

To date, third-level Modern Chinese has been an integrated class, with students who have been speaking Chinese since childhood and those who started learning it in college. Senior Austin Thompson, who has visited East Asia on multiple occasions, belongs to the latter group. However, Thompson said he enjoys learning with heritage speakers in Nie’s class.

“It was something I was looking forward to this year,” he said. “[Chinese] is such a widely spoken language such that you have northern accents, Taiwanese accents, so I’ve found what they’re looking for in class-the Putonghua.”

Putonghua is the term for what is considered standard spoken Chinese.

“But in China they’re not looking for just the biaozun,” said Thompson, referring to the Chinese term for what is “correct” Chinese. “I think it’s great for me so I’m not exposed to just one accent. It’s just a good challenge, and I think it’s improved my Chinese.”

Junior Jessica Lin, a heritage speaker enrolled in the same course, held a somewhat different opinion on the class’s integration.

“I don’t like that they combine heritage and non-heritage because there should be a different technique in teaching students who don’t speak Chinese at home and don’t have a background in Chinese,” said Lin. “In the class they talk to you as if you were a heritage speaker. There’s only one person in my class who’s not a heritage speaker. If it were a one-to-one ratio, it would be far better than having a majority versus a minority, but even that would slow down the heritage speakers.”

Both Thompson and Lin, however, expressed satisfaction with the course’s teaching.

“I feel like the progression of what I’ve learned is faster this year, and she [Nie] teaches to my learning style,” said Thompson.

“There’s not a variety of things you do in the class, and he [Wu] can do a better job of linking past coursework to present coursework, so it would develop,” said Lin. “But Wu does a good job of covering a lot of material.”

As for Wu, he anticipates more benefits than difficulties with the implementing the division.

“Next year, we’ll do something, and I can see there would be problems, but I’m really anxious to do that,” said Wu.

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