Should I do Chinese?

[Wota]

Hi guys, so I have a love hate relationship with Chinese. Currently I'm doing Sla 1/2 and I feel like I'm sort of average in my class, but I still lack a lot of confidence in my skills. I think I'm pretty good at translation, listening and reading comprehension but my essay writing is pretty bad... Like compared to everyone's essays that are posted on the school website. I always dread writing essays and only do it relunctantly just the day before it's due.

Sorry for my rant, but I just want to ask you guys after reading my circumstance whether I should pursue doing Csla 3/4 for vce or not. The older friends that I ask always advice me to drop Chinese but they received pretty good scores 35 above raw (which is actually what I'm aiming for).
So yeah idk what to do, should i drop it, get a tutor or something? What are your tips on coping with Chinese etc and stuff?

Thank you

[CatherineMo2015]

how's your oral?
For essay, is the problem vocab or grammar?
Grammar and pronunciation are harder to improve, but the rest of the examinable sections are all very easy to get high marks as long as you are on the track.

[tylenolramyun]

Hi guys, so I have a love hate relationship with Chinese. Currently I'm doing Sla 1/2 and I feel like I'm sort of average in my class, but I still lack a lot of confidence in my skills. I think I'm pretty good at translation, listening and reading comprehension but my essay writing is pretty bad... Like compared to everyone's essays that are posted on the school website. I always dread writing essays and only do it relunctantly just the day before it's due.

Sorry for my rant, but I just want to ask you guys after reading my circumstance whether I should pursue doing Csla 3/4 for vce or not. The older friends that I ask always advice me to drop Chinese but they received pretty good scores 35 above raw (which is actually what I'm aiming for).
So yeah idk what to do, should i drop it, get a tutor or something? What are your tips on coping with Chinese etc and stuff?

Thank you

Doing Chinese this year, and honestly it was probably the worst decision of my life lol. It's way too much work for the study score I'm probably going to get and super stressful.
First off, are you in Year 10/11/12 next year? To do well in Chinese you either need to be either a) pretty much be top of the state from the start or b) work your ass off (I'm talking about 10+hr/week), but even then, if you're not at least average from the start its going to be hard to get 35+. If you want to do really well you have to be both. And teachers expect you to stay back and practise/do extra classes on top of homework

There's not really much difference content-wise compared to 1/2, but the level of difficulty of everything increases by quite a bit (at least with the material you get from Mount XJS). For writing I wouldn't worry too much, as you'll gradually improve after writing all the homework essays in the year (you get at least 1-2 a week for the whole year, more when writing sacs come up/doing mocks). For oral it's important to memorise your gen con and detailed inside out, as the questions they ask are always a bit off compared to what you prepared, and you have to be very flexible.

I think the main thing it comes down to is, how good are you right now and if you are willing to put the time and effort in.

[Wota]

I'm alright right now but yeah I'm struggling with using idioms and just writing good essays in general. I'm in year 10 (doing unit 1/2 Chinese ) so haven't done the gc mock exams or even started detail study yet. My parents are making me do Chinese as 'it'll look good on my resume' is that true?

[tylenolramyun]

I'm alright right now but yeah I'm struggling with using idioms and just writing good essays in general. I'm in year 10 (doing unit 1/2 Chinese ) so haven't done the gc mock exams or even started detail study yet. My parents are making me do Chinese as 'it'll look good on my resume' is that true?

Late af reply but:
-Don't stress about using idioms or writing good essays. In the course of 3/4, you can literally drag your essay score up from a 11/20 to 18/20 (literally me), as you do end up writing about 60+ by the end of the year. The essay portion is marked 6/6/8, with 6 being content, 6 being structure and 8 being language, but 'language' isn't as scary as it sounds! You can literally get 8/8 for language, even without any chengyu, as long as you don't have any grammatically incorrect sentences/incorrect words.
-It's better to start GC/DS super early, but imo the time you'll see the biggest improvement in both of those is when you're forced to memorise them for SACs/mocks next year. You still have plenty of time, so it should be fine as long as you don't slack with the memorising next year (start like start of term 2 for memorising, otherwise it gets so stressful at the end of the year)
-Yeah, Chinese does look amazing on the resume, especially because of how important it's becoming as a global language. That being said, I can't tell if its worth the suffering through 3/4, because it is a HUGE struggle.

[Wota]

Late af reply but:
-Don't stress about using idioms or writing good essays. In the course of 3/4, you can literally drag your essay score up from a 11/20 to 18/20 (literally me), as you do end up writing about 60+ by the end of the year. The essay portion is marked 6/6/8, with 6 being content, 6 being structure and 8 being language, but 'language' isn't as scary as it sounds! You can literally get 8/8 for language, even without any chengyu, as long as you don't have any grammatically incorrect sentences/incorrect words.
-It's better to start GC/DS super early, but imo the time you'll see the biggest improvement in both of those is when you're forced to memorise them for SACs/mocks next year. You still have plenty of time, so it should be fine as long as you don't slack with the memorising next year (start like start of term 2 for memorising, otherwise it gets so stressful at the end of the year)
-Yeah, Chinese does look amazing on the resume, especially because of how important it's becoming as a global language. That being said, I can't tell if its worth the suffering through 3/4, because it is a HUGE struggle.

Tysm what you just wrote literally boosted my confidence back up again thx