CHIN10003 Chinese 7?

[zsteve]

Hi, I'm considering seriously taking up Chinese in my breadth, and I'm thinking about Chinese 7 (CHIN10003). According to the handbook, Chinese 7 is meant for background speakers with minimal literacy skills. That sounds like me!
However, after reading the subject review on AN (Re: University of Melbourne - Subject Reviews & Ratings), I'm doubtful whether I'd be able to get in on the placement test.
How hard is it to get to Chinese 7 on the placement test? (If anyone knows) I have a moderate passive auditory vocabulary (such that I can understand e.g. a sermon in Chinese) but very limited written vocabulary.
Also, what happens if I try really hard at Chinese but still get relatively low grades? Will it pull my WAM down? What is uni policy on breadth subjects and breadth results? (i.e. should I take breadth subjects in which I can get good grades?)

Also with the placement test, would it be better for me to study by myself first say until semester 2 (might not be doing a breadth in sem1) and then take the test? (I.e. would this potentially save time if I can pull myself up quite a bit?) or should I just give it a crack (although the results are binding)

[SuperCell.27]

Hey zsteve,
I would suggest you take the placement test without any study, purely because the language skill needed to obtain any particular result on the placement test is perhaps the minimum needed to actually do well in that language level. I did chinese 9 last year, and to be frank the language placement test was almost a laughing matter compared to the actual standard set by the cohort for that language level. But this may be different for other languages. It is probably better to start at a lower level of language as this allows you to gauge the difficulty better, than if you went straight into higher levels.

I had a friend do chinese 7, with a background in VCE 3/4 chinese second language, and he didn't find it hard, but he did work pretty hard just to memorise the vocab and sentence structures etc.

I'm not too sure if the results are binding though. You can always argue to go above the level if you feel like you're up to the challenge, or down a level if you can manage to convince the language coordinator otherwise. Since you're chancellors, you shouldn't be worrying too much about grades (doesn't hurt to do well though), but definitely shouldn't be stressing over how much H1s you get at a first year level anyway. The uni policy for breadth subjects is that it is treated like any other core subject - basically, its just another subject, that has the same weighting as your cores.

Hope this answered all your questions.

[TJL]

I did the Chinese placement test an I don't think it's really worth studying for? I mean, you could but I'm not too sure if it's going to have a significant difference unless you do it intensive or something. The components were also fairly easy although my computer lagged on me midway which was annoying. There was a listening component, a fill-in-the-blanks (choose from 4) component, a spot-the-wrong-words component and that's about all that I can remember.

More than happy to answer any other questions you may have.

[RKTR]

http://asiainstitute.unimelb.edu.au/help/placement just try it ?