Will I need to know the language?

The CSP expects participants to have had no previous training in Mandarin, the national language of China. Our goal for most students is “survival” competence, not eloquence. The focus is on learning the phrases and characters you need to take care of things like shopping, eating, and traveling.

A very few CCCU institutions offer Mandarin; if you already have a low-intermediate level of Mandarin, you can take more advanced classes with Xiamen University’s other international students.  Even those who are in advanced classes, however, must take the same comprehensive exams on Chinese sentences and Chinese characters that all the other students take. This is to avoid the anomaly of having an “advanced” student who can’t say or write what our new learners can by the end of their study.