I liked this class, I think the professor is nice and puts effort into making the materials and the slides relevant and funny. He uses lots of celebrities and anime images and references. The workload is kind of tough but you're supposed to pace yourself and not do it last minute like I did, whoops. I think the class is only hard due to the difficulties of the language but he is super helpful. The TAs were nice too.

Chief lao shi's classes come with a very lenient grading structure, so getting a good grade is very easy. As long as you keep up with the material and utilize the textbook, it is no problem getting at least an A in this class. Chief laoshi will also answer any questions and is usually pretty helpful in his answers.

Professor Chief was pretty good. His lectures were mostly engaging and sometimes funny. This class was hard virtually because of the emphasis placed on participation, but I was still able to learn a decent amount and get an A. Definitely don't put off the HW assignments for this class though they take way longer than you would expect because there aren't that many.

If you want to learn Chinese, definitely take this class. Chief Laoshi is a great professor and I learned so much in this class. The stuff you learn is a good foundation if you plan on taking more Chinese classes. Although the lectures were pretty dry and boring, he does care about you learning the language and practicing. Discussions were easy, but you do have to participate and there is also a quiz every week, but it's easy as long as you just practice your characters. The midterm and final were fair, basically just everything we had learned in the class and nothing more or less. You also learn about the culture, not only the language which I really enjoyed as well. If you're thinking about taking Chinese, definitely take it with Chief.

Coming from a background of a little bit of Chinese from high school, this class was a breeze. The professor gives about one homework assignment a week, and it is very easy, the hardest part is remembering to do it. The midterm and final are not hard, if you review the vocabulary a day in advance then you should get an A. The professor is funny and he gives extra credit, too. You must go to discussion as there are quizzes and homework is turned in during discussion. The quizzes and tests are purely vocabulary-based so if you know the definitions of the 10-15 characters a week, you will be fine. Easy A, learn Chinese!

This class was one of the best I've taken at UCLA. I took CHIN 1A-3A with Chief and he made the material very accessible to learn for students of all levels and all backgrounds. Definitely recommend this class if you are interested in learning Chinese, he's funny and great and teaching..also is not hard to approach at all if you have questions!

I have all the materials you need for this class (workbook, textbook, character workbook) in BOTH traditional and simplified versions -- please email me linmelanie6@gmail.com or text me at (714)907-3618 if you're interested!

Professor Chief is an excellent teacher. Here is a little outline on the course for Chinese 1:

Textbook: You NEED to buy the textbooks and the workbooks. There is a Textbook, Workbook, and Character Workbook.

Lecture: The lectures are really interesting, and Professor Chief's powerpoints included pictures of celebrities which was a crack up. Have a coffee before class though, because you have GOT to be mentally present during lecture because he moves pretty quickly. He posts the slides online.

Homework: For each chapter, there is a workbook homework assignment and a character workbook assignment. The answers to the workbook assignment are posted online.

Quizzes and Tests: Expect a weekly quiz, testing your knowledge of anywhere between 10-30 new Chinese characters and their pinying. You are only quizzed on 5 of the 10-30, but you've got to know them all.
Oral tests, Midterm, and Final are very straight forward. My TA sent us the outline of the test format, which was super helpful so nothing came as a surprise.

Participation: Everyday Professor Chief (or a TA) would ask us questions in Chinese, so you really have to study the language everyday.

Chi laoshi is awesome... always loved watching the video clips he showed in class.

Definitely doable to get As in his classes, but you'll need some effort. Lot of memorizing pinyin and character strokes, and some grammar points can be difficult to understand. Quizzes every week, but not bad as long as you memorize the vocab. Tests were very straightforward, but you'll need to do translations between English/Chinese/pinyin for the writing portion.

I thought Chi laoshi really tried to get students to be fluent in speaking Chinese during lecture; he always corrects you if you make a mistake in pronunciation. Lots of conversation exercises in lecture/discussion (and I've made lots of friends through this class because through these exercises haha).

Only annoying part of this class is the group skit you have to do every quarter, so there is some outside work involved since you have to write the skit/practice on your own time. However, I will say that some skits were quite funny, so skit writing can be enjoyable. Pick your group members wisely and hope that they really memorize their skit lines well.

If you've have any interest in learning Chinese/just want to complete your language requirement, I definitely recommend taking Chinese 1-3 with Chi laoshi!

Chief definitely cares about your learning. Did pretty bad on the first midterm in Chin1, went to his office hours, and did well for the rest of the quarter. Chinese classes or any classes in general definitely take a lot of time, but in the end, you usually end up with that A that you want as long as you study.

If anyone of you needs chinese 1, 2, 3 textbooks, let me know! email: aymetrang@gmail.com !!! Trying to get rid of them since I will never need them again!

If you're thinking of taking Chinese 1/2/3 with Chief because you want to have a good foundation in learning Chinese, turn away, because you're not going to get it. If you're taking Chinese just for your language requirement, it's one of the easier classes you'll take, but you'll still need to put in a good amount of effort. I took Chinese 1-3 with Chief and got an A each quarter. However, the pace is pretty fast, especially when there are 2 quizzes each week (Chinese 2-3).

Your grade is based on attending section, quizzes, a skit, a Midterm, and a Final. On attending section, that's pretty self-explanatory. He likes picking on some people more than others to answer questions, so you might find yourself getting called on 3-4 times in one Discussion. In the quizzes, Chief dictates 5 Chinese words or phrases for which you have to write the Chinese characters, pinyin, and English meaning, as well as one Chinese sentence that may include one or more of the vocabulary learned in the chapter. The Midterm and Final are generally 40 multiple choice questions that test grammar and vocabulary, and several free-response questions in which you have to translate Chinese into English and vice-versa. Pretty much everybody gets an A on the skit as long as they incorporate the corrections Chief has on the script you send him (written in Chinese or pinyin) and have an intelligible conversation.

As for the actual learning, Chief takes a generally hands-off approach to teaching Chinese. He only goes over grammar in his lectures, so he expects you to study Chinese for 2 hours each day on your own, and that you will dutifully learn the correct strokes and pronunciations (which he doesn't really go over in class) by yourself. The most guidance he will give you in class about how to pronounce the vocabulary words is to repeat each word three times. Because of this, even in Chinese 3, more than half the class couldn't pronounce tones very well, since they relied on pinyin.

Overall, he's a decent professor, but I feel he should be more involved in getting his students to become more fluent in Chinese instead of just throwing vocabulary words at them.