Reflections on The Increasing Number of Foreign Students

As China is getting stronger and stronger, the trend of learning Chinese is increasing. According to the article, most of students come here for the language studying. I am glad the trend has been changing. It is their turns to come to Asia to learn a language which is much more difficult to study.

The part time job during the summer vacation was a clerk at a bookstore near National Taiwan Normal University. If you think I have got more chances speaking to foreigners in English, you would probably wrong. They actually could speak good daily Chinese. On the lunchtime, I saw many foreign students walked out of the university for lunch. There were still many foreigners studying Chinese during the vacation. At the same time, a big advertisement about the certificate of Chinese teaching course was displayed outside the wall.

The article also mentions the students at my university are the second largest group for the language learning. It is pity that our language center is not located in the Yang-Ming Mountain. Some classmates and I all feel disappointed that we usually don’t have chances having western students in the English Department. Every time I walk pass a classroom where there is a western student in it, I always hope for the opportunity to make friend with her or him and wish they could be in my class. I understand the reason why we can not see western students in our department. Most of western students might be native English speakers. It is strange to learn the mother language outside the country where English is just only an official language.

This week, I met an exchange student from China. She smiled at me first. I smiled back in order to be polite even thought I didn’t know her. I asked her to sit beside me, because she sat alone in the back of the classroom. She didn’t look like she comes from China until we chatted during the break time. I told her the first time I went to China was on the winter vacation of 2010. I did not get used to the foods and drinks there. She thinks Taiwanese spicy chili sauce is weird with a little sweet taste.

Although Chinese will not be an international language right away, I do enjoy the fact that westerners start to learn Chinese. Not only they can understand more about the beauty of traditional Chinese characters, but also the difficulties of studying a new language. (416)

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