Chinese Shouldn’ t Be Just an Optional Course

Recently, some universities have changed their courses. In these universities Chinese has been removed from the list of compulsory courses and added into optional courses. Only students majoring in majors relevant to Chinese would still have Chinese as compulsory courses. In my opinion, this action is quite harmful, which would cause students to pay less attention to their mother tongue and even lose Chinese attainment. Chinese shouldn’ t be just an optional course.

Chinese is our mother tongue, so we should never ignore the learning of Chinese. Nowadays, as China joins the globalization, more and more people are placing emphasis on learning English and other foreign languages but paying less attention to Chinese learning. However, Chinese represents our root. Since primary school, we have begun to take Chinese as an important subject, but its importance gradually reduces, finally in university it drops from a compulsory course to an optional one. This sounds really awful. It seems that we are gradually forgetting our root. Though foreign language learning is important, we should remember that we are Chinese, and we must master our mother tongue.

If we want to learn other subjects well, first we should have a good command of Chinese. Take English as an example, in English learning, translation is an inevitable part to learn. But translation not only requires a good command of English, but also needs mastery in Chinese. After all, a passage is not just a pile of unrelated words put together. If to translate a passage, one cannot only convert English words into Chinese ones. He also needs to think about the proper way of expression in Chinese, the logic of the Chinese sentences and the coherence of his whole translation work. All of these require a good mastery in Chinese. If one doesn’ t attach importance to Chinese learning, he may not learn other subjects well. Therefore, Chinese course is a must and they’ d better be made as a compulsory course.

Learning Chinese isn’ t equal to just learning this language, but also learning the Chinese culture. Many people have ignored the importance of Chinese learning, since they think that mother tongue doesn’ t need to learn purposely as we use Chinese every day. But this is totally wrong. Chinese is not simply a language, it also contains great cultural deposits. For example, the ancient passages in classic Chinese and ancient poems studied in Chinese course are great treasure of Chinese culture. By taking Chinese courses, one can learn a lot about our brilliant culture. In this sense, Chinese course is indispensable.

In conclusion, much attention should be paid to Chinese. The Chinese course should not be turned into an optional course, instead, it should be an important compulsory one, which would benefit students a lot.