Learn Mandarin at Peking University

Peking University is one of China's leading universities for the past hundred years. The students at Peking University are among the best in the world. Founded in December 1898, it has been providing superior education for over 100 years. The university's campus is located in the a Qing Dynasty royal garden with traditional houses, gardens, and pagodas. Peking University accepts about 4,000 international students per year from 80 different countries in the world.

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Since 1952, Peking University has been accepting foreign students; it is the university with the longest history in teaching Chinese language to foreign students in new China. On 29th June 2002, the School of Chinese as a Second Language (SCASL) of Peking University was established; it signified a new chapter of Peking University in teaching Chinese language as a second language.

At the end of 2007, SCASL has 52 full-time teachers, among whom there were 5 professors, 27 associate professors, 15 master supervisors and 4 PhD supervisors. Apart from full-time teachers, there were 39 part-time teachers and above 85% of them have passed the national examinations and have obtained the qualification issued by the Ministry of Education of China for teaching Chinese as a second language.

Teachers at Peking University's Mandarin teaching school have an interdisciplinary and high-level educational backgrounds, international perspectives, extraordinary teaching abilities, and impressive backgrounds for scientific research. They have rich experiences in teaching the Chinese language as a second language and have solid foundations in linguistics. Dozens of papers are published in publications home and abroad each year. Dictionaries and teaching materials have been published by Peking University teachers to help overseas students with their study of the Chinese language.

For decades, SCASL has successively established cooperative relationships with dozens of organizations, and has performed Chinese trainings on hundreds of students the organizations sent. Including: Yale University and Stanford University of the United States, Oxford University and Cambridge University of Britain, Melbourne University of Australia, Leiden University of Holland and Waseda University of Japan, and many others. The number of students attending SCASL only continues to rise. In 2007, long-term students studying Mandarin reached more than 700 and short-term students numbered more than 1000, with over 60 countries and regions represented in the student body.

In addition to classroom teaching, the school arranged a series of extracurricular activities. Speech contests and teaching practice are the favorites. The extracurricular activities are rich in content and close to reality. They not only can strengthen students’ understanding of China's culture, but can promote their learning of Mandarin. Other extracurricular activities include: calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, Er Hu, martial art, and others. Rich and colorful extracurricular activities have become the “Second Classroom” for international students to study Chinese and Chinese culture.