Corey Wood

Senior 2014 - Majoring in International Relations; Minoring in Chinese

I believe attaining proficiency in Chinese gives non-heritage speakers superpowers. The dream of becoming fluent continues to motivate me to improve my language capabilities. Although I cannot claim fluency by any standards, the fact that I can chat with my neighbors from China in Chinese gives me hope of achieving my goal. The Chinese classes at UCD have truly given me a strong foundation to build on. The passive knowledge I have developed here will undoubtedly catapult me to fluency this year when I move to Taiwan. All of my language professors were patient, kind, and encouraging. These qualities were especially important since I had no Chinese background and was far below the language levels of many of my classmates. I was patiently allowed to make mistakes and encouraged to try again. The classes involving Chinese culture and history taught me so much about the country, which was important because my pre-college educational background provided very little meaningful information on China. All of the friends that I made here at UCD were in the Chinese department; the daily, small classes provided a great atmosphere to get to know my classmates. My Chinese language classes without a doubt required the most effort and were the most challenging, however, they have prepared me for a lifetime of language learning and a potential career using the language and knowledge I learned at UC Davis.