My Summer of Chinese: NYU Shanghai’s Mandarin Language Immersion Program

At NYU Shanghai’s annual Summer Chinese Language Immersion Program, 22 students from eight countries took a pledge to speak only Chinese for nine weeks. Though these students from NYU New York and NYU Shanghai were native speakers of English, Spanish, Thai, German, Korean, and Vietnamese, throughout the more than 60 days of classes, they promised to only speak Mandarin together. 

This was the fifth year of the Immersion Program, which offers classes for students at the intermediate and advanced levels. Inside and outside of class, students surrounded themselves with Chinese language and Chinese culture, learning about poetry, Chinese cuisines, and tai chi, all while speaking Mandarin. Heading off campus, they joined city walks around Shanghai, including a campus visit to East China Normal University. They visited social enterprises, met with Sichuan high school students, and even went on an overnight trip to Shengsi Island in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province. 

_{Students on walk throughout Shanghai to learn about the city's history and development.} 

Immersion learning provides intensive language learning experiences that can help students become more comfortable using language in real-life settings. NYU Shanghai creates a language environment that goes beyond  just learning to recognize and write characters - it is elevated into a cultural exchange as students live and learn in Shanghai while improving their language skills. 

Three students shared their experiences in the program, their advice to other students, and some of their proudest moments of using Chinese in and outside of the classroom.

Adriana Gimenez Romera ’26 

Major: Business and Finance 

Hometown: Lorca, Spain 

Growing up in Spain, I cultivated a passion for learning languages, namely, Spanish, (my mother tongue) French, and English. Language can bridge a crucial gap, enabling us to get to know other cultures [that are] unique and in many ways different from ours. 

The key difference between this program and regular Chinese courses is that the learning goes beyond the classroom and you spend a lot of time talking to peers, roommates, and even friends from outside the program in Chinese. You really have a chance to figure out how conversations in the real world happen, and you start to learn vocabulary that is outside of your textbook but that you regularly use in your daily life. 

_{Adriana Romera speaking in Mandarin to students from Sichuan province.} 

On my first day, I was assigned to a room with roommates whose Chinese [level was] way beyond mine, and I was kind of scared. However, as the days and weeks evolved, I realized that having peers who had more experience than I did with the language…only benefit[ed] me. I think that is a key aspect of learning a language–not being scared of not knowing. 

Proudest Moment: 

I delivered a six-and-a-half minute speech to 60 native Chinese high schoolers. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least. It was challenging to feel confident in a language that I had just started learning nine months before. After finishing, I remember the Chinese girl sitting next to me turning and saying, “That was great, I understood everything.” I felt really proud of myself for sharing something so close to my heart and being able to do it in Chinese.