Meanwhile out there in the real world, if you specifically want to get a job that requires you to speak Chinese, you are going to have to attend a course in Chinese, to actually learn Chinese. Unless you are actually native Chinese in which case you won’t have to attend that course.
Though depending on the situation I might still find that it’s useful to attend the course, so I can get certification as having gone through the course, which in the real world might be of more value than speaking Chinese without that certification.
And these sorts of certification-based (as opposed to skill-based) considerations apply to most disciplines as well.
And, of course, the fact that I’m applying for this job, which requires Chinese, is itself a choice I’m making, and we can ask why I’m making that choice, and to what extent my motives are status-seeking vs. truth-seeking vs. improvements-in-the-world-seeking vs. something else.
Conversely, if I am entirely uninterested in certification and I really am solely interested in learning Chinese for the intrinsic value of learning Chinese, I might find it’s more useful not to attend a course, but instead study Chinese on my own (e.g. via online materials and spending my afternoons playing Mahjong in Chinatown).
If you already speak Chinese, you’d just need to pass an exam, no course attached, and if you are a native speaker, you’d be correctly presumed to speak it better than someone who spent many years on a course, lived in China, etc.
Though depending on the situation I might still find that it’s useful to attend the course, so I can get certification as having gone through the course, which in the real world might be of more value than speaking Chinese without that certification.
And these sorts of certification-based (as opposed to skill-based) considerations apply to most disciplines as well.
And, of course, the fact that I’m applying for this job, which requires Chinese, is itself a choice I’m making, and we can ask why I’m making that choice, and to what extent my motives are status-seeking vs. truth-seeking vs. improvements-in-the-world-seeking vs. something else.
Conversely, if I am entirely uninterested in certification and I really am solely interested in learning Chinese for the intrinsic value of learning Chinese, I might find it’s more useful not to attend a course, but instead study Chinese on my own (e.g. via online materials and spending my afternoons playing Mahjong in Chinatown).
If you already speak Chinese, you’d just need to pass an exam, no course attached, and if you are a native speaker, you’d be correctly presumed to speak it better than someone who spent many years on a course, lived in China, etc.