Can Top 0.1% Students in China Speak fluent English? | Street Interview 

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Now ask top 0.1% students in America if they speak any other languages other than English. Edit: To those offended in the replies, this is just a video idea suggestion lmao. I get it, some of yall are very proud to speak only English xD

The female student with the blonde fringe is actually so impressive. Only a six months exchange program during her junior year in uni in Berkley to achieve that level of pronunciation and articulation? I would have thought she lived in the US for the majority of her schooling career. 😮 Definitely a language genius.

I actually do find this culturally insightful. I just wish I could speak Chinese as good as they speak English. Well done guys. We need more unity in the world and this is helping bridge that gap.

As a student at Tsinghua University (one of the two best universities in China), English is completely necessary in your studies. Some courses are taught in English, and almost all courseware, textbooks, assignments and examinations for senior undergraduate courses are in English. Scientific research and reading papers require English even more. Therefore, the students' English proficiency is quite high, but the spoken English is not used at all in daily life, so the accent will be strange.

I'm from Denmark. I met a 7 year old chinese girl and her mother in a park in Beijing. They offered to take my photo, because I was travelling alone. The 7 year old girl spoke better english than me, in fact her english was perfect as far as I could tell. She told me that she had a teacher from UK. Her mother was very proud of her.

The light haired girl with glasses was spot on with her rating. Six months in an English-speaking country and her English might be undistinguishable from a native.

I'm an American guy--mad respect to my Chinese brothers and sisters! I just visited mainland China for the first time a couple weeks ago (a short visit to Guangzhou) and on multiple occasions I was approached by people asking if I needed help with directions or help using Alipay 😅. Such a beautiful and fascinating country. I hope to make a proper visit around the provinces someday (after I learn a bit more Mandarin)!

About the girl with the blonde fringe, I'm pretty sure that the 6 months in Berkley were just icing on the cake. I noticed that in public schools here in China, in almost every grade, there are a few students who are really good at the language. Some are due to the fact that they lived abroad for a few years with their parents when they were little, others simply because of how much emphasis their parents put on the subject early on. Language skills can be acquired at an early age, with enough exposure it's a pretty natural process.

Great interview, gave us a better insight on the younger people in China. Also, not everything needs to be political, at the end of the day we are all human and being able to communicate, relate, and enjoy ourselves is the key to better understand each other!

Well their accent may be foreign but these kids are extremely intelligent & opinionated. Their pov on China vs. the US is more enlightened than most adults in any parts of the world.

What I find most interesting is that among the 2 best English speakers in the video, one had a very American and one had a very British leaning accent.

The girl with the blone streak in her hair had amazing English skills. Her pronunciation was great and very understandable. If I didn't hear her speak Mandarin first, I would have thought she was born in the US.

they did really well tbh. makes me wanna get out there and learn more languages. the first language I learned was a little bit of italian in middle school and then some spanish in high school. but to hear that they’re learning english from kindergarten is amazing. and shoutout to these students for being cool enough to be interviewed in a language that obviously isn’t their first.

@4:07: The interviewee's English was correct: "We still have to spare no effort...," but for some reason, Asian Boss incorrectly wrote, "We still have to spare more effort..." in the subtitles.

Incredibly proud of these young people, as a former ESL teacher in China. Truth is most young people would have had English classes at either kindergarten or at a training center, have an English teacher at school or an online tutor. It also depends a lot on the city. Someone born in Shanghai will generally be exposed to more foreigners and will be more fluent than say someone from Lianyungang. Chinese students work very hard in a highly competitive environment.

Practice is the key. Our family left China for many generations now. My cousins who live in California speak fluently Cantonese, English and Spanish. Me and my sibling grew up here in Montreal (Canada). We all speak fluently French, English and Cantonese.

This was great to watch. Certainly impressed by some of the speakers. I was so glad to hear though from the one guy that China is not at war with the U.S. they want to improve themselves. I truly think there's just too much of a need to be THE global power. It highlighted how no matter what culture you come from, we all have a greater purpose than asserting dominance.

Damn! Some of those people have a really nice accent, eg the gentleman at 2:16 and the lady at 2:28. I’d say that it’s pretty impressive for native Chinese speakers to have such a clear and flawless pronunciation. For me, a native Chinese that had been living in Canada since 2010 and in an English-majority area of Québec province, it’s quite normal to hear such good English. However, for these two, it’s actually breathtaking.

Their English is so good, it makes me want to work hard to get better at Chinese! I think another part of the reason for low english proficiency in China is simply because our languages are so different from each other. Even if you study a foreign language from a young age, if you don't enjoy learning languages, then something so difficult can be come very frustrating and discouraging and may make people not want to continue anymore. It's like math! You have to do it in school, but if it's not your thing, then you're relieved when you're finally done with it, and you don't use it any more than you need to for the rest of your life 😂

This is a really good video!

They all did fantastic!! Way to go!!!

I am an English teacher in China, cn students have pretty good grammar and vocab basics, I could even say they're better than most of non-native speakers of English in other countries, they just don't get to use them in actual conversation because of GAOKAO, so it's totally the fault of education system. but on the other hand, considering the large population, it's understandable.

I came from China and spent a lot of time abroad, and from my observations, everyday people in China know a lot better about the world than those in the west know about China. That's why on the one hand we know we have a lot of problems domestically and internationally to deal with, but on the other hand we also know our strength relative to other countries and we are optimistic about our future.

I'm actually applying for Chinese Universities as of now, mostly they have English taught majors which is what I'm signing up for, my mandarin is still kind of basic, so this video kind of hits home because im hoping my English can kind of help me out there.

My man there with the poshest English accent. Dude must have been learning with British foreigners. I love it.

I hope you do most of the countries in asia like in South East Asia too and not just East Asia

Impressive! It's not just about how good their English is, is how well-informed they are of the world, and their self awareness. China's success is never accidental, apart from sheer hard work, its thinking and attitude are underpinned by Confucius teaching which is ingrained in the Chinese psychic. It's not taught, but has been internalised over centuries of influence in arts and literature.

This is an interesting interview!

They are honest and that seems to be a general trait in China.

Very impressive 👍

Love knowing their stories. Watched from Philippines

They all spoke relatively well. Keep up the good work. 👍

You will find much better English speaking students in language or literature-focused programs and colleges that probably ranked after 100s in Chinese Universities. These students interviewed in the video were simply not trained to 'speak' English, but I am pretty sure they have no issue understanding English-written journals and database when they do their research. It is not important at all for Chinese institutions to have all students good English speakers where English is just a tool for them to learn from online resources.

Massive respect, learning a latin language as a non-latin native speaker is incredibly difficult and vice versa. Tried learning Japanese for 2 months and it felt I got no where. Gonna pick it up again sometime.

I speak both Chinese and English because my parents are from China but I'm from the U.S. I usually have to speak Chinese to my parents when we talk, but at school I speak English. Sometimes when I speak English I accidentally speak Chinese, and sometimes it's the opposite.😅 I get messed up.... but to me it's really cool to be able to speak both languages. When I was a baby (like a few months old) my parents had to work and so they had no time to take care of me, so then the only choice that they had was to send me to China and let my grandparents take care of me. I stayed in China up until I was 5 years old. That's when I came to the U.S. And the funny thing is that I didn't know any English, the only words I know were "hi", "thank you", and "you're welcome".😭 But eventually I got the hang of it and started to understand the language better as time pasted by. Now I improved and became a better me, and I will continue to do that.

Good job!! future of Chinese ❤

Any language is difficult without constant exposure. I have a chinese employee moved to Australia a couple of years ago, she thinks her english is bad but within 2 years she has gone from struggling to fluent and also reads quite well. I doubt I'd do as well in China being a monolingual english speaker.

China is currently being hated by some groups of people. I’ve been more and more curious about the actual China. Thank you for showing this.

I have a friend who runs a team for a large US chip company. His team is in China. He learned Chinese and runs meetings in Chinese. He’s been at it for 15 years and doesn’t sense any political barriers. We need leaders among this crowd on both sides to bring people together. We can avoid taking steps backwards and accomplish more.

I once met a girl who was majoring in English literature in Fudan. To say I was extremely impressed is an understatement.

Language proficiency is all about practice . I have met 8 year olds that can hold a semi decent chat in English and taught 14 year olds that can't initiate a conversation and only answer in short form. I have had students score 7+ in ELTS and others that wouldn't even be able to take the exam. In most cases it is not so much the student's intelligence , but the fact that they love and immerse themselves in the language. A big hurdle here is basically English isn't used in daily life so unless as I described in the previous sentence applies, the students forget faster than they learn .

I still remember the BBC interviewing a group of young people living in China a long time ago who said they had been oppressed by the CCP and had not received a good education. So I've always wondered how the BBC found a group of Chinese people who hadn't received a good education, but were as fluent in English as Americans are

At 7:47 mark you mentioned about English Proficiency ranking of different countries but do you also realize that there is also an English proficiency level for cities, on that ranking Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou actually ranked higher than most of Indian cities including New Delhi. New Delhi was in the low proficiency category while three Chinese cities I mentioned were rated moderate proficiency category. So when you find someone in Shanghai especially if they are university educated I would not be entirely surprised they can speak better English than say India. Another surprise I found was Hanoi, Vietnam it also ranked higher than New Delhi in English proficiency. I was in China until 1980s, I completed my primary school education in China and attended first two years of secondary school in Qinghua University. Qinghua University has a primary school and also a secondary school( they call it Middle School). English was taught as a subject in the first year of the secondary school.

I was surprised at how well all of these students spoke English. For a lot of them you could tell it was difficult or they used grammar slightly wrong but overall very impressive. I was especially impressed with the lady that had the blonde in her bangs. I thought for sure she had spent a long time in the USA with her fluency. I was surprised when she said she had been here only 6 months. She is very fluent and should feel very confident in her English skills.

The thing is, as long as any non-anglophone country _teaches_ english as a foreign language in the curriculum, most _young_ people can speak it somewhat, or at least fairly well. Its the same in many non anglophone countries (both primary and secondary usage) not just in china.

To be honest when a place you live on with 1.3billon people who speaking mandarin they dont bother to learn much about english 😂

Girl with spectacles! So pretty and smart!

As a college student in China, I really want to communicate with foreigners in English fluently. Although I work hard in English, it's difficult to improve my listening skills and oral English due to lacking of language circumstances. It wuold be fine if I have a foreign friend who can chat with me in English. If there are someone interested in Chinese, we can make friends.

Somehow when the lady with blonde streaks said 七八分 (7 or 8 out of 10), I knew she was going to nail it.

Could anybody lmk which province the guy with black glasses, blue hoodie and gummy smile's accent might be from? I haven't heard one like that.

It's also worth noting that the entrance exam (gaokao) includes English but to my knowledge no speaking portion. I've found (as someone living in Shanghai) that Chinese students have pretty decent comprehension and reading, but they're largely not confident in their speaking due to a lack of practice.

You never miss 🔥

I'm from China. I love languages, so I always tried to make chance to speak or read English in my daily life when I was a child, although most of my friends and relatives don't understand English. I got 148 marks in English in gaokao, which is 2 marks lower than full marks. (But I had totally disasters in Maths and Science.) After that I learned German and now I'm studying in the university in Germany. I'm learning Russian in my spare time, but I can only count from 1 to 10 now. I always think a language is not only a way of speaking. Further more, it's a new way of thinking. Those who speaks 2 languages are free travelers between two parallel universes. And English is not everything. There are 6000~8000 languages in the world. I don't want to force anyone to learn 8 or 10 languages. Everyone has his own things to do after all. Even English do I not want to force anyone to learn. But I think everyone must learn at least 1 foreign language other than his mother tongue(s). Trust me: you will have fun with that.

Experience and finding other people to speak the same language to is almost everything. As someone who was born in China but lived abroad for most of my life, my English proficiency far exceeded my Mandarin proficiency, and I now have to make up for that by speaking to some of the chinese-speaking peers in my university.

Very cool interviews, and high level english from a lot of them! - I made a video testing Colombians on their English, and it went a little different.. haha

Fudan university is one of the top unis in mainland china with really high standards. all these students are no less than geniuses in their fields. As someone who has lived in china for 9 years, their level of english is quite good compared to uni students in general of shy away from speaking any amount of english at all

Very happy and proud to see that our young students are quite open-minded despite the political backwardness of the last decade. Thanks @AsianBoss for the great interview!

Pertaining to the question about access to English language material. Truth be told I found it easier to find a bookstore in a major Chinese city than in many other western countries. And many of these bookstores do sell English or Bilingual versions of many bestsellers or classics.

Thanks

The audio is really good on this. So, is it just my impression, or do some of the interviewees have different accents?

That is the fact, Chinese young generation understand the world, but young generation in the rest of the world know little about China.

Wow. So different than japan esp. Didnt expect it will be like this

I just watched the same interview filmed in Japan. There is a huge gap between the top students in the two countries.

I'm 64 and a second generation overseas born Chinese. I must say that the young Chinese of today has improved leaps and bounds compared to the last generation or two. Well done. If I can speak Mandarin as well as they speak English.... I'll be delighted

Children may have started learning English in primary school these days, even in schools as far as Xinjiang remote areas, they still lack the ability to speak fluently. The reason being the national language there is Mandarin (or they called Putonghua) and it's used in public and schools across the entire nation. So there isn't a conducive learning environment to practise the oral English they have acquired on a daily basis. To be able to speak confidently and fluently a language you've picked up, you need a "speaking" environment, otherwise it will fall into disuse over time. Having said so, within China, knowing English is not important since it's not the main medium of communication. However, if they want to venture overseas, English being a lingua franca, would seem to be the common denominator for people from different nations to at least have some level of communication. Foreigners going into China, however, should not complain or lament people there can't speak English, because they needn't have to. It's not an English-speaking country. Instead, foreigners (tourists) should learn some very basic Mandarin phrases to get by and have a oral translation app on their phone to get around.

1:07 This is very true- in some of the provinces in China top students compete to go to Fudan, but in some other geographic locations, Fudan was not commonly considered as prestigious as a top-3 university. Anyway I am very proud of these students who can express themselves so well ♥I could barely put together a complete sentence when I was their age lol

Sooo, can Harvard uni students speak Chinese ?

Outstanding

Can top 0.1% students in England/US speak fluent chinese?

4:45 I'm sure the student said "World" ( his 口语 was a little difficult) I think your subtitles are incorrect.

It’s extremely difficult to get into Fudan😢

比日本人说的英语还要好。日本的大学生大多数不会讲英语。东京大学的学生也不例外。日本人的英文口语表达能力跟北朝鲜人差不多。

If that guy is truly studying 12 hours per day, it's a minor miracle that he's still sane. Most kids in the West can't even sit still for a two-hour lecture without their minds wandering.

3:39 the interviewer said "has to" instead of "has" by mistake

To be fair . What about trying to do this in America or England? Asking the top 0.1% of student in university if they can speak Mandarin?

I agree with the boy who mentioned China focuses on improve itself instead of challenging the US. On the personal level, it's the same logic. We all know it's pointless to compare ourselves with other people.

It's important to emphasize how hard they worked to get where they are. The level of competition in China is no joke.

I actually curious how many Americans can speak a foreign language especially Asian languages like Chinese. I know some of ppl learn spanish just for take easy option but kind of useless especially in ecnomics or tech sector.

It fascinates me other nationalities can speak English. Kind of heartwarming actually.

I salute these students, its not easy to study that hard for this much amount of time. Only a student who is also preparing for any university entrance exam can understand the struggle and pain of these hardworking students.

Just give them another 10 to 15 years, we will see allots more Chinese young students speaking fluent English.

Do this interview in Hong Kong top universities

They are better than the Japanese top students!!! 👏👏👏

It's actually better than I expected, given that their methodology is still the same grammar rote memorizing as in Japan and Korea.

It's ok to suck at spoken English as outside of western world English is a second language for most of us , which makes it a challenge as the words that you want to say pop up in native language but u don't know the English word for it and all of that has to be done in real time 😅 To improve it Keep watching English movies , sitcoms , read English materials like magazines newspapers and if possible train with a online native English speaker on many online website that are for English speaking .

Well, for the students who enroll in local school rather than international one, their English exam never include speaking. sometimes they need to listen an audio and then speak up the answer, but the answer only require one or two key words, but that can't be regarded as some speaking task, I think. And that is the key, most students in China don't learn things which is not gonna appear in their future exams(may because trying their best to get their highest score in each of their paper takes most of their time), so they can't speak cohesively in English and some of them even have weird pronunciation. By the way, I grown up in that nation, so I known a little about the reason

Why not interview students from top foreign universities and ask them if they can speak Chinese? This selection of materials is entirely a culturally strong thinking inertia.

Girl with the highlights has a really good American accent forming. Might still need a bit of work but im super impressed as a native Californian. That other guy that rated himself pretty high has a good Brit accent 👌

这个频道很棒。我一定会推荐你们的视频。 👍🏻

Aight as always I have minor issues with the translations but they all spoke pretty well considering when they’re speaking Mandarin, including the interviewer, they still dialect accents lmao 🤣🤣 They’re doing so well! My own cousin doesn’t even practice English with us at all so it’s no wonder she remembers like nothing, they’re doing great in comparison honestly haha

I taught English at a polytechnic college in Beijing. The level of English was incredibly low. I asked a student how long she had been learning English and she told me 8 years (after a slow start while she tried to understand what I had asked her). She wasn't alone. Out of all the students studying English at this polytechnic, there were only 2 or 3 who could speak it well enough.

I really want to see this video done in Taiwan

Damn, there are so many disciplined students in Asia, especially in China. Those hours are unreal.

4:48 is absolute facts

Wow almost all of them are good in English, I watched the previous interview for the 1% top students from Japan and I think only one of them was able to follow a conversation. Chineses students did really good. 👏👏 I think China education system is giving important for his students to also learn on languages so that they can be involved on international business with no struggles, the result says a lot.

Chinese took the trouble to learn another language as an asset. English is popular n they learn this with an open mind. I cannot say about the West learning Mandarin, they are so proud of English or Spanish, really sad they are so living in an enclose thought trap environment

As an American, we need to do better. These are very bright and motivated people. We are losing our foothold.

Well, my advice for quick improvement on English skills is to date a girl/boy friend from an English speaking country. Especially when you are in argument.

Prnounciation dosn't matter. They have clear thinking, and can articulate their thoughts for us to understand. (by the way I'm also not fluent in English, so my grammar might have mistakes too, but I hope you understand me)