Program overview
Applied linguistics might sound academic, but it's actually very down-to-earth—it studies how language is used, learned, taught, and even runs in computers. If you're interested in language itself but don't want to just study ancient texts, this major is for you. Core courses include Introduction to Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition (e.g., how foreigners learn Chinese), Language Teaching Methodology, Corpus Linguistics, Language Testing and Assessment, and Cross-cultural Communication. Chinese universities have a natural advantage in this field: research on teaching Chinese as a second language is very mature, and many schools offer a dedicated track in International Chinese Education, giving you direct access to real Chinese teaching cases and data. Additionally, universities like Beijing Language and Culture University, Peking University, and Fudan University have strong applied linguistics teams, with courses that use plenty of Chinese corpora and actual teaching data—a rich resource for international students aiming to teach Chinese or work in language technology.