This makes a lot of sense because our "Kouyu LaoShi) is, I believe, a BeiShiDa (masters?) student significantly younger than our very experienced primary teacher, who at one point taught abroad in Moscow. The first week of class, while I could understand him, I couldn't catch a word that came out of her mouth. I had three main problems: she spoke too quickly with all sorts of unlearned vocab, she has a rather high voice, and thirdly I couldn't slow the class down at all because it was overwhelmingly Taiwainese-Americans who could to a greater or lesser degree speak Chinese already (I was in section 5). Though by the end of classes there was still an occasional day where I wouldn't catch much, this forced my Chinese to improve greatly. I must say I'm glad the University of California program adjusts our grades, however, since my writing tests were pretty horrid in this class (all other students save one, an amazing girl from UCLA had taken 2 or more years of Chinese and/or were of Chinese background).
EAP China! Robert Klein.