Chinese International Commerce in UCD

Well, loads of people graduate from these sorts of courses with still a poor control of the language, just as many people will get Cs in honours French etc. for the leaving cert and struggle to hold together five minutes of conversation. But I know a couple of people studying language at university at the moment and to put it bluntly they're absolutely killing it, cause they're passionate about languages anyway. So it isn't just homework for them, they're applying what they're learning by speaking and reading in their studied languages (and subsequently, enjoying their courses a lot more than I'd suspect some of their classmates are). So in summary, your ability to apply and use Chinese at the end of the course will be what you make it. Oral exams and things like that are playing a bigger role in examination these days, but it's still very possible you could pass everything and come out the other side with very 'bookish' Chinese. You probably get the opportunity to spend a year or semester in China anyway? Which is a great chance to immerse yourself.

Whilst I don't know anybody studying Chinese at UCD personally, I do have a friend who studied it as part of his course in the UK, very similar to this, might have been Chinese + business too. He was pretty passionate about the language and worked hard on his tones, pronunciation and took proficiency tests outside of his course, also saved up and spent a Summer in Beijing. It was a 4 year course which he finished last year and has been living and working in Beijing for most of the time since then and I've been told that when he's on the phone and stuff people mistake him for a native etc. so yeah I'd say he's fairly fluent. But he was always chipping away with self study books at home and teaching Chinese students 'Business English' and they would return the favour etc.