This may sound strange but this has been on my mind for a long time.

I'm a non-heritage Chinese learner. What I mean is that I don't speak Chinese at home. I didn't learn how to speak Chinese in a Chinese speaking environment from the time of birth.. My parents are not from China or Taiwan"Taiwan" is also commonly used to refer to the area under the jurisdiction of the Republic of China (ROC) government, not to be confused with the People's Republic of China government. Following World War II, the ROC gained control of Taiwan from the Japanese in 1945, but lost control of mainland China to the Chinese Communist Party four years later in 1949 as a result of the Chinese Civil War. The Kuomintang (KMT) government then retreated to the island and moved the capital to Taipei. While the People's Republic of China (PRC) claims Taiwan as its province, the PRC has never controlled Taiwan. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa (from Portuguese (Ilha) Formosa, meaning "beautiful (island)"), is located in East Asia off the coast of China, southwest of the main islands of Japan but directly west of the end of Japan's Ryukyu Islands, and north-northwest of the Philippines. It is bound to the east by the Pacific Ocean, to the south by the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait, to the west by the Taiwan Strait and to the north by the East China Sea. The island is 394 kilometers (245 miles) long and 144 kilometers (89 miles) wide and consists of steep mountains covered by tropical and subtropical vegetation. Though for decades following the Chinese Civil War, the ROC was politically a single-party authoritarian state, the ROC has since evolved into a democracy in Asia. Its rapid economic growth in the decades after World War II and the government's relocation to Taiwan has brought it to an advanced economy status as one of the Four Asian Tigers. This economic rise is known as the Taiwan Miracle. It is categorized as an advanced economy by the IMF and high-income economy by the world bank. Its technology industry plays a key role in the global economy. Taiwanese companies manufacture a giant portion of the world's consumer electronics.. I'm taking a Chinese class with a few people that are Chinese. I mean they speak Chinese at home every day to people in their family. Everyone knows that learning Chinese is very much unlike other languages. It takes a little more effort. I've also studied Spanish and French and I had very little problems understanding and learning them. 

My point is that I don't think it's fair for a heritage speakerA heritage speaker is a student who is exposed to a language other than English at home. Heritage speakers can be categorized based on the prominence and development of the heritage language in the student's daily life. Some students have full oral fluency and literacy in the home language; others may have full oral fluency but their written literacy was not developed because they were schooled in English. Another group of students -- typically third- or fourth-generation -- can speak to a limited degree but cannot express themselves on a wide range of topics. Students from any of these categories may also have gaps in knowledge about their cultural heritage. Teachers who have heritage speakers of the target language in their class should assess which proficiencies need to be maintained and which need to be developed further. (from: http://www.learner.org)   to be graded the same as a non-heritage speaker. It's like, if I were to study English in China with Chinese students I'm sure my grades would be one of the highest in the class if not the highest! I not really trying to complain but I do think heritage speakers should not be graded on the same level as students who don't speak Chinese at home or who didn't learn from birth.

This may sound hard for some people to understand.

Paul