> Is there any hope of becoming proficient enough at chinese to compete for these jobs when you're just starting in your late teens? Yes… sort of. First, folk

> Is there any hope of becoming proficient enough at chinese to compete for these jobs when you're just starting in your late teens? Yes… sort of. First, folks who have learned the language as adults are often better at teaching early stages of language learning. Bilingual folks may know what is right or sounds right, but they may not know why. Second, folks who are bilingual mostly by speaking the language in their home often have a very limited scope of knowledge of the language. The range of language needed to teach at a university or to a higher level of proficiency (beyond tourist level) requires a much wider range of target language knowledge. Third, for folks who want to become a professor, their research will matter much more than their ability to teach the nuts and bolts of the language. Lastly, at most universities that teach Chinese, you have mostly if not exclusively grad students from China teaching the pure language stuff. Someone who has a major in Chinese will be teaching literature, linguistics, culture, or something similar.