National Taiwan University

This course is for students who have taken Intermediate I of the Chinese Language Course for International Students or those who have taken Chinese for at least 450 hrs. The course develops proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing to deal with complex situations within daily lives, and discuss about complex issues, such as economy, transportation, societal culture and etc with people. Students learn to read simple document forms and announcements and to write a short essay of at least 300 words to express oneself. This course uses the textbook “Practical Audio-Visual Chinese IV” (chapter 1-11). Assessment: attendance and participation (20%), quizzes (20%), assignments (20%), midterm exam (20%), final exam (20%).

This course introduces five mainstream Chinese philosophical thoughts of Confucianism, Mohism, law, Taoism and Buddhism, and reflects on the theoretical gains and losses of traditional thoughts and contemporary significance from a critical perspective.

This course aims to explain the relationship between mental health and disease, as well as the impact of stress on physical and mental diseases. The purpose of the course is to promote self-reflection on physical and mental health issues among college students and learn care for oneself (self-care) and others (social care). The introduction covers the causes and treatment of insomnia, anxiety, depression, and even suicide, and strengthens students' concepts of stress management and mental health promotion. The course also covers understanding the role of suicide prevention gatekeepers; mental health communication skills and their importance to suicide prevention; the use of screening tools to identify needs, and how to communicate and respond to high-risk groups for subsequent referral to the medical system or further treatment. Self-study, group discussion, peer interactive learning, and teacher lectures are utilized throughout the course.

The course introduces field study and geological surveying methods. The teaching material is lecture based and includes the concept of field geological surveying and the Heng-Chun Peninsula, which the class will embark on a four-day trip to Southern Taiwan to examine the rock and land formations of the area. Field practice is held during the semester, and performance during the field observation is the main determinant for performance assessment. A final examination is given after the field study, covering information on land formations, geological mapping, etc.

This course is designed to help upper level Chinese as a Second Language students to improve their literacy through Chinese newspaper articles. The goal of this class is reach at least a 70% understanding of articles. Every class focuses on one section within a news site. Each week a student chooses an article and prepares to teach the rest of the class the key words needed to grasp a basic understanding of the content.

This course provides an overview of world economic history. The first part deals with early economic history focusing primarily on Asia. Topics include prehistory and the rise of civilization, the Buddhist and Islamic trade networks, early Chinese history, the rise of Europe, early imperialism, Chinese emigration and early Taiwanese history, and the British Industrial Revolution. A textbook is not used, but class readings and lecture notes are available on the internet. Assessment: book report, final exam, midterm quiz, group work.

The movies have long exploited biology as a source of bankable plot material. This trend has been even more intensified recently as biological discoveries and biotechnology advanced. Filmmakers capitalize recent discoveries to produce movies with science-based plots to an increasingly aware public. In view of their mass appeal, such movies play a significant role in society as disseminators of scientific facts and misinformation. They thus serve as a useful starting point for exploring various aspects of the relationship between science and the public perception of science. This course discusses various biological topics drawn from movies; explores public misconceptions and naiveté about science that are perpetuated by movies, as well as the extent to which such movies borrow from, or in some cases, even predict scientific fact. This course requires weekly screenings of a feature-length movie prior the one-hour lecture in the classroom. Films and topics are organized around biological themes. Discussion of films that feature different biological transformations focus on distinguishing between science fiction and science fact, understanding the uses of the underlying principles in scientific research, and exploring real world analogies to such fictional concepts as fly-human chimeras and reconstructed dinosaurs. Movies and related discussion topics include LORENZO'S OIL (1992) and the biology of rare genetic diseases; MISSION TO MARS (2000) and origin of life and life from other planets; ICE AGE (2009) and the origin of humans; OUTBREAK (1995) and the small pox virus debate.

The course is aimed to introduce the basic concept of logic and teachs how to reason things in the world correctly. Two important parts of this course are to talk about deductive reasoning and to teach student to separate the concepts of cognitive language and emotional language.

This course examines macroeconomics with a focus on the four basic models: Keynes Is-LM model, Classical full employment AD-AS model, Inflation SP-LP model, and Modern growth model. The course uses the four models to analyze the actual state of the economy with a focus on the United States, Taiwan, and Mainland China. Other topics include macroeconomic statistics; monetary policy, fiscal policy, and government budgets; stabilization policy objectives; money and financial markets; consumer theory; investment theory; and reflection on the rapid economic development of Taiwan over the past half century. Text: Robert J. Gordon, MARCOECONOMICS; and class handouts.

Taiwan has formed a multilingual society rich in languages, an asset accumulated over a long history. This phenomenon was also due to Taiwan’s encounters with different cultures at different historical stages: that between Austronesians and Dutch; Austronesians and Han Chinese; Austronesians and Han Chinese and Japanese, to Taiwan natives and Chinese immigrants in 1949. This course enables students to gain a full understanding between Taiwanese language and historical development and social phenomena, as well as develop an enthusiasm for Taiwanese language.