Chinese

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 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 examines the role of translation in social media communication. It contemplates how wide-ranging multilingual digital contents are circulated on social media via translation, how genres, user experiences, visual styles, business models and technologies harnessed by digital enterprises and platforms are impacting on legacy media and traditional means of mediated communication, and where the diverse user-generated content continue to innovate and transform social media communication.

The course provides an understanding of the structure of Chinese characters and radicals. It strengthens student ability of remembering form, pronunciation and meaning of Chinese characters. The course is taught mainly in Chinese, and supportively in English.