Chinese

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.

This is a beginners' for students with no Chinese language education. The course consists of three main components: conversation, grammar, and Chinese characters. The course covers vocabulary items, sentence patterns and utilizes short texts to aid in instruction. Approximately 180 Chinese characters and 150 phrases are introduced and students acquire basic communicative skills to deal with simple daily situations. 

This course is for students who have completed Elementary Chinese III or at least 350 hours of Chinese language study. The course develops proficient language skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing that enables students to communicate effectively in their daily lives. Students learn commonly used new vocabularies and grammar that are not often used in daily conversations. Through the course, students learn to use appropriate Chinese language to carry on discussions to further understand Taiwanese culture and language. This course uses the textbook “Practical Audio-Visual Chinese III” (chapter 4-14) Assessment: attendance and participation (20%), quizzes (20%), assignments (20%), midterm exam (20%), final exam (20%).

This intensive course is intended for foreign learners who have no prior knowledge of Cantonese. The course introduces students to present-day Cantonese, with an emphasis on learning correct pronunciation throughthe Jyutpingphonetic romanization transcriptionsystem and basic structure. It aims to develop fundamental oral communication skills through a variety of situational conversationsin a highly interactive classroom. Assessment: self introduction, group presentation, midterm written test, final written test, class participation and exercises, two reading recordings.