CHIN 110 - First Year Chinese I

Introductory courses emphasizing four basic language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Consideration of the cultural and historic background of the areas where the language is spoken is promoted, and readings are designed to introduce students to the cultures of the Chinese-speaking world. Emphasis is on class participation and active use of the language in a grammatically accurate and culturally appropriate fashion. The aim is to prepare students to achieve the Novice-mid level of the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) standard: o Listening: Understand key words and formulaic expressions from sentence-length speech in highly contextualized, predictable situations, such as greetings. o Speaking: Communicate by applying a number of isolated words and memorized phrases on very familiar, everyday topics that affect them directly, such as self-introduction. o Reading: Recognize approximately 300 frequently-used characters and understand predictable and formulaic phrases in highly contextualized texts and/or with extra-linguistic support, such as street signs and class schedules. o Writing: Demonstrate a high degree of accuracy when writing on very familiar topics using well-practiced language; able to recombine learned characters and structures to produce simple sentences, such as writing a postcard and short messages.