CHIN 225 - Second Year Chinese I

Sequential courses following CHIN 110 and CHIN 111. These courses build upon the linguistic skills developed in CHIN 110 and CHIN 111, stressing improvement in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Consideration of the cultural and historic background of the areas where the language is spoken is further promoted, and readings are designed to advance students’ understanding of 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 Intermediate-low level of the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) standard: o Listening: Understand one utterance at a time in face-to- face conversations or in routine, highly contextualized listening tasks, such as straightforward announcements, simple directions, and high-frequency commands; reply on repetition, derive meaning from rephrasing and/or a slowed rate of speech. o Speaking: Converse in some concrete exchanges and familiar topics in straightforward social situations necessary for survival in Chinese-speaking communities, such as expressing their personal preferences and some immediate needs. o Reading: Comprehend loosely-connected texts that deliver basic information in non-complex and predictable pattern of presentation, such as online bulletin boards and forums; understand discourse that is primarily organized in individual sentences containing predominantly commonly-used vocabulary. o Writing: Meet some practical writing needs, such as short messages; craft simple conversational-style sentences with basic word order and repetitive structure; write on highly familiar content areas and personal information with adequate vocabulary to express elementary needs. Prerequisite: CHIN 111 or permission of instructor