Elementary Chinese for Advanced Beginners

Catalog description

This course is intended for students who can converse in Mandarin Chinese about matters related to everyday life situations but cannot read and write at the same level. This includes students who were raised in a non-Chinese speaking country but in a home where the Mandarin Chinese dialect was spoken, and/or students who have acquired a certain level of Mandarin Chinese language proficiency (primarily speaking and listening) by living or working in a Chinese speaking country/region for an extended time. Though speaking and listening will be an integral part of the course, the major focus will be on developing students’ competence in reading and writing. The objectives of the course are: 1) to master the Chinese phonetic system (pinyin and tones) with satisfactory pronunciation; 2) to understand the construction of commonly used Chinese Characters (both simplified and traditional) and write them correctly; 3) to build up essential vocabulary needed to read and write about topics covered in the textbook; 4) to understand and use correctly basic Chinese grammar and sentence structures; 5) to comprehend level appropriate passages and to be able to perform simple sentence analysis; 6) to write level appropriate essays (250-300 characters long) with grammatical, accuracy as well as cohesion and coherence; 7) to become acquainted with and be able to discuss in speech and writing aspects of Chinese culture and society related to the course materials. Prerequisite: None. ​This course is followed by Intermediate for Advanced Beginners. Fulfillment: General Elective.