High Intermediate Chinese I

Catalog description

This course builds on what students have learned in beginning and intermediate Modern Chinese and further develops their language proficiency by introducing the formal register used in academic, professional, and public contexts. Students explore contemporary Chinese culture, society, and everyday life since China’s economic reforms and opening up in 1978, using comparisons with the United States to strengthen their intercultural communicative competence. Through ten thematic units—including language policy, manufacturing, economic discourse, state-owned enterprises, Sino–U.S. relations, education, censorship, Taiwan, and population aging—the course integrates language learning with meaningful content through a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach. A wide range of authentic materials, such as TikTok videos and other media, are used to promote multimodal learning. Students also learn to use AI-based tools responsibly and effectively—including machine translation, optical character recognition, speech recognition and synthesis, and large language models—to support continued Chinese learning beyond Penn.