CHIN 304            2 Credit Hours

Comprehension and Oral Expression II

This information is for second semester 2017/2018 academic year

Teacher responsible

Ms. Che Wenping

Availability

This course is available open to all visiting students but only as a second semester course.

Course Content

This is an intermediate level course. The purpose is to increase students' vocabulary, to improve their ability to express themselves orally and on paper, thus to improve their ability in comprehensive Chinese application. It aims to consolidate and extend the language skills developed in Chinese through further oral, reading, writing as well as translation practice. The emphasis is on the application of the student's language training to the study of Chinese source materials reflecting contemporary culture, society and everyday life in China.

Teaching

Wednesday, 15:30 PM - 17:20 PM for 12 weeks.

Presentation of the topics takes the form of a lecture and discussion on set topics. Students are required to read and listen to course materials before the class session it is assigned for. The Lecturer will not repeat the reading; usually, lectures will involve illustrating selected points by working through pieces of data. Students are expected to come prepared to discuss, with their questions that arise out of the reading.

Formative Coursework

Student’s general performance is assessed through class participation, group presentations, written assignment, class tests and final end-of Semester Examination.

Indicative reading

Books:

1. Say It Now: A Complete Handbook of Chinese Idiom
2. ShaoLan. Chineasy Everyday: Learning Chinese Through Its Culture (Harper Design)

Facebook Chinese Learning Resources:

1. Hanbridge Mandarin Facebook share various Chinese language topics in a fun way.
2. Business Chinese Learning It is mainly for business man that there are a lot of posts about business Chinese vocabulary, job interview phrase, Chinese business culture and etiquette.
3. Learn Chinese characters It is a page where you can learn how to read and write the most common used Chinese characters.
4. All about ChineseThis page doesn’t share all the things about Chinese, and it is much more about motto in Chinese.
5. CCTV中文From this page, you can get acquainted with the latest happenings in China and learn Chinese at the same time.

Dictionaries 

(Online)

1. Han Dian (in Chinese)
2. Wikipedia
3. Wikipedia can actually be used as a dictionary, especially of proper names, historical events, modern culture, etc. Simply go to the English language page on the topic you

are interested in and click on the left-hand-side link to Chinese (中文) Wikipedia (if available). You will be taken to the Chinese page on the same topic.

4. Google Images
5. Google Images can be used as a visual dictionary, this is especially helpful with nouns which are not easily expressed with words, such as types of food.
6. Wiktionary
   You can search in Pinyin and Hanzi.
7. 小马词典 Xiaoma Cidian
   Has Hanzi, Pinyin and english lookup.

(Offline)

1. CC-CEDICT for GoldenDict/Stardict and OS X Dictionary
   Recommended for use with GoldenDict on Windows/Linux/Android, or with Mac OS X's built-in Dictionary.
2. Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro for Android. Commercial (Lite version also available). Handwriting recognition, stroke animation, native speaker audio, soundboard, powerful tagging system, AnkiDroid export integration. No ads. Based on CC-CEDICT but ABC Chinese-English and ABC English-Chinese available as in-app purchases.
3. Youdao: It has various versions for Android, iPhone, Desktop Mac, iPad, Android Pad, Windows Phone. See above for the online version.
4. Pleco: Smartphone/tablet app for Android or Apple. Mature and well-supported. The core dictionary app is free, no-ads. Additional dictionaries (such as Chinese<->French, or all-medical-terms) and features (such as flashcards and OCR) can be added, the better ones requiring money.

Assessment and Grading

Evaluation will be based on a continued assessment which will constitute 30% and a final end of semester term paper which will constitute 70%.

Grading Scale: