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The Language Centre

Chinese Beginners (Extra) (LL2B1)

Summary

Level:

Beginners and near beginners. As well as being open to students with no knowledge of oriental scripts in their prior language learning or mother tongues, the module is also open to students who may have some prior knowledge.

Main Objectives:

To enable students to enhance their knowledge on basic sentence patterns and ways of expressions, developing competence in a range of predictable everyday tasks. This level allows the students to take fast pace to achieve the outcome of Chinese 2 by the end of the study. Simplified Chinese characters will be taught and assessed.

Credits:

This is a 24 or 30 CREDIT module.

Teaching hours:

  1. Term One: 2 x 2 hour seminar per week over 9 weeks
  2. Term Two: 2 x 2 hour hour seminar per week over 10 weeks
Students are reminded that 1 credit = 10 hours of study, therefore the minimum expected amount of study is 240 hours, which averages over 10 hours per week. A substantial amount of independent study is therefore required.

Tutors:

Zhiyan GUO, Zhong ZHENG

Core Texts:

  • New Practical Chinese Reader (2nd Edition), Textbook 1, Liu Xun. Beijing Language University Press, 2002. (ISBN: 7-5619-1040-1)

  • New Practical Chinese Reader (2nd Edition), Textbook 2 (Units 15-17), Liu Xun. Beijing Language University Press, 2002. (ISBN: 7-5619-1129-7)

  • New Practical Chinese Reader (2nd Edition), Workbook 1, Liu Xun. Beijing Language University Press, 2002.(ISBN: 7-5619-1042-8)

  • New Practical Chinese Reader (2nd Edition), Workbook 2 (Units 15-17), Liu Xun. Beijing Language University Press, 2002. (ISBN: 7-5619-1145-7)

Additional Materials:

  • Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2000. (ISBN: 0198602588)
  • Basic Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook (2nd Edition), Yip Po-Ching and Don Rimmington, Routledge, 2009. (ISBN:0-415-47215-6)
  • Yufa ! A practical guide to Mandarin Chinese.

Course Description:

The module will focus on acquiring essential listening and speaking skills, providing more exposure and practice of speech sounds and tones. Students will also develop and further practise their reading techniques and writing of characters. The stimulus material (aural, written and visual) not only provides an introduction to Chinese language but also gives the students an insight into a broad spectrum of everyday life in China. The text-book provides written text in both characters and pinyin tones. The workbook, however, gives greater prominence to characters. The online materials will reinforce students' classroom learning.


Learning Outcomes:

  • Communicate more confidently with a certain level of oral fluency and accuracy in a range of daily life situations
  • Obtain general and detailed information from audio materials of clear and standard pronunication
  • Find required messages from Chinese texts on familiar topics
  • Compose longer paragraphs in characters

Syllabus:

 
Communicative functions
  • ordering drinks and food
  • getting personal information and talking about one's family
  • talking about one's university
  • making an appointment
  • celebrating one's birthday
  • shopping
  • talking about past activities and experience
  • renting a house
  • changing money at the bank


 Grammatical content

  • basic sentence structures
  • different forms of questions
  • attributives expressing possession
  • some commonly used adverbs
  • numbers from 1-999 and numeral-measure words as attributives
  • optative verbs
  • pivotal sentences
  • the particle 'le'
  • the 'ba' sentence
  • comparison

Assessment Scheme:

Exam summary and skills weighting: Assessment

Marking criteria (written): Marking criteria (written) Chinese/Japanese levels 1/2

Marking criteria (oral): Marking criteria (oral) Chinese/Japanese 1/2

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