CN 403I - Chinese Language in Context: Emerging Competent Abroad II

This class is a course in Chinese language for non-Chinese speakers participating in the Language Intensive Program. It is designed for those students who have studied Chinese for between three and four years (six or seven semesters or nine to eleven quarters).  The course will begin with a series of intensive “foundation building” sessions which not only give students communication tools that are immediately useful in their daily life but which also consolidate previously learned fundamentals of the Chinese language. It is designed to further challenge and enrich the language skill sets of students whose proficiency is approximately at the advanced Chinese level. Students will acquire over 2500 new words, the ability to correctly utilize several hundred sentence and grammar patterns, and gain proficiency in comprehending newspaper articles, plays and novels, video and movie clips, and commentaries. All of the course content is related to contemporary issues in China, Chinese history, Chinese literature, and Chinese culture.  The class emphasizes all four major areas of language acquisition: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.  Students will acquire several new skills in the class, including: (a) how to interview native speakers of Chinese; (b) the ability to discuss a range of social, economic, and political issues; (c) the ability to write essays based on specific topics; (d) the skills needed to make effective presentations in Chinese; and (e) the ability to do basic translations and interpretation. By the end of the semester students should be able to easily express their opinions and to be able to hold discussions with native speakers of Chinese on a wide range of topics. Students should also have developed an appreciation for Chinese literature, know how to correctly distinguish between formal and informal patterns of speech, and be able to identify different styles of writing. 

Research has demonstrated that study abroad can enhance every aspect of language ability. One of the most important general findings of this research is, however, that study abroad is most beneficial for the development of abilities related to social interaction. Students who go abroad can learn to do things with words, such as requesting, apologizing, or offering compliments, and they may also learn to interpret situations calling such speech acts in ways that local people do…In short, and logically, study abroad has been show to enhance the aspects of communicative competence that are most difficult to foster in classroom settings (IES Abroad MAP for Language and Intercultural Communication, p. 6).