CHI4040 - Chinese 4

Leader: Robert Irving

Offered

Clayton Second semester 2007 (Day)

Synopsis

Chinese 4 completes an overview of the important sentence structures of modern standard Chinese. Equal emphasis is placed on the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. Speaking classes cover practical, everyday situations, to develop interactive competence at a basic level in a range of situations likely to be encountered in daily life in contemporary China. In addition to regular classroom activities, listening and reading skills will be further developed through the use of audio/visual, Web-based and computer-assisted language learning materials.

Objectives

Building on the language skills acquired in Chinese 3, on successful completion of Chinese 4, students will have developed:

1. The ability to read and write around an additional 200 Chinese characters (900 in total).
2. An understanding of the basic syntax of Modern Standard Chinese and of the similarities and differences between it and English.
3. Knowledge of a grammatical framework with which to analyse and describe the vernacular Chinese under study facilitating progression to later study of formal written Chinese (in Chinese Media Studies and Advanced Chinese).
4. Comprehension skills necessary to read simple modern vernacular texts.
5. Basic Chinese word processing skills.
6. Oral/aural skills necessary to communicate quantitatively and qualitatively in a range of everyday, practical situations (approximates to International Second Language Proficiency level 1+: transactional proficiency).

Assessment

Weekly homework exercises: 20%
Written examination (2.5 hours) and written tests: 50%
Aural/oral tests and class performance: 30%

Contact hours

4 hours (2 x 1 hour lectures and 2 x 1 hour tutorials) per week

Prerequisites

A pass in CHI4030 or equivalent

Prohibitions

CHI1040, CHI2040, CHI5040