Introduction

The intermediate Chinese language integrated course is designed for those Chinese language learners who have finished the elementary course, mastering 2000-2500 common words as well as basic communicative ability, and are be able to talk about personal or common topics with others in Chinese. 

Teaching Aims and Tasks

The teaching aims and tasks of this course are to further enlarge learners’ vocabulary, to consolidate, supplement, broaden and deepen the basic grammars; to improve their narrative abilities of using the vocabularies, structures, compound syntax and discourse structure knowledge they’ve learnt to discuss some certain topics, enabling learners to fluently communicate with others in both spoken and written Chinese. All in all, this intermediate course still aims at cultivating communicative competence and centers on skill training. Specific tasks as followings:

1. Master intermediate vocabularies, language points, functional sentences and relevant cultural knowledge.

2. Be able to understand the language materials related to the society and life and to express in simple narration, exposition and argumentation.

3. Learn more knowledge of Chinese language, and comprehensively enhance the integrated Chinese language competence (including listening, speaking, reading and writing) and appropriate communicative competence.

4. Further master relevant strategies of study, communication and resource, with the understanding of basic Chinese cultural knowledge, basic intercultural awareness and international horizon.

5. Further develop independent learning ability. 

Contents and Requirements

The Intermediate Chinese Language Integrated Course is generally open for one academic year (10 class hours per week, counting as 10 credits).

1. Listening

Have a good understanding of the pronunciation, intonation and tone of the given materials; be able to preliminarily recognize word meanings, characteristics of sentence pattern and language style, and be able to summarize the topic and key information of the given materials. Understand speeches or conversations about the general daily life and social activities.

2. Speaking

Be able to correctly grasp the rules of sound, rhyme, tone, stress, pause and intonation of Mandarin, and to fluently read general literature materials and narrative articles; be able to clearly express ideas in normal spoken speed, to naturally communicate or discuss about general news and the social life, and to have general or business negotiations.

3. Reading

Be able to read simple literature materials, practical writings of some certain areas, general popular science articles and news reports; be able to summarize the theme of the reading as well as to distingue its layers with the help of titles, key words and topic sentences.

4. Writing

Grasp Chinese character stroke, the stroke order and the writing rules; can take notes and make extracts from relevant materials; can write general articles with coherent discourse, complete narration, as well as clear and precise expression. 

Teaching Methods

1. Reviewing Old Lessons

Review the old lessons by phrase dictation, text context questioning, sentence making with the given words and sentence patterns, etc.

2. Learning New Words

1) Reading New Words

Students read once after the teacher, and each student read 10 words one by one.

2) Students can ask about the unknown new words and the teacher will give explanations.

3) The teacher teaches collocations and expanded knowledge and arranges exercises about them.

3. Learning Texts

 General steps：reading texts→explain texts→explain key words→express in paragraph

1) Reading Texts

Students read texts one by one, one paragraph per person. The teacher correct their mistakes in pronunciations, tones and pauses.

2) Explaining Texts

Generally the teacher raises questions about the contents and requires students to give oral responses using given key words.

3) Explaining Key Words

General steps: demonstration→explanation→application

4) Expressing in Paragraph

The teacher instructs students to recite the contents of one paragraph or one layer by comprehensive questioning and answering and, by asking for an explanation, lead students to express their opinions on certain issues.

4. Exercising and Explanation

Assign homework (after-class practice) after completing each teaching steps mentioned before.

Test for Intermediate Chinese Language Integrated Course 

1. Test Principle:

This is a course results test, not for testing language level, while will also reflect the comprehensive abilities (including listening, speaking, reading and writing) of students. The test items are mainly about the content of the course, and students must finish the test within the fixed time. It is a closed-book exam.

2. Question Types of the Test

1) Phrase dictation (5%)

2) Gap filling (15%)

3) Word placing (10%)

4) Sentence correction (10%)

5) Sentence completion with the specified word or sentence pattern (10%)

6) Sentence making (10%)

7) Cloze (10%)

8) Reading comprehension (20%)

9) Writing (10%)

3. Scoring Method

The full score of the test is 100 points, each question with certain points, and the answer sheets will be marked accordingly.