Introduction

Elementary Chinese Listening Course is an important course for international students with little basis of Chinese, supporting and supplementing Elementary Integrated Chinese Course.

Phonetics and meanings, closely related, are two important parts of language. Phonetics (spoken language), prior to characters (written language), is the initial in foreign language acquirement. To improve listening Chinese is both difficult and essential during the beginning period of learning Chinese. 

Aims and Tasks

Listening courses aim at developing the ability of good comprehension in communication of students. These following abilities are required:

1. recognize words in listening

2. recognize stresses and tone of a sentence

3. understand structures and meanings of sentences

4. Memorizing

5. Grasping main contents and key information

6. Grasping details

7. Associating and predicting

8. Instant feedback

Contents and Requirements

The elementary listening course lasts for one academic year (4 class hours per week) and can be pided into 3 periods:

1. Period of phonetics: During this period, students will mainly learn how to recognize words and tones, adapt to the changes of tones and notice the subtle differences in meanings expressed in different tones.

1) Distinguish the initials and the finals

2) Distinguish the tones.

3) Percept the syllables.

4) Percept the neutral tone and retroflex (suffix -er)

5) Adapt to the change of tones.

Students in this period have to comprehend materials with 120-130 words/minute.

2. Period of grammar: Understand structures and meanings of sentences and dialogues. Memorizing ability and associating ability are the two key listening skills:

1) Different tones of all types of questions in difference contexts.

2) Changing meanings because of changing stresses, tones in sentences.

3) the structural meaning of sentence and notice the significance of word orders.

4) Grasping the key words and notice the stress for capturing the key information.

5) Establish the ability of instant feedback; develop Chinese way of thinking.

6) Students in this period have to comprehend materials with 140-150 words/minute.

3. The period of passage: On the basis of basic grammars and structures, students have to understand words and expressions in depth and try to understand longer dialogues and passages. Listening skills in this period are to associate, predict and to generalize, summarize. This is the top level among the period of elementary listening.

1、Know the implication of words.

2、Grasp associated words, transitive sentences and given information and try to predict.

3、Understand parataxis in Chinese and to find topic sentence quickly.

4、Generalizing and retelling after listening.

5、Memorizing while listening； develop the ability of information conversion.

6、Know necessary cultural backgrounds.

Students in this period have to comprehend materials with 160-170 words/minute. 

Suggested Teaching Steps and Methods

1. Organize classes

2. Review acquired words in Integrated Course and teach knowledge related.

3. Review acquired grammar in Integrated Course.

4. Teach new contents.

1) Distinguish phonetics

2) Grasp the general idea of listening materials at first listening.

3) Capture more details at second listening.

4) Retell.

5) Answer questions.

Suggested Test

1. This is a course results test, not for testing language level. This test is to exam comprehension of listening materials but not memorizing, speaking, writing or cultures.

2. Test Forms

The Period of Phonetics: To test the ability of distinguishing words and tones of students. Suggested test forms: Listening and choose initials / finals/ syllables; Listening and mark the tones/ spell/ write in Chinese Pinyin.

3. The period of grammar: Taking sentences and dialogues as main language materials to test if students know the meaning, if they can feedback instantly, if they can memorize information they have listened to. Suggested test forms: Choose questions according to the stresses; Match the answers according to the listening materials; True of False/ Multiple choice based on listening materials.