This course is aimed at students who have built up a working vocabulary of Chinese and some knowledge of the language but wish to further develop their communication skills in oral, aural and written form.

This course will enable students to use a broader range of oral, aural and written language skills, sufficient to get by in China with some hesitations on topics concerned with everyday matters and express their view in writing using both pin yin and Chinese characters, in a more elaborate style. Students will further develop an understanding of the culture of China.

METHODS OF TEACHING: i) Weekly two-hour workshops taught by Tutors from the Cardiff University Confucius Institute
METHODS OF ASSESSMENT: i) Coursework (20%) 2 pieces of text production
ii) Oral continuous assessment (40%) iii) Aural class test (40%)

Email: languages@cardiff.ac.uk

Knowledge and Understanding:    

• demonstrate their ability to understand the gist and some detail of short authentic texts around familiar topics by adequately completing listening tasks.
• show their ability to extract information and ideas relating to everyday situations and topics by adequately completing reading tasks.
• show their ability to give a short presentation on familiar topics with the help of pre-prepared outlines.
• show their ability to write short texts with the help of dictionaries.
• show their ability to do some basic translations by completing worksheets.

Intellectual Skills                           

integrate information provided in taught sessions and private study.

Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills:

 demonstrate their ability to communicate at a level which is sufficient

  to get by in  practical situations whilst sustaining a dialogue in Mandarin Chinese.

• demonstrate their ability to construct short connected written texts on topics which are familiar or of personal interest.
• express opinions and ideas with some grammatical accuracy in spoken and  written form.
• demonstrate their ability to describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Students will actively participate in dialogues, group discussions and other interactive language exercises. The use of multi-media teaching facilities such as power-point presentations and CD playing will enhance students’ active language learning.

48 contact hours – interactive language work-shops.

• to be responsive to the discipline of working with others as part of a group.
•  to understand and reflect upon different cultures and societies.

Coursework (20%) and Written class test (40%)  to test students ability of understanding simple texts and produce written responses and translate simple sentences.

Oral continuous assessment (20%) to test students ability to produce oral dialogues in Chinese

Aural class test (20%) to test students basic understanding of familiar day to day life

The main language functions covered in this course are:

1. Eating in a restaurant
2. Talking about time and date
3. Talking about weather
4. Discussing specialities
5. Travelling
6. Yesterday, today and tomorrow
7. Taking a plane
8. Shopping
9. Services in the hotel
10. Attending a party
11. Seeing a doctor
12. Attending a banquet

The main grammatical features covered in this course are:

1. The usage of particle ‘le’
2. The usage of particle ‘guo’ and past tense
3. The usage of ‘(jiang) yao’ and future tense
4. The usage of preposition ‘ba’
5. Measure words
6. Comparative study of grammars of Chinese and English