BA Art History and Chinese

Chinese 6 is intended for final-year students who began Mandarin Chinese ab initio in their first year and who have returned from the period of Residence Abroad, or for level 1 or 2 students who have substantial experience studying Chinese or who have already completed Chinese 5. Students are expected but not required to have passed HSK level 5 by the start of this unit. This course focuses on real language use in everyday communicative contexts. All learning activities, including preparation before class, discussion in class and homework after class, are conducted in the target language. Learning activities are organized to enhance students' comprehension of Chinese in preparation for participation in real-life Chinese-language situations. The course is designed to build upon and consolidate students’ advanced level of Chinese language proficiency, with the goal of reaching HSK level 6 and developing a vocabulary approaching 4000-5000 words by the end of the year.

This course aims to:

• Enable students to understand advanced reading materials from various original Chinese-language sources
• Enhance students’ ability to communicate orally on a variety of topics
• Guide students in applying a variety of writing skills and grammatical structures to specific tasks

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

• Produce a solid argument in both oral and written form 
• Exchange information with native speakers fluently 
• Express ideas in Chinese clearly, precisely and coherently 
• Extract information from a variety of media and sources, including newspapers, journals, radio broadcasts, TV and the internet 
• Plan, structure and evaluate learning strategies and processes 
• Read various kinds of Chinese texts (literary, journalistic, etc) dealing with a wide range of topics 
• Demonstrate a good level of understanding and analysis of advanced Chinese-language texts (literary, journalistic, etc.) on a wide range of contemporary issues 
• Reflect on the activity of writing and apply appropriate approaches in their own writing 
• Express themselves clearly on complex subjects in a well-structured essay or a report 
• Speak with a high degree of fluency and accuracy and take part in discussion and debate covering a range of social, cultural and political contexts 
• Prepare and give oral presentations in Chinese on a wide range of topics 

Topics may change from year to year, the following is an indicative list of topics that may be covered in a given year:

Semester 1:

Week 1. Online dating  
Week 2. Brand-name fever  
Week 3. Television dramas and popular culture  
Week 4. The city of Yiwu in Zhejiang 
Week 5. Floating population  
Week 6. Changing views of marriage  
Week 7. Chinese food culture  
Week 8. Confucianism in modern China  
Week 9. Chinese architecture in transition  
Week 10. Educated youth 
Week 11. A start for democracy 
Week 12. Revision  

Semester 2:

Topic 1: Current Affairs 
Topic 2: International Relations  
Topic 3: Chinese Political Parties  
Topic 4: Working and living in China  
Topic 5: Birth control policy of China 
Topic 6: Chinese Poetry  
Topic 7: Chinese Fiction   
Week 12: oral exam 

 A combination of lectures, seminars and tutorials, totalling three contact hours per week.

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

• Analyse difficult authentic texts by using reading comprehension skills 
• Explore various social issues in China 
• Write a clear report using coherent paragraphs 

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Analyse difficult authentic texts by using the reading comprehension skills
• Explore various social issues in China
• Write a clear report using coherent paragraphs

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Follow current trends in the development of the Chinese language and in Chinese media and society using Chinese-language materials
• Write descriptive and argumentative essays
• Master the writing of different types of essays
• Reach, or be close to reaching, HSK level 6 (requiring a vocabulary of 5000 Chinese words)

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Develop independent learning skills
• Work effectively in pairs and groups
• Acquire advanced critical reading skills
• Demonstrate high-level presentation and debating skills
• Write clearly and effectively

Resit Assessment:

Video and Essay

• Comments made during class discussion regarding the relevance and coherence of student participation in discussion
• Comments made during oral presentation regarding the relevance and coherence of the presentation, including word choice, sentence structure and content
• One-to-one feedback before oral presentation

Lee, Kunshan Carolyn et al, The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. (required textbook)

Wang, Hailong, Cultural Interpretations of China: An Advanced Reader. Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2002.

Wang, Hailong, Reading China through Newspaper Contextual Comprehension and Pedagogical Practice. Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2004.

Guenier, A. The Little Book of Health: Chinese Secrets to Happy Living. Manutius Press. 2018.

Exceptions to word-processed assignments: Assessed coursework and the essay should be hand-written.  

Students may take a one-volume Chinese-English-Chinese dictionary provided on the examination date.