Chinese Language in Context: Emerging Independent Abroad I - 301

This class is a course in Chinese language for non-Chinese speakers participating in the Language Intensive Program. It is designed for those students who have studied Chinese for three to four semesters.  The course will begin with a series of intensive “foundation building” sessions which not only give students communication tools that are immediately useful in their daily life but which also consolidate previously learned fundamentals of the Chinese language.  Students will acquire 1400 new words, the ability to correctly utilize new sentence and grammar patterns, and will complete specific ‘activity objectives.’ Students will learn several new skills in this class, including: (a) the ability to engage native speakers of Chinese in higher level conversations on topics including  “traffic and transportation in urban areas,” “laid-off workers” and “the single-child generation.”; (b) the ability to write essays on specific topics; and (c) the ability to compose stories or narratives based on certain information or visual aids.  Students will be encouraged to complete assignments creatively making full use of newly learned structures and vocabulary.  Through these exercises, students will be able to communicate with native speakers of Chinese on topics related to society and social issues.

Research has demonstrated that study abroad can enhance every aspect of language ability. One of the most important general findings of this research is, however, that study abroad is most beneficial for the development of abilities related to social interaction. Students who go abroad can learn to do things with words, such as requesting, apologizing, or offering compliments, and they may also learn to interpret situations calling such speech acts in ways that local people do…In short, and logically, study abroad has been show to enhance the aspects of communicative competence that are most difficult to foster in classroom settings (IES Abroad MAP for Language and Intercultural Communication, p. 6).