CN 351I - Chinese Language in Context: Independent Abroad I

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 approximately two years (four or more semesters or six quarters).  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. It is designed to bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced Chinese. Students will acquire 1700 new words, the ability to correctly utilize new sentence and grammar patterns, and the skills necessary to utilize newly acquired material in practice dialogues. All of the course content is related to contemporary issues in China, with topics focusing on the daily lives of the Chinese people.  The class emphasizes all four major areas of language acquisition: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

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).