Prerequisites
CHIN 0400 or teacher permission
Textbook:
A New China （《新的中国》）, Chou Chih-p’ing et al. Princeton University Press, 2011.
Coordinator
Dr. Ye Tian (tianye1@sas.upenn.edu)
Course Descriptions
The main purpose of this 5th semester Chinese course is to consolidate the foundation, which you have built in beginning modern Chinese courses, and to introduce more complex grammatical structures and vocabulary that help students to understand formal Chinese. The second purpose is to enhance your understanding of Chinese culture, society, people and their everyday life as well as China’s status quo since Deng Xiaoping’s opening of China’s market to the western countries in 1978. The following 10 topics is covered in 211: slogan culture; language policy and ethnic minority; manufacturing industry; idiom and economic policy; state owned enterprises; Sino-US relations; college entrance exam; censorship; Taiwan issue; divorce and Women’s rights; and population aging. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is the key feature of this course. We use non-language content as vehicle for promoting Chinese language proficiency. In terms of technology skills, this course explores Machine Translation, Optical Character Recognition, and Speech Recognition tools to prepare students for life-long Chinese learning after Penn Chinese education.
Sample Text (Entry):
学校附近有一所小学，小学的大门口儿有一块很大的牌子，上面有毛主席写的八个大字：“好好学习，天天向上”。大概每个中国小学生都知道这句话。（From Lesson 22 《好好学习，天天向上》）
Sample Text (Exit):
以前女人在经济上完全依靠男人，如果离了婚，他们就失去了生活的保障。所以即使没有爱情，婚姻还是得维持下去。现在可不是这样了。有的家庭里，妻子的收入比丈夫还高。（From Lesson 32 《离婚》）