CHNS101
Elementary Chinese I
Prerequisites: 2.75 GPA, and approval by the Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.
Balanced emphasis is on listening, speaking, reading, and writing for beginners. This course has been approved for General Education credit in Area 5 International and Intercultural Studies.
Detailed Description of Course
Situations and intentions covered include: greetings, commands, numbers, simple introduction of oneself and friends; the classroom, the school, the dorm, the family, the restaurant; personal qualities, nationality; daily routine; personal information on forms; ownership; birthdays, and holidays.
Vocabulary is limited to basic objects, common measures, numbers 1-99, name of immediate family members. Use of common verbs and adjectives in the present time frame: “shi(4), you(3), zai(4)” as in “Wo(3) shi(4) zher(4).”
Cultural sections focus on: international college students studying and traveling in China, cultural differences, and background information regarding Chinese society, history, local customs and national holidays.
Grammatical structures include: gender, number; personal pronouns, possessive adjectives, articles (also negative); basic verbs, and word order.
In the first week of semester, instructor will introduce an overview of Chinese language including a brief description of Chinese dialects; the fundamental rules of learning the Chinese script, the basic strokes, the five tones; the character components, and their historical development. Students will spend the rest of the semester learning and practicing their pronunciation, basic conversation skills, and writing Chinese characters.
Detailed Description of Conduct of Course
Class instruction targets communication practice utilizing the situations, intentions, vocabulary, culture, and grammar introduced in a given chapter. Other activities include: singing songs; doing skits; playing Chinese games; explaining grammar and vocabulary; practicing pronunciation, listening comprehension exercises; translation, writing, and grammatical drills. Class is conducted both in Chinese and English depending on the level of students’ Chinese language comprehension.
Student Goals and Objectives of the Course
Speaking and listening goals (standardized ACTFL proficiency criteria): Having successfully completed this course, the student will be able to make short statements utilizing simple formulaic utterances, ask simply questions and communicate minimally with learned material. Students will produce oral speech using isolated words and learned phrases with predictable areas of need. Even though students’ pronunciation and tones are often faulty, students are minimally able to recombine learned oral elements slowly. As regards listening skills, students will be able to recognize learned material and isolated words and phrases when strongly supported by context and at a very slow speaking pace. Students will be able to comprehend some words and phrases from simple questions, statements, high frequency commands, and courtesy formulae about topics that refer to basic personal information or the immediate physical setting.
Reading and writing goals (standardized ACTFL proficiency criteria): Students will be able to identify learned material without assistance and to understand some new material when strongly supported by cognates, context, or dictionary assistance. In writing, students will be able to produce isolated words and phrases from learned material and will be limited to producing the most basic grammar in graded sentences.
Broad General Education Goals. Students will be able to:

*think critically and creatively about ideas, issues, problems, and texts both within and across academic disciplines
CHNS 101 students will acquire some basic social, economic, or political knowledge about issues of current importance in the Chinese cultures and be able to discuss these issues on an elementary level.
*employ a variety of research methods and styles of inquiry
Students will learn to gather information about Chinese cultures and communicate about it by means of a variety of TV programs, audio, video, or computer technologies.
*work with others in a shared process of inquiry and problem-solving
They will practice Chinese and communicate about other cultures with each other in small groups and with at least one native speaker.
*identify the cultural values that shape decisions in public, professional, and private life
As a result of all these intercultural encounters, students will be able to understand how different cultural values affect perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors that they would tend to take for granted and not analyze so critically in a monocultural environment.
Area 5 Goals. Students will be able to:
* demonstrate an understanding of the central place of language in shaping thinking, values, and other aspects of culture
CHNS 101 students will, in learning another language system and its cultural centeredness, understand the interrelatedness of language and culture in the perceptions and values of other cultures.
*demonstrate an awareness of the diversity of cultures beyond the United States and analyze similarities and differences between their own and other cultures that affect perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors
Students will be able to analyze a number of basic cultural similarities and differences between the United States, China and Taiwan. These comparisons students make between their own and other cultures will help students realize how diverse cultures can be.
*identify and discuss important global issues that highlight the relationships among peoples and nations
Students will, in class conversations, with native speakers, and in readings, acquire knowledge about some historical, but mostly current global issues that are in the news and that are having a significant social, economic, or political impact.
Assessment Measures
Speaking progress is evaluated in class and in oral interviews. Written homework assignments provide a basis for the evaluation of writing progress. Listening and reading comprehension and grammatical accuracy are tested in quizzes, chapter tests, and on the final exam. In most of these testing situations, students will also either demonstrate or further expand (in the case of new linguistic excerpts containing new cultural topics) their familiarity with cultural topics and current global issues. Students’ success in using Chinese will therefore demonstrate not only their linguistic abilities but also their cultural competence to anticipate, identify, and to simulate the use of different cultural perceptions and behaviors through the new language.
Other Course Information
To supplement linguistic and cultural encounters in class, students are expected to participate in some extracurricular activities such as the celebration of Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, and conversation with native speakers, watching Chinese language movies, and inquiring about Chinese cultures by means of the multitude of media available as informational resources. Chinese 101 is for beginners in the Kirk Scholar Program and students who have had no more than two years of Chinese in high school.
The course is designed to attract students who have 2.75 GPA and are interested in learning the Chinese language and culture. No specific majors are required.