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The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course

Crossing Cultural Boundaries

By Kun-shan Carolyn Lee, Hsin-Hsin Liang, Liwei Jiao, Julian Wheatley

Published November 9th 2009 by Routledge – 16 pages

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Description

The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries is an innovative multimedia course for advanced students of Chinese. Written by a team of highly experienced teachers, the book offers advanced learners of Chinese a chance to consolidate their foundation in the language through a variety of activities, which are designed to develop both language skills and cultural literacy.

Divided into four thematic units covering popular culture, social change, cultural traditions and politics and history, each unit contains three lessons providing the student with a structured course which supports the transition from an intermediate to advanced level.

The 12 lessons are comprised of texts which present interesting and accurate information about contemporary China, introducing the student to useful vocabulary, speech patterns, and idiosyncratic language usage.

Key features include:

  • lively and detailed discussions of grammatical points and sentence patterns
  • exercises for developing grammatical concepts and insight into the character writing system
  • systematic review of earlier material to ensure consolidation of learning
  • extensive cultural and historical notes providing background to the subjects presented.
  • complimentary CDs to enhance listening skills.

Further material can be found on the accompanying website at: http://duke.edu/web/chinesesoc/. The site is also linked to a multimedia website with a wealth of video content which forms the basis of many of the listening activities linked to topics within the book. In addition, the Teacher's Handbook can be requested at www.routledgelanguages.com/9780415774079.

Reviews

'A timely and significant contribution to advanced Chinese instruction. Amazingly well-thought-out!' - Zheng-sheng Zhang, Editor of the Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association

'The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries is one of the best advanced level textbooks I’ve ever used. Its detailed grammar notes and diversified exercises are finely designed. It saves time for teachers and helps students understand the Chinese language better. Finally we have a better choice of textbook for advanced Chinese courses.' - Min Chen, Yale University, USA

'This textbook contains the essential aspects of Chinese culture relevant for advanced learners of the Chinese language. The selected topics focus on contemporary Chinese society while revealing how the past has laid the foundation. The varieties of exercises make the course suitable for both classroom-teaching and self-learning.' - Daming Wu, University of Leeds, UK

'This book is innovative, original and pedagogically sound' - Sharon Wen, University of Houston, USA

Contents

Unit One: Popular Culture Lesson 1 Online Dating Lesson 2 Name Brand Fever Lesson 3 Popular Culture as Seen from TV Serials Unit Two: Social Change Lesson 4 Yiwu in Zhejiang: A Miracle of Chinese Regional Economic Development Lesson 5 Floating Population Lesson 6 Changes in Marriage Customs Unit Three: Cultural Traditions Lesson 7 Chinese Food Culture Lesson 8 A Short Introduction to Confucian Thought Lesson 9 Chinese Architecture in Transition Unit Four: History & Politics Lesson 10 The Generation of ‘Educated Youth' Lesson 11 A Start for Democracy in China Lesson 12 Cross-Strait relations

Author Bio

Kunshan Carolyn Lee is an Associate Professor of the Practice and the Director of the Chinese language program in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University.

Hsin-hsin Liang is an Assistant Professor of Chinese and the Director of Modern Chinese Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Virginia.

Liwei Jiao is a Lecturer of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania.

Julian K. Wheatley is currently a Visiting Associate Professor in Chinese at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Formerly he spent 10 years each at Cornell University and MIT in the dual roles of Senior Lecturer and Chinese Program Coordinator.

The Teacher's Handbook is freely available to all teachers using this course. For more information and to receive the handbook please email samantha.valenoya@tandf.co.uk

Sample Chapter PDF (2.23 MB)

  • Companion Website