Full 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 instructors, the book offers advanced learners the opportunity to consolidate their knowledge of Chinese through a wide range of activities designed to build up both excellent language skills and cultural literacy.
Divided into four thematic units covering popular culture, social change, cultural traditions, and politics and history, with each unit presenting three individual lessons, the volume provides students with a structured course which efficiently supports the transition from an intermediate to an advanced level. The many different texts featured throughout the lessons present interesting and accurate information about contemporary China and introduce students to useful vocabulary, speech patterns, and idiosyncratic language usage.
Key features include
Lively and detailed discussions of grammatical points and sentence patterns
Engaging exercises for developing grammatical concepts and insight into the character writing system
Systematic review of earlier material to ensure consolidation of learning
Coverage of diverse and culturally relevant topics such as online dating, changing views of marriage, food culture, Confucianism and democracy in China.
Extensive cultural and historical notes providing background to the subjects presented
Complementary downloadable resources to enhance listening skills.
Free companion website (http://duke.edu/web/chinesesoc/) offering a wealth of video content forming the basis of many of the listening activities linked to topics within the book.
Extensively revised and updated throughout, this new edition includes new material and activities on synonyms and substantial improvements to the "composition", "Focus on characters" and "Language practicum" sections.
The improved Instructor's Resource Manual, which includes activity tips, additional exercises, answer keys and the traditional character texts, is available at http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415841337/
Contents
Preface in English. Preface in Chinese. List of Abbreviations and conventions. 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. Indices: Pinyin-English vocabulary. English-Pinyin vocabulary. Idioms of speech patterns.
