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Cynthia Ning is associate director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She regularly conducts teacher-training sessions for secondary and post-secondary levels on performance-based language testing and training, and gives a wide range of lectures on Chinese culture to both academic and nonacademic audiences. She has also served as president of the international Chinese Language Teachers Association.

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Exploring in Chinese

Yale University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................................7Introduction..............................................................8Unit A-1 Making FriendsLesson 1: Three Students Introduce Themselves.............................13Lesson 2: Interviews with Two Security Guards.............................23Lesson 3: Three Students Name Favorite Pastimes...........................45Lesson 4: American Students Interview a Chinese Woman.....................55Unit A-2 Making Friends (cont.)Lesson 5: A Seven-Way Chat................................................75Lesson 6: Introductory Comments by Two Boys...............................109Lesson 7: Advice on Making Friends........................................123Unit B Making Plans to Get TogetherLesson 8: Making an Appointment Face-to-Face..............................137Lesson 9: Making an Appointment on the Telephone..........................157Lesson 10: A Follow-up Call...............................................171Lesson 11: Advice on Refusing an Invitation...............................183Unit C Handling MealsLesson 12: Two Boys Comment on Dinner.....................................193Lesson 13: Ordering in a Chinese Restaurant (1)...........................203Lesson 14: Ordering in a Chinese Restaurant (2)...........................225Unit D ShoppingLesson 15: Buying T-Shirts................................................245Lesson 16: Buying Souvenirs...............................................253Lesson 17: Buying Postcards...............................................261Lesson 18: Buying Snacks..................................................281Lesson 19: Buying Magazines...............................................289Lesson 20: Advice on How to Shop..........................................309

Introduction

Creating the DVD The curriculum is based on edited video footage filmed in Beijing, China, in the summer of 1999. Its content includes interviews, filmed interactions among two or more people, and records of common transactions, all of which were purposely unrehearsed and unscripted, in order to maximize the "naturalness" and spontaneity of the interactions. The on-camera interviewers included three U.S. students: Robyn Yee, a high school junior and an Intermediate Low speaker of Chinese; Todd Pavel, graduate student in Asian Studies and an Intermediate Mid speaker of Chinese; and James Yao, graduate student in Asian Studies and an Advanced speaker of Chinese. Each of the interviewers was given a variety of assignments ("Go in this store and buy some snacks," "Ask that security guard about his background" ). We also interviewed a variety of Chinese people about their lives. The cues were general: "Tell us about how you spend an average day," or "How should an American student go about making friends?" The Chinese respondents very naturally adjusted their level of speech downwards since they were faced with "foreigners," so that what we recorded was more nearly at the optimal "i+l" level for the intermediate-level learner, rather than the normally "too high" level recorded as native-speaker speech. Also, since all segments were unrehearsed and unscripted, what we preserved is a record of people interacting in authentic and lively fashion-trying to decipher what each other is saying, asking for confirmation, working around miscues-all the elements of a real-life conversation. The curriculum is based on a DVD of 37 video segments arranged by topic and function. The first 20 lessons (Volume 1) are more characteristic of the Intermediate Low/Mid level, focusing on daily life interactions and transactions. The remaining 17 lessons (Volume 2) gradually become more descriptive and narrative, as is appropriate to moving toward the Intermediate High level. Each lesson offers two sound-tracks-the original sound recorded live (which is authentic and more interesting but sometimes harder to understand), and a dubbed soundtrack recorded in a studio (which is clearer but contains none of the color of the original, and does not quite match the cadence of the visuals). My suggestion is that users listen to the authentic soundtrack as much as possible, and certainly for all the first times they contact the material; the dubbed soundtrack can serve as a backup, perhaps as a final listening tool.

Contents of the Student Text The DVD is correlated with the two volumes of the student text, with learning activities divided into 37 lessons-20 lessons in Volume 1 (third semester college or third year high school) and 17 in Volume 2 (fourth semester college or fourth year high school). The lessons follow the format described below:

Previewing Activity: generally, predicting the content of the video, to "activate schemata" (bringing to mind sets of previously learned information about any given topic, to aid in comprehension). First Viewing, in which the focus is on understanding the main ideas in the segment. (Each "viewing" may actually include multiple viewings, of course.) Second Viewing, to tease out supporting details included in the segment. Third Viewing, to support linguistic work: focusing on specific useful new vocabulary and selected structural items. Cultural discussions may also be included here, although information on culture may be derived throughout the lesson. Postviewing Activities, including Speaking activities (in which students spiral the content of the lesson into speaking about their own lives); Reading activities including notes/letters written by native speakers pertaining to the objectives of the lesson, and a series of exercises beginning with top-down strategies (in which students try to decipher the main ideas of the reading) and progressing to bottom-up strategies (in which students work on vocabulary and detailed comprehension); and a brief Writing activity, in which students take the content of the Reading unit and write something about themselves. Transcript of the video segment, given in traditional characters, simplified characters, pinyin, and English. This is provided for the convenience of both the teacher and the students, who might want to read quickly through after all the other exercises have been completed, to pick up more information about the content of the segment, and perhaps to answer any remaining questions about what was said.

Within each section, students are encouraged to view the segment as many times as necessary to complete the assigned tasks. Our suggestion is not to read the transcript before doing all the exercises provided, or else students will not have the opportunity to develop comprehension strategies for authentic (or simulated authentic) situations. Students need to develop their tolerance for native-speaker speech, as well as their skills in guessing the meaning of what is said. The exercises throughout the curriculum are aimed at developing both tolerance and skills. Skipping ahead to the transcripts nullifies these benefits.

Overall, all texts provided within double borders (see pages 20-23, for example) are for reference; we suggest that students look at them only after doing the exercises provided.

Issues of Coverage

It has been commented that the contents of some of the DVD segments seem elementary, particularly in the early lessons and especially when compared with the contents of other Chinese language textbooks for the second year that are currently on the market. This is the result of a conscious choice regarding this curriculum: it is an implementation of the adage "Less is more!" of the proficiency approach, which advises in part that less be focused on ( introduced for the receptive skills of listening and reading, for example) so that more can be done with it (using the productive skills of speaking and writing, for instance).

Conversely, it has also been noted that the long lists of vocabulary that appear in the text in order to encourage students to express their own meaning in speech and writing far exceed similar lists in other second-year textbooks. Here, we are simply enabling the students to express them selves: the lists are for them to choose from, selectively, to enable them to spiral through conceptual, partial, and full control of the material. That is to say, students may scan through the lists and gain conceptual control of perhaps 60% of the material. Then they may hear classmates use some key terms, and through repeated exposure via interactions with the teacher and other students they will gain partial control of perhaps 40% of the material. Finally, because they themselves find a certain subset of the material particularly meaningful in their own lives, they will choose to use perhaps 20% of the material repeatedly, thereby gaining full control of it.

(A caveat to the teacher: when the time comes to test the students, then, it is important to allow for individual expression by the students. Rather than asking, "Write the Chinese terms for baseball, basketball, bicycling and billiards," for example, you might ask, "Write the Chinese terms for four of your favorite sporting activites." A perfectly acceptable answer might then be "ginshui [Japanese text], hu xueban [Japanese text], rng fipn [Japanese text]."]

You might also notice that these vocabulary lists include a certain amount of redundancy in them, that certain terms that have appeared in a previous lesson reappear in later ones. This is to support the principle of moving from conceptual to partial to full control. We don't expect students to master new terms the first time they encounter them, and so repeat them as necessary.

Concerns with Errors Where the American student interviewers or Chinese native respondents make errors in their speech, or state something in a non-standard way, the student exercises will note this, and suggest alternative forms of expression. Errors and miscues have been preserved in the text, because negotiating errors and extracting meaning is an essential skill in real life, and deserves classroon attention.

Pinyin Orthography As for the pinyin orthography used, we have tried to adhere to the principles listed and the corpus provided in John DeFrancis's groundbreaking ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary. Whereas in my previous text for the first year-the Communicating in Chinese series-I indicated tone sandhis (e.g., when one third tone follows another, the first one moves to second), in this volume I've moved to orthographical conventions, following which original tonal values are indicated on syllables. Thus, the number "one" always appears as "yi" rather than "yf" in front of a fourth tone and "yi" elsewhere, and the negative particle "b" is always "b," even before a fourth tone. Two third tones together are each marked by the third tone. We trust that by now, students who are going to be able to master tone sandhi principles have already done so, and have decided to privilege pinyin orthographical conventions instead.

Traditional and Simplified Characters This volume continues the tradition of Communicating in Chinese, in that students are encouraged to become familiar with both simplified and traditional characters, and to write in either one or the other format. To this end, glosses are provided in both formats. Many students I have taught have chosen first to read through one transcription (say the traditional) with the help of many handwritten notes, and then fold the page in half and "test" themselves by reading the other transcription in the other character format, without any notes.

PRC and Taiwan Usage Since the DVD was recorded in Beijing, PRC usage is privileged in this text; however, to the extent practical, Taiwan usage is included as well. Glosses indicate alternate forms of expression, and some of the simulated authentic notes included in reading sections were produced by Taiwan speakers.

Student Work as Teaching Material The inclusion of the work of the learner (edited by native speakers) in the reading sections is intended to 1) valorize the voice of the learner in the learning process; 2) provide an example of ideal i+1 texts [the original composition by the student being representative of the "i", and the minimal corrections made by the teacher constituting "+1"]; and 3) motivate learners to write for an intended audience (their classmates, in the immediate context).

Finally, supplementary materials to this text (such as indices) will be included at the end of Volume 2 and at yalebooks.com/eic.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please feel free to contact the author, Cynthia Ning, at .

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