Communicating in Chinese - An interactive Approach to beginning Chinese, Student's Book for Listening and Speaking

Communicating in Chinese is for the beginning learner. The basic texts include two student books and two activity books for teachers, as well as supplementary materials. The series provides a framework for a proficiency-based approach to learning standard Chinese. Focusing on all four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), the texts provide a series of graded exercises that approximate the real-life tasks a student might face. The exercises require the student to learn and manipulate vocabulary and structures to achieve specific real-life ends. The content of each lesson is intended to provide the student with the necessary resources, and the practice to develop the necessary skills, to use Chinese to achieve these ends. The curriculum consists of task-based, interactive classroom activities. The focus is on the learner. Students are encouraged to develop their own strategies to express meaning. A variety of daily life needs are covered, including becoming acquainted, making appointments, shopping, engaging in leisure activities, obtaining food and drink, using transportation facilities in contexts such as home, school, and a restaurant. Through practice, the student gains competency in asking and answering questions, affirming, denying, pressing for clarification, restating, correcting, thanking, apologizing, etc. Communicating in Chinese provides a listening and speaking curriculum written in English and romanized Chinese based on Hanyu pinyin, as well as a separate but coordinated reading and writing curriculum that includes both simplified and full forms of Chinese characters. Communicating Chinese bas been adopted as a text for beginning Chinese by many schools and colleges throughout the United States and abroad.