Advanced Chinese language 2 and translation
Students attending this course are required to have certified a level A2+/B1 Chinese language proficiency (HSK IV).
There will be quizzes, a mid-year oral test and a final exam. For attending students, quizzes would be 15% of the final grade (of part 1 of the course), the mid-year oral test would be 5% of the final grad (of part 1 of the course)。For non-attending students, the final grade is solely based on the final exam results.
Quizzes mainly include oral work and listening comprehension exercises;
Final exams consist of a written part and an oral part.
The written part is composed of different sections:
- A listening comprehension test;
- Reading comprehension test;
-Vocabulary and grammar usage test;
- Paragraph/short essay writing;
- An Italian- Chinese translation text based on materials studied during the workshops.
The oral exam will include making presentations, conducting conversations with the instructor on the topics covered in this term.
The main goal of the Advanced Chinese and Translation II course is to consolidate and increase the language skills acquired by students who have already studied Chinese for several years. In addition to expanding the students’ working vocabulary and their understanding of complex syntactic structures and further improving students’ communicative competence, this course puts the students on track to pass the HSK V exam (which Chinese Hanban has determined to be a C1 level), certifying a B1+/B2 proficiency level according to the Common European Framework. At the end of the course, the students will have learned how to employ up to 3.000 high-frequency characters and 4.000 high-frequency words in a variety of different contexts. They will be able to express themselves correctly both in oral and written form in everyday situations, competently managing conversations at the intermediate level. A key objective will be to provide strong translation skills, with specific regard to expressions and sentence patterns typically used in formal and literary written Chinese, which are very common in Chinese writing pertaining to politics, law, commerce, and a great number of socially and culturally relevant topics.
Content:
(1) Unit 31： Reading is Always Beneficial (开卷有益);
(2) Unit 32: To each his own （各有所好）；
(3) Unit 33: Search the Globe for Curiosities (环宇搜奇)；
(4) Unit 34: Life is in the movement (生命在于运动)；
(5) Unit 35: Every walk of life produces a virtuoso (三百六十五行， 行行出状元)；
(6) Unit 36： Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (情人眼里出西施)；
(7) Business Chinese： lesson 4 Price Negotiation;
(8) Business Chinese: lesson 5 Making Payment;
(9) Business Chinese: lesson 6 Making Orders;
By watching multimedia materials, reading and discussing texts of an increasing degree of complexity, conducting authentic communicative tasks，and writing about issues discussed, students will improve their sophistication level in language use and acquire specialized lexicon and sentence patterns that will enable them to construct complex discourses in speech and in writing on a wide variety of topics regarding everyday China.
In addition to their Advanced Chinese textbook, the students will also study Business Chinese, and texts and multi-media materials drawn from contemporary publications on topics related to politics, law, business, tourism, and culturally or socially relevant issues. Along with the course lessons, there are two parallel translation workshops of 60 class hours throughout the entire academic year; each will enable students to hone their translation skills in the two interdisciplinary curricula offered within the Master’s course in Modern Languages for International Communication and Cooperation, i.e.: juridical and economic translation; and linguistic, cultural and juridical mediation. During the workshops, the workshop teacher will offer a set of study materials, selected from real documents in actual use in a variety of relevant contexts.
Mandatory texts:
Ning, Cynthia Y., Stephen L. Tschudi, and John S. Montanaro. 2016. Encounters: Chinese Language and Culture. Student Book 4. Yale University Press: New Haven and London.
Leonesi, Barbara. 2011. Cinese & Affari. Hoepli: Milano.
Additional materials will be uploaded on the course e-learning website.
Primarily conventional lectures, with occasional workshops on specific topics.
- Attendance to class is highly recommended.
- Non attending students should contact the course teachers.
- Day, place, and hours of teacher-student counselling will be agreed upon with the students.