Routledge The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries

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/ Review Reviews for the First Edition "The authors have done an amazing job in presenting the cultures of contemporary China, integrating the skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, providing extensive and various linguistic input, and consolidating learning through systematic review… this book is useful not only as an advanced textbook for achieving language competence but also as reading material for courses with a cultural emphasis …The most outstanding components within each lesson are the grammar explanations and the Chinese character analysis exercises. The grammar explanation component explains each sentence pattern in great detail and with extraordinary accuracy. More important, simple, focused, and clear exercises follow each detailed explanation of a sentence pattern, immediately enabling learners to digest and reinforce the mastery of a grammar point quickly. The Chinese character analysis exercises provide a systematic review of frequently occurring phonetic sets of Chinese characters, helping learners decipher Chinese characters and synthesize the Chinese characters they have learned. The unique feature of this book lies in its emphasis on the link between cultural literacy and language competence…The tremendous amount of online audio and visual supporting materials constitutes a second outstanding feature of the book, which provides learners with extensive and authentic exposure to the Chinese language and culture. Another valuable feature comes from the book’s emphasis on the transition from spoken language to written or formal language…In conclusion, this is an excellent textbook for advanced CSL/CFL learners...Due to its special emphasis on culture and formal language, this book could also be a good choice for Chinese courses designed for Chinese heritage learners."- T