Elementary Conversational Chinese
for Business Professionals I

About the course

Chinese language skills are becoming increasingly valuable, as U.S. trade and investment in China soars.  The University of Wisconsin-Madison, a leader in language education and international studies, is pleased to introduce Elementary Conversational Chinese for Business Professionals I, a new online course for working professionals who want to learn Mandarin, the dialect used by the Chinese government and more than 70 percent of the country’s people.

This innovative course introduces students to basic conversational Chinese, with a focus on understanding and appreciating cultural beliefs, attitudes and practices, especially in a business or professional context. The course is designed to meet the goals of the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning to promote cultural understanding and communicative proficiency in the three modes:

• interpretive (understanding spoken language and written texts)
• interpersonal (communicating with others in a spontaneous manner)
• presentational (preparing and delivering more formal spoken or written presentations)

Students in the course work through thematically-based online lessons independently, meet regularly with the instructor for conversation and office hours, work with classmates to practice speaking and to complete exercises assigned by the instructor, submit oral and written assignments to the instructor for feedback and assessment, and take regular quizzes and tests.

Each online lesson consists of the following sections:

• Listening in Context: practice listening to short conversations in Chinese, with interactive exercises designed to help you to focus your listening on the most important information
• Integrating Words and Expressions: new vocabulary for each lesson, presented in context and with opportunities to practice pronouncing new words, comparing your pronunciation with a native speaker
• Situating Talk in Cultural Contexts: critical cultural information, with online discussions with the instructor and classmates on cultural beliefs, attitudes and practices
• Integrating Structures and Forms: New grammatical points, with lots of practice and immediate feedback
• Recognizing and Writing Chinese Characters: Animations showing correct the correct stroke order of new characters and worksheets to practice
• Putting it All Together: Practice in the three modes of communication: interpretive, interpersonal and presentational; Practice with a Partner assignments; instructions for preparing for the Conversation with the Instructor

Online voice communication is faciliated by Wimba Voice Tools and Skype.

People

The course was developed as part of a collaborative project of the Language Institute and the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature.

Initiative Co-Directors: Dianna Murphy, Sally Magnan
Faculty lead: Yongping Zhu
Course co-authors: Yongping Zhu, Yang Liu, Dianna Murphy
Fall 2007 instructor: Yang Liu
Graduate assistants: Yang Liu, David Dettmann, Ying Du
Undergraduate assistants: Tiffany Iliadis, Richard Zhu
IT training and support: Bruno Browning, Karen Tusack, Sue Weier, L&S Learning Support Serivces; Lauren Rosen, UW Collaborative Language Program
Programming: Bruce Barton, Division of Information Technology
Graphic design: Michelle Glenetski, Division of Information Technology

Funding

Funding to develop this course is from the UW-Madison L&S Office of Education Outreach, the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) and the Center for East Asian Studies.