Creating a Web-Based Tutorial for Reading Comprehension of Journalistic Chinese.

Grant Details

Amount: 5320.00

Project Start Date: 07/01/00

Status:

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Chinese

Project Level:
Advanced

Project Skills:

Institutions Involved:
Brown University

Primary Contact:
Hsiu-Huei Lin Domizio ()

Box 1850
Brown University
Providence , RI 02912
Phone: (401) 863-1296

One of the greatest challenges for fourth-year Chinese students is comprehending specialized genres. One such genre is expository discourse. In college courses, this is usually taught under the rubric of journalistic Chinese or Media Chinese. In studying expository discourse, students encounter three peculiar challenges: (1) specialized vocabulary—great number of characters of the higher register, (2) complex structure—sentences of many phrases, compound connectors, and literary expressions, and (3) sequence of presentation—pattern of presenting issues in four stages, typical in expository writing in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. We propose to address the need to master these challenges by creating a web-based tutorial to help students to identify and understand (1) the logical connectors that function at the level of the sentence and (2) the stages of the typical sequential flow of information at the level of the discourse. The tutorial initially will be developed for use in fourth year Chinese at Brown University, in a new course to be taught by Ms. Domizio every spring.