Written by a team of highly experienced teachers, the book offers advanced learners of Chinese a chance to consolidate their foundation in the language through a variety of activities, which are designed to develop both language skills and cultural literacy. Divided into four thematic units covering popular culture, social change, cultural traditions and politics and history, each unit contains three lessons providing the student with a structured course which supports the transition from an intermediate to advanced level. The 12 lessons are comprised of texts which present interesting and accurate information about contemporary China, introducing the student to useful vocabulary, speech patterns, and idiosyncratic language usage. Key features include: lively and detailed discussions of grammatical points and sentence patterns exercises for developing grammatical concepts and insight into the character writing system systematic review of earlier material to ensure consolidation of learning extensive cultural and historical notes providing background to the subjects presented. complimentary CDs to enhance listening skills. Further material can be found on the accompanying website at: http://duke.edu/web/chinesesoc/. This site contains a wealth of video content which forms the basis of many of the listening activities linked to topics within the book.  The Teacher's Handbook, including activity tips, answer keys and the traditional character texts, can be requested from [email protected].

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