AP Chinese course is designed for students who have completed 4-5 years of Chinese or have equivalent proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. The course will reinforce the language skills acquired in previous years and further developed the language proficiencies in oral and formal written communication. Harvest Shouhuo is the primary textbook used in this course, along with other supplementary materials, such as AP practice test, Chinese stories, newspaper articles and video clips. The course engages the students in an exploration of both contemporary and historical Chinese, including topics as schools and family, foods and sports, festivals and customs. The course is delivered entirely online in Chinese. Students will acquire more sophisticated linguistic elements to increase their language abilities. The primary goal of the course is to help students master the advanced-level Chinese language structures, communicative strategies, reading comprehension skills, linguistic accuracy, and cultural awareness through the use of multimedia authentic materials and real-life language tasks. In order to maintain the integrity of AP standards, all AP course midterm and final exams must be proctored. Prerequisites: Chinese 4A, 4B or equivalent level of Chinese with proficiency of 1600-2000 Chinese words.
Course Objectives: Understand the textbook and given materials and be able to discuss the cultural connotations;
• Identify main ideas and important details in the authentic materials such as advertisements, signs, and written texts from newspapers, contemporary literature, letters, and essays.
• Use a variety of discourse styles, including descriptive, narrative, expository, and persuasive, to meet the writing or speaking purpose.
• Be able to use the Chinese language to communicate more effectively both in the school setting and in real-life situations;
• Initiate and sustain conversation on topics covered in culturally appropriate ways.
• Be able to make comparison and connections between the target language and culture and those of the learners.
• Create a level-appropriate speech or report, produce a newscast or video, and narrate personal experiences, research result and current events fluently.
• Get prepared for the AP test.
Course Outline:
Unit 1 School and Family
1.1 Study and School Activities
1.2 Summer Plan and Academic Plan
1.3 Review
1.4 Family Relationship
1.5 Generations
1.6 Review
Unit 2 Foods and Sports
2.1 Tea or Coffee
2.2 The Culture of Food
2.3 Review
2.4 Martial Arts and Taichi
2.5 Midterm Review
2.6 Sports and Competitions
Unit 3 Festivals and Customs
3.1 Major Chinese festivals and Celebrations
3.2 Western Festivals and Chinese festivals
3.3 Review
3.4 Project week
3.5 Moon Festival Final Test
Resources Included:
Additional Costs: Students must purchase the following textbook. Note: this purchase comes with the textbook, a workbook, and an accompanying audio program.Xu Jialu, Chen Fu, Wang Ruojiang, Zhu Ruiping. Harvest Intermediate Chinese Textbook 2nd Edition. CENGAGE Learning, 2014.
Scoring System: Michigan Virtual does not assign letter grades, grant credit for courses, nor issue transcripts or diplomas. A final score reported as a percentage of total points earned will be sent to students upon completion of a course. Your school mentor is also able to access this score within the Student Learning Portal. Schools may use this score for conversion to their own letter grading system.
Time Commitment: Semester sessions are 18-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1 or more hours per day in the course to be successful. Summer sessions are 10 weeks long: Students must be able to spend a minimum of 2 or more hours per day, or about 90 hours during the summer, for the student to be successful in any course. Trimester sessions are 12-weeks long: Students must be able to spend 1.5 or more hours per day in the course to be successful.
Technology Requirements: Students will require a computer device with headphones, a microphone, webcam, up-to-date Chrome Web Browser, and access to YouTube.
Please review the Michigan Virtual Technology Requirements: https://michiganvirtual.org/about/support/knowledge-base/technical-requirements/
Instructor Support System: For technical issues within your course, contact the Customer Care Center by email at [email protected] or by phone at (888) 889-2840.
Instructor Contact Expectations: Students can use email or the private message system within the Student Learning Portal to access highly qualified teachers when they need instructor assistance. Students will also receive feedback on their work inside the learning management system. The Instructor Info area of their course may describe additional communication options.
Academic Support Available: In addition to access to a highly qualified, Michigan certified teacher, students have access to academic videos and outside resources verified by Michigan Virtual. For technical issues within the course, students can contact the Michigan Virtual Customer Care by email at [email protected] or by phone at (888) 889-2840.
Required Assessment: Online assessments consist of formative and summative assessments represented by computer-graded multiple choice, instructor-graded writing assignments including hands-on projects, model building and other forms of authentic assessments.
Technical Skills Needed: Basic technology skills necessary to locate and share information and files as well as interact with others in a Learning Management System (LMS), include the ability to:
- Download, edit, save, convert, and upload files
- Download and install software
- Use a messaging service similar to email
- Communicate with others in online discussion or message boards, following basic rules of netiquette
- Open attachments shared in messages
- Create, save, and submit files in commonly used word processing program formats and as a PDF
- Edit file share settings in cloud-based applications, such as Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides
- Save a file as a .pdf
- Copy and paste and format text using your mouse, keyboard, or an html editor’s toolbar menu
- Insert images or links into a file or html editor
- Search for information within a document using Ctrl+F or Command+F keyboard shortcuts
- Work in multiple browser windows and tabs simultaneously
- Activate a microphone or webcam on your device, and record and upload or link audio and/or video files
- Use presentation and graphics programs
- Follow an online pacing guide or calendar of due dates
- Use spell-check, citation editors, and tools commonly provided in word processing tool menus
- Create and maintain usernames and passwords
Additional Information: The official course descriptions for Advanced Placement courses and information about their exams are located on the College Board site at a http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/descriptions/index.html.
Michigan Virtual prepares students in AP courses for the AP exam, but does not offer the exam test itself. It is the responsibility of the school or parent to register for a local administration of the AP exam.
There are required due dates in AP courses. The pacing of due dates in AP courses aligns to the completion of all lessons and required assignments and assessments prior to the national AP exam date related to this course title. The calendar of AP exam dates is published by the College Board (Exam Calendar).
Resource Books (Optional): Yea-Fen Chen, Meng Yeh, Frances Yufen Lee Mehta, Mei-Ju Hwang, Yuanchao Meng, and Natasha Pierce. Chaoyue: Advancing in Chinese. Columbia University Press, 2010. Shen, Yan. Barron’s AP Chinese Language and Culture 2nd Edition. Barron’s Educational Series, 2014. Wei-ling Wu, Hain-lan Tsai, Shwu-Fen Lin, Lin Young, Vivian T. Yu. A Study Guide to the AP Chinese Language & Culture Test. The Far East Book Co., Ltd, 2013. Bih-Hsya Hsieh, Sunny X.Yu. AP Chinese Language and Culture Simulated Tests. Nan Hai Publishing, 2013 Phyllis Zhang. Developing Chinese Fluency, CENGAGE Learning, 2009. Cheng& Hsui. Integrated Chinese Level 2 Part 2 Textbook (3rd Edition). CHENG& HSUI, 2010.