Chinese Language Flagship Program

Learning Outcomes

The Chinese Language Flagship Program compiles detailed, observable, and measurable information about what a student is expected to know or be able to do as a result of their participation in the academic program. This information helps guide decisions in program planning, improvement, pedagogy, and practice. Learning outcomes are focused on all four modalities of the language: speaking, listening, reading and writing as well as cultural competence and cross-cultural awareness that enables students to function in professional and social settings.

Language Proficiency

Language Proficiency: Speaking Effectively

Students demonstrate effective speaking in various social contexts, in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways.

Students demonstrate effective oral communication in uncomplicated communicative tasks and social situations.
Students can initiate, sustain, and close a general conversation.
Students demonstrate evidence of speaking in paragraph-length discourse.
Students communicate effectively with persons not accustomed to dealing with Chinese language learners at this level.
Students demonstrate the effective application of basic socio-linguistic aspects of Chinese, such as the use of the formal vs. informal address.
Students are able to complete complicated tasks, such as support opinions, talk about hypothetical situations, and carry on discussions and debates.

Language Proficiency: Listening

Students will demonstrate an understanding of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics through analysis of words, phrases, and clauses from authentic Chinese audio and video samples.

Students demonstrate the ability to recognize and understand a number of high-frequency, highly contextualized words and phrases including aural cognates and borrowed words.
Students are able to understand some information from sentence-length speech, one utterance at a time, in basic personal and social contexts.
Students are able to understand simple sentence-length speech in basic personal and social contexts.
Students are able to understand short conventional narrative and descriptive texts with a clear underlying structure.
Students are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts of any length as well as complex factual material such as summaries or reports.
Students are able to understand speech in a standard dialect on a wide range of familiar and less familiar topics.

Language Proficiency: Reading

Students will read and comprehend texts written in Chinese from a variety of genres and contexts. Simplified and traditional versions of characters text.

Students can identify a number of highly contextualized words and phrases.
Students are able to understand some information from the simplest connected texts dealing with a limited number of personal and social needs.
Students are able to understand fully and with ease short, non-complex texts that convey basic information and deal with personal and social topics to which the reader brings personal interest or knowledge.
Students are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts with a clear underlying structure.
Students are able to understand conventional narrative and descriptive texts of any length as well as more complex factual material.
Students are able to understand texts from many genres dealing with a wide range of subjects, both familiar and unfamiliar.

Language Proficiency: Writing

Students will apply critical thinking skills to produce written works and presentations.

Students can reproduce from memory a modest number of words and phrases in context.
Students can create statements and formulate questions based on familiar material.
Students can write compositions and simple summaries related to work and/or school experiences.
Students demonstrate the ability to narrate and describe in major time frames with some control of aspect.
Students are able to write about a variety of topics with significant precision and detail.
Students are able to produce most kinds of formal and informal correspondence, in-depth summaries, reports, and research papers on a variety of social, academic, and professional topics.

Cultural Competence

Students will be culturally competent by demonstrating knowledge of geography and history of Chinese speaking countries and regions, and the ability to evaluate and analyze contributions of Chinese speaking countries and regions to the arts/culture, society and politics.

In their own and Chinese cultures Students can identify products and practices to help them understand perspectives. So they can interact at a survival level in some familiar everyday contexts.
In their own and Chinese cultures Students can make comparisons between products and practices to help them understand perspectives. So they can interact at a functional level in some familiar contexts.
In their own and Chinese cultures Students can explain some diversity among products and practices and how it relates to perspectives, so that they can interact at a competent level in familiar and some unfamiliar contexts.
In their own and Chinese cultures, students can suspend judgment while critically examining products, practices, and perspectives, so that they can interact in complex situations to ensure a shared understanding of culture.
In their own and Chinese cultures, students can objectively evaluate products and practices and mediate perspectives, so that they can engage with complexity and pluricultural identities and serve as a mediator between and among cultures.

Professional Skills

Students will demonstrate a cross-cultural awareness enabling them to function in professional and social settings, demonstrating familiarity with professional etiquette and appropriate professional interactions.