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Language for Specific Purposes: Chinese

Code: 101557 ECTS Credits: 6
2024/2025
Degree Type Year
2500244 East Asian Studies OT 4

Contact

Name:
María Carmen Espín García
Email:
carmen.espin@uab.cat

Teachers

Marta Andia Maldonado
Isabel González Torrents

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

It is necessary to have passed all Chinese subjects from previous years.


Objectives and Contextualisation

The main goals of this subject are:

1. The acquisition of the necessary strategies and linguistic knowledge to be able to communicate effectively in a Chinese working environment.
2. The acquisition of knowledge about phonetics, morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and linguistic variation in Chinese.
3. A contrastive approach to Chinese oral and written documents.


Competences

  • Apply knowledge of East Asian culture in order to be able to communicate.
  • Developing self-learning strategies.
  • Ensuring the quality of one's own work.
  • Produce oral texts in one of the languages of East Asia.
  • Respecting the diversity and plurality of ideas, people and situations.
  • Solving problems of intercultural communication.
  • Understand oral texts in one of the languages of East Asia.
  • Understand texts written in one of the languages of East Asia.
  • Working in teams in an international, multilingual and multicultural context.
  • Write texts in one of the languages of East Asia.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Apply knowledge of lexis, morphosyntax, texts, rhetoric and linguistic variation.
  2. Apply strategies to produce oral texts for different contexts and for specific communicative purposes.
  3. Apply strategies to produce written texts for different contexts and for specific communicative purposes.
  4. Apply strategies to understand oral texts from various different contexts.
  5. Apply strategies to understand written texts from various different contexts.
  6. Apply strategies towards acquiring knowledge of East Asian culture in order to be able to communicate.
  7. Deal with interferences between the working languages.
  8. Developing self-learning strategies.
  9. Ensuring the quality of one's own work.
  10. Identify the need to activate knowledge of East Asian culture in order to be able to communicate.
  11. Integrate cultural knowledge to solve problems in communication.
  12. Possess knowledge of East Asian culture in order to be able to communicate.
  13. Produce oral texts for different contexts and for specific communicative purposes.
  14. Produce oral texts that are appropriate to the context and linguistically correct.
  15. Produce written texts for different contexts and for specific communicative purposes.
  16. Produce written texts that are appropriate to the context and linguistically correct.
  17. Respecting the diversity and plurality of ideas, people and situations.
  18. Solving problems of intercultural communication.
  19. Understand the communicative intent and the meaning of oral texts from various different contexts.
  20. Understand the communicative intent and the meaning of written texts from various different contexts.
  21. Working in teams in an international, multilingual and multicultural context.

Content

The general contents of this subject are:

  1. Introduction
    1. Chinese for specific purposes
    2. Chinese for professional and academic purposes
  2. Chinese oral and written conventions for effective communication in the workplace, and cultural conventions for interpersonal communication and personal relationships.
  3. Study of oral and written documents from specialized fields: journalistic, business, tourism, and foreign language teaching.
  4. A contrastive approach to Chinese text, discourse, and cultural conventions.
 
 

Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Completion of various types of practical activities 25 1 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
Lectures 25 1 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 18, 21
Type: Supervised      
Completion of various types of exercises , correction of exercises and doubts resolution individually and in small groups. 35 1.4 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
Type: Autonomous      
Study and reading of texts, preparation of practical activities 50 2 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21

In order to achieve the objectives of the subject, the methodology chosen is as follows:

  • Learning by tasks: Under the supervision of the teacher and also independently, students perform tasks and projects to reflect on the problems they may have in reading texts in Chinese and find a way to solve them.
  • Case study: Students analyse professional situations presented by the teacher to conceptualize the experience and search for effective solutions.
  • Cooperative learning: Students are encouraged to build knowledge socially; use of small groups for students to work together in order to optimize their and their classmates' learning.

The formative activities that will be carried out in this subject are divided into directed activities, supervised activities, autonomous work and evaluation activities.

  • The directed activities consist of working different types of  texts from various fields.
  • The supervised activities consist in carrying out activities proposed by the teacher.
  • Autonomous work: it requires about 50 hours of autonomous work. Students must autonomously prepare the vocabulary, texts, exercises and grammar points indicated by the teacher, in this way in class the teacher can direct the study to solve issues in the fields of interculturality, phonetics, lexicon, the syntax, the translation the production of oral and written.
  • The evaluation activities are tests and tasks that allow both the teacher and the students to evaluate the progress of learning and reflect on the teaching-learning process.

 

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Final project or test 35% 3 0.12 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
Mid-term test or project 20% 2 0.08 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20
Teaching portfolio 45% 10 0.4 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

Continuous assessment

Students must provide evidence of their progress by completing various tasks and tests. These activities are detailed in the table at the end of this section of the Study Guide. The continuous assessment of this course is distributed as follows:

  • Exams or projects - 55%
    • Mid-term exam or mid-term project - 20%
    • Final exam or final project - 35%
  • Teaching portfolio - 45%
    • Submit all activities discussed and/or corrected in the classroom along the semester. These activities will be marked as "submitted" or "not submitted" – 15%
    • Group activities and individual activities assessed by the teacher (Oral presentations, summaries, translations, follow-up tests, etc., 3 minimum) – 30%

All information on assessment, assessment activities and their weighting is merely a guide. The subject's lecturer will provide full information when teaching begins.

 Review

When publishing final marks prior to recording them on students' transcripts, the lecturer will provide written notification of a date and time for reviewing assessment activities. Students must arrange reviews in agreement with the lecturer.

Missed/failed assessment activities

Students may retake assessment activities they have failed or compensate for any they have missed, provided that those they have actually performed account for a minimum of 66.6% (two thirds) of the subject's final mark and that they have a weighted average mark of at least 3.5. Under no circumstances may an assessment activity worth 100% of the final mark be retaken or compensated for.

The lecturer will inform students of the procedure involved, in writing, when publishing final marks prior to recording them on transcripts. The lecturer may set one assignment per failedor missed assessment activity, or a single assignment to cover a number of such activities.

Classification as "not assessable"

In the event of the assessment activities a student has performed accounting for just 25% or less of the subject's final mark, their work will be classified as "not assessable" on their transcript.

Misconduct in assessment activities

Students who engage in misconduct (plagiarism, copying, personation, etc.) in an assessment activity will receive a mark of“0” for the activity in question. In the case of misconduct in more than one assessment activity, the students involved will be given a final mark of “0” for the subject.

Students may not retake assessment activities in which they are found to have engaged in misconduct. Plagiarism is considered to mean presenting all or part of an author's work, whether published in print or in digital format, as one's own, i.e. without citing it. Copying is considered to mean reproducing all or a substantial part of another student's work. In cases of copying in which it is impossible to determine which of two students has copied the work of the other, both will be penalized.

Single assessment

This subject may be assessed under the single assessment system in accordance with the terms established in the academic regulations of the UAB and the assessment criteria of the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting.
Students must make an online request within the period established by the faculty and send a copy to the teacher responsible for the subject, for the record.
Single assessment will be carried out in person on one day during week 16 or 17 of the semester. The Academic Management Office will publish the exact date and time on the faculty website.
On the day of the single assessment, teaching staff will ask the student for identification, which should be presented as a valid identification document with a recent photograph (student card, DNI/NIE or passport).

Single assessment activities

The final grade for the subject will be calculated according to the following percentages:

  • Mid-term exam – 35%
  • Final term exam – 35%
  • Activities portfolio – 30%: A dossier with 3 activities will be submitted the day of the final exam.

Grade revision and resit procedures for the subject are the same as those for continual assessment. See the section above in this study guide.


Bibliography

Hao Yamin （昊雅民). (2008). Baokan Yuedu Jichu (报刊阅读基础) [Learning about China from Newspapers]. Beijing Language and Culture University Press.

Li Li （李立）；Ding Anqi (丁安琪) . Gongsi Hanyu (公司汉语) [Business Chinese]. Peking University Press.

Liu Xun (刘珣). (2009). Tiyan Hanyu (体验汉语) [Vivir el chino]. Higher Education Press.

More bibliography related to the contents of the subject will be provided throughout the semester.


Software

Teams and Moodle will still be used. Other platforms such as Canvas, Kahoot or Padlet will be used as well.


Language list

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(PAUL) Classroom practices 1 Chinese second semester morning-mixed