Crossing cultural boundary: A multimedia advanced-Chinese course
Crossing Cultural Boundaries （文化纵横观）is a structured presentation of text and online supporting materials dealing with contemporary China, designed for students who have completed the foundation levels of Chinese language and are embarking on more specialized work, at a level that can be roughly characterized as ‘advanced’. The book covers four thematic units: popular culture, social change, cultural traditions and politics and history. The four units contain a total of twelve lessons, including lively and detailed discussions of grammatical points and sentence patterns, a variety of tasked-based activities, exercises for developing grammatical concepts and insight into the character writing system, systematic review of earlier material, and extensive cultural and historical notes to provide background to the subjects presented. The online teachers’ manual consists of sections on teaching tips, a key for exercises, references and suggested resources, and additional supplementary materials and classroom activities. The online materials include a link to a multimedia website with video modules that form the basis of listening activities geared to the topics presented in the book. Crossing Cultural Boundaries offers advanced learners of Chinese a chance to consolidate their foundation in the language and improve language skills and cultural literacy, and begin a transition to authentic Chinese literary texts.
