文化大學推廣部

Courses & Syllabi

Elective Course Introduction

The elective courses are divided into two types. The 'Skills Builders Series' focuses on strengthening listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities that are necessary for daily life in Taiwan. The 'Chinese Culture Series' is composed of traditional and modern culture topics that one would often encounter in the Chinese speaking world.

'Skills Builders Series'

The 'Skills Builders Series' focuses on strengthening listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities that are necessary for daily life in Taiwan. Students that are in pre-intermediate levels and above, can chose an elective course based on their own interests and what language ability they want to strengthen. The courses are separated based on language skill (reading, speaking, listening and reading). You can also choose character writing, pronunciation and grammar classes.

Intermediate Listening Class	Pre-intermediate and Intermediate Speaking Class	Pre-intermediate and Intermediate Reading Class
Can you understand long and continuous dialogue in soap operas or when talking to people? The listening class uses everyday conversations from radio plays and the use as course material. Through everyday topics students can improve their listening ability and start to easily understand conversations and TV shows.	Have you studied Chinese for a while but are still unable to express what you want to say? The speaking class uses various topics from daily life and current events as the basis for discussion. This allows students to understand what someone else is saying and fluently reply.	Do you ever find that even though you are able to speak easily, reading a long article still gives you a headache? Is it hard to sit down and persevere with it? We use articles and biographies to train reading skills and to make you feel comfortable when reading longer articles.

Pre-intermediate and Intermediate Writing Class	Pronunciation Class	Chinese Characters Class
The goal of the writing course is to develop and master the use of more academic vocabulary. The course is separated into pre-intermediate writing based on pictures, intermediate letter writing and advanced persuasive writing classes. This allows students to write anything from narratives to writing to express an opinion. Eventually students can master writing an essay and have the skills to clearly express their view points. The goal is that each student is unimpeded when writing articles for work or school.	The pronunciation course was started for those students wanting to speak clear and understandable Chinese. Paying attention to phonetic structure, tones and sentence cadence, we test students’ progress in pronunciation. As individual problems are noted, the teacher can guide a student towards proper pronunciation. Students will understand their issues with pronunciation because they are under the personal guidance of an instructor. Through repeated practice students can effectively correct their pronunciation problems.。	Chinese is considered a pictographic language. Each character is like a picture. From each character we can extract a hidden meaning. We choose the 80 most commonly used radicals (a part of a Chinese character), and through understanding the radical's meaning and composition, students can understand the rules behind how Chinese writing is put together. In the future, students will be able to logically learn the meaning of other Chinese characters and therefore improve the rate at which they can retain vocabulary.

Grammar Class

The grammar course includes learning about Chinese parts of speech and syntax rules. Through grammar maps, examples, and rules we learn the formula for how Chinese is composed. Along with other strategies, we implement these rules through error analysis to learn grammar to eventually reach a place where it's easy to learn and understand Chinese sentence structure.


	'Chinese Culture Series' The 'Chinese Culture Series' includes modern and traditional topics. Students can choose what interests them to deepen their understanding of Chinese culture and help them assimilate into Taiwanese life. During these courses, students can experience traditional Chinese culture on a deeper level and understand its relevance in today's society. The popularity of Taiwanese culture has spread around Asia, and many students come to Taiwan to study because they like Taiwanese singers and entertainers. Therefore, we've started classes using popular culture as course material. Currently we offer singing, TV and movie classes.

Singing Class	TV Drama Class	Movie Class
Taiwanese songs have become popular throughout Asia. It would be a shame if you were to study Chinese but weren’t able to sing Chinese songs! The singing class mainly discusses the meaning and stories behind Taiwanese pop songs. This allows students to stay up to date with this generation's language and slang.	The TV class uses popular Taiwanese dramas as course material. Partly educational and partly entertaining, watching Taiwanese soap operas allows students to learn contemporary ways of speaking, culture and daily life.	The movie class uses famous Chinese movies as teaching material. In addition to learning commonly used vocabulary, students can also discuss their opinions on topics the movie raises under the guidance of a teacher. While enjoying Chinese movies, students can learn about Chinese politics, culture, history, geography and folk customs.

Calligraphy Class	Taiwanese Class
In calligraphy class we start from the eight basic strokes and teach the proper method of painting. By learning proper stroke order and direction a student can produce a better looking characters and experience the beauty of Chinese calligraphy.	You've probably tried to buy something in a night market but couldn't because the vendor was speaking in Taiwanese. What was he actually trying to say? You can only really say you've lived in Taiwan if you can speak and understand some Taiwanese. Learning Taiwanese makes studying and working here far more convenient.