Xinyi Liu,  xinyi_liu@hcpss.org

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AP Chinese is a full-year course that covers the equivalent of the fourth semester of a college Chinese course. It includes aural/oral skills, reading comprehension, grammar, and composition. The AP Chinese Language and Culture course is designed to provide students with varied opportunities to further develop their proficiency across the three communicative modes: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational. It also addresses the five goal areas of communication, culture, connections, comparisons, and communities as outlined in the National Standards for Foreign Language Education.

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Developing appreciation and awareness of the Chinese cultures is an integral theme throughout the AP Chinese course. The course engages students in an exploration of both contemporary and historical Chinese culture. Course content reflects intellectual interests shared by the students and the teacher, such as careers, teen life, famous people, technology, and social change.

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Instructional materials include signs, advertisements, posters, video clips, films, news broadcasts, announcements, and written texts adapted from newspapers, magazines, literature, and reports. As some of these materials may be beyond the linguistic grasp of students, their engagement with the materials is scaffolded when necessary to better provide access. The teacher’s delivery of the course in Chinese is similarly scaffolded. Students are encouraged to use Chinese as they engage in the content and language learning strategies.

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Throughout the course, assessments are frequent, varied, and explicitly linked to the content and skills that comprise the learning goals of each unit of study. The course provides students with maximum exposure to authentic culture and language. Students gain necessary knowledge of the Chinese language including vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, and grammatical structures. Students apply their growing cultural knowledge to communicative tasks in real-life contexts. They also develop the ability to speak and write in a variety of discourse styles, using both keyboarding and handwriting skills, to an audience of listeners and readers.