Abstract

TDLEG- ‘Learning Chinese Outside the Classroom’ aims at providing a further Chinese-learning opportunity for students taking the University Chinese courses to broaden their horizons in the process of Chinese learning, as well as to enhance their language awareness and self-learning ability. Four major components of the project include: 1. CAC (Chinese Across Curriculum) To cater for students’ learning needs, CAC organized 42 workshops, 7 colloquiums and 4 cultural talks on different topics related to the Chinese language and culture in 2017/18. The wide range of activities cover the linguistics knowledge which is not discussed in the University Chinese language courses, focusing on how the Chinese language knowledge can be used in different academic settings. 2. Literary CUHK A popular writing competition, “Literary CUHK”, has been organized since 2015/16, which aims at arousing students’ interests in creative writing in Chinese, and enhancing their observation and expression skills. More than 1000 people have participated in the competitions; several book exhibitions and creative writing sharing seminars have also been organized for the past three years. 3. eLearning With the purpose of facilitating students’ self-learning of Chinese, several eLearning tools have been launched, including “Language Map of CUHK 2.0”, self-assessment test of foundational linguistic knowledge, and Cantonese and Putonghua proficiency mock tests, etc. The Facebook fan-page of “University Chinese” has been established to share the language knowledge and details of the events with students. 4. Heritage Walk In order to encourage students to obtain a first-hand experience in the use of Yue dialects in different regions of Guangdong, experiential learning activities are promoted. A tour to Zhongshan, organized by the Department in November 2018, was open for application to students taking the University Chinese courses. With the implementation of the project and introduction of new concepts, we would like to study how these components work alongside with the University Chinese courses. We will take reference of the comments and opinions from the Expo participants to enhance the efficacy of the project, in a bid to ultimately bring the greatest benefit to the students