Chinese Courses

The course is designed for non-Chinese language background students who have learned Chinese for less than 50 tuition hours. It aims to equip the students with listening and speaking skills for communicating in Putonghua for daily and social purposes through a range of learning activities. After successfully completing the course, students will have developed basic pronunciation ability in Putonghua, and fundamental listening and speaking skills necessary for daily communication.

The course is designed for non-Chinese language background students who have learned Chinese for up to 150 tuition hours. It prepares students for an intermediate-level understanding of spoken Chinese and equip them with a strong communicative competence in using Chinese in social and professional situations. After successfully completing the course, students’ listening and speaking skills will be enhanced, and they will be able to participate in complete, coherent and appropriate conversations on topics relating to daily life, study and work.

The course is designed for non-Chinese language background students who have learned Chinese for up to 300 tuition hours. It prepares students for an advanced-level understanding of spoken Chinese and to equip them with a strong communicative competence in using Chinese in social and professional situations. After successfully completing the course, their listening and speaking skills will be enhanced, and they will be able to handle a wide range of discourse with nearly full linguistic control and communicate effectively on complex topics relating to life, study and work.

The course is designed for non-Chinese language background students who have learned Chinese for less than 50 tuition hours.It aims to equip students with Chinese reading and writing skills for daily and social purposes through a range of familiar topics. After successfully completing the course, students will have acquired a basic knowledge of Chinese characters, be able to identify information from simple passages,and write basic sentences to introduce themselves and describe their daily lives.

The course is designed for students with non-Chinese language background who have learned Chinese for less than 100 tuition hours. It aims to enhance students’ ability to recognize and write Chinese characters, and to help develop their understanding of written Chinese and writing competence in using Chinese in daily life and social situations. After successfully completing the course, they will be able to recognize and write commonly used Chinese characters, understand narrative, expository and basic argumentative texts, and write short passages for daily life and social purposes.

This course seeks to enhance the market competitiveness of HKUST graduates by making them effective users of spoken Putonghua and Standard Written Chinese in meeting communicative needs in academic, social and professional contexts. The course materials and activities help students acquire fluency and accuracy in the use of Chinese by engaging them in authentic communication tasks based on real-life situations and needs. Students’ mastery of Putonghua phonology and Chinese syntax and lexis will also be enhanced through in-class teaching and outside class practice.

This course targets all students who have a background in Chinese, and with a strong interest in the use of Chinese in digital media. The focus of this course is to lead students to explore the characteristics of using Chinese in digital media for social, professional and academic communication purposes, and to develop their Putonghua speaking and Standard Chinese writing abilities through digital media platforms. The emphasis is on using Chinese to talk about digital media. Students can also have a deeper understanding of the current situation and developmental direction of Chinese digital media in the digital age, and be able to discuss topics in this field in Chinese.

This course is for students who have a background in Chinese. It aims to enhance their Chinese communication skills in workplace contexts. It also helps students to understand how language plays a crucial role in various workplace situations including self-branding, internal and external communication. Students will explore how to choose and use communicative strategies appropriate to the professional purposes, audiences, and contexts. The course will highlight the differences between the use of English and Chinese in workplace contexts, different Chinese language styles in various working regions and the culture behind the language. Students will acquire communication skills through interactive tasks, case analyses, simulated practices.

The course seeks to enhance the Putonghua speaking and Chinese writing abilities of students who have typically undergone schooling in a Chinese language community. Learning tasks and activities on this course further challenges students to aim at very high levels in terms of precision of expression in writing and expressiveness and persuasiveness in speaking. The learning experience will also sharpen the students’ awareness of style and tone and context of situation.

This course targets all students who have a background in Chinese, and with a strong interest in the study of Chinese writing and cultural issues. It aims to cultivate students’ logical expression skills in Chinese in the context of investigative study of culture. Students will learn how to describe cultural phenomena, summarize literature, and evaluate claims from a critical perspective. Students will also learn to construct arguments and support claims effectively in an academic style. The course integrates the three elements of communication skills, academic literacy, and culture with a focus on Chinese writing training. The emphasis is on using Chinese to examine and discuss various cultural issues such as language culture. Students can have a deeper understanding of selected cultural issues and be able to discuss relevant topics in Chinese writing.