Transfer Student Courses in Chinese (Division 339)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 - December 22, 1999)

To see what Transfer Student courses have been added or changed in Chinese this week go to What's New This Week.

Language Courses

Instructor(s): Hilda Tao (htao@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Native or near-native speakers of Chinese are not eligible for this course. (5). (LR). Laboratory fee ($10) required.

Credits: (5).

Lab Fee: Laboratory fee ($10) required.

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~htao/

Chinese 101 is an introductory course for students who do not understand or speak any Chinese. (If you speak Chinese at home, this is not the right course for you. Take the placement exam in the fall for Chinese 301/302.) In this course, students are expected to achieve control of the sound system (especially the four tones), basic sentence patterns, aural comprehension, and daily conversations. Starting with the fourth week, students will learn to read and write the “traditional” Chinese characters (Fan-ti zi). Students will learn 100 characters in Chinese 101. Almost every week, students will be required to do their homework at the computer sites and will be required to perform skits in front of the class. A written quiz or test will be given every Thursday. Class is held one hour per day: Tuesdays and Thursdays are lectures; Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are recitations. Students are required to register for both a lecture section and a recitation section. Attendance will be taken everyday. Textbooks: (a) John DeFrancis, Beginning Chinese (Yale Univ. Press); (b) John DeFrancis, Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I and II (Yale Univ. Press). Materials covered: Beginning Chinese, Lessons 1-13. Beginning Chinese Reader, Lessons 1-12. No visitors are allowed.

Language Courses

Section – Permission of instructor required.

Prerequisites & Distribution: Assignment by placement test and permission of instructor. No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in Chinese 101, 102, or 361. (4). (LR).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/asian/chinese/program.html

This course is designed for students with native or near-native speaking ability in Chinese, but little or no reading and writing ability. Chinese 301 focuses on reading and writing Chinese and will cover the regular 101-102 reading materials. Students will be graded on the basis of daily classroom performance, daily quizzes, periodic tests, and homework assignments. Students must have the permission of the instructor in order to register for this course. Most students will receive this permission via the placement exam to be held on Tuesday, September 7 at 1pm.

Culture Courses/Literature Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): David Rolston (drolston@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Chinese 202 or 362. (4). (Excl).

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Literary Chinese is the gateway to the vast treasures of Chinese literature, history, and culture. One cannot really come to know traditional China, or even modern China, without the ability to read literary Chinese. It is the language for the overwhelming majority of whatever was written in Chinese from the very beginnings to this century. Although there are some similarities and continuities between literary and modern Chinese, a class of this type is really necessary to help you open up the riches that lie waiting there. The class is designed to serve the needs of both undergraduate and graduate students, of both specialists (and would-be specialists) and those who are just curious about the Chinese literary heritage. Reading materials include a textbook, An Introduction to Literary Chinese, and handouts especially picked to reinforce the material in the textbook. Even in just this first half of a two-term sequence, the student will be introduced to many famous works of Chinese literature, the kind of pieces that have been memorized and chanted by Chinese down through the ages. There are brief weekly exercises, as well as a midterm and final.

Language Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Qinghai Chen (chenq@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Chinese 406. (5). (Excl).

Credits: (5).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~chenq/461-2.html

Chinese 461-462 is a two-term Chinese language course sequence with graded readings at an advanced level. Texts chosen from a variety of sources in both Mainland China and Taiwan include 20^th-century fiction and essays on various topics. While students are helped to further improve command of structure and vocabulary in a range of language styles, the primary emphasis of the sequence is on reading comprehension with the aim of enabling students to read original materials with less reliance on a dictionary. Development of speaking and writing skills will also be stressed through discussions on the readings. In the second term, longer texts will be used, and efforts will be made to improve reading skills and speed. At times when Chinese 431-432 (Contemporary Social Science Text) is not offered simultaneously, a social science component may be arranged to accommodate to the wider interest and demand of students. Daily attendance, weekly assignments and quizzes as well as unit tests are required. There is no final exam. Classes are conducted largely in Chinese.

Culture Courses/Literature Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Shuen-fu Lin (lsf@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: No knowledge of Chinese required. (3). (HU).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Largely through lectures, this course will examine the highlights of early Chinese literature from antiquity to the 13th century. We will begin with The Book of Changes, The Book of Songs, and a few ancient philosophical texts (which are written in brilliant literary styles) from the millennium before Christ, the millennium in which China made an astonishing "philosophical breakthrough" in its civilization. We will then undertake to follow the development of the various forms of poetry, fiction, and other kinds of prose during the subsequent centuries. The principal aim is to enable students to become familiar with, and also to be able to enjoy, these masterpieces of literature that illustrate the range and depth of the Chinese imagination, the inner life of the individual as well as the outer social and political life of China through the ages. Three 5-page papers and a final exam are required. Sample readings include Cyril Birech, ed., Anthology of Chinese Literature, Vol. I; two major texts in Taoist mysticism: Tao Te Ching and the "Inner Chapters" of the Chuang Tzu; Burton Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry; and other materials in a course pack.

Culture Courses/Literature Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Philip Ivanhoe (ivanhoe@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Chinese 452. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ivanhoe/alc510.htm

This is an upper-level course requiring advanced reading knowledge of classical Chinese, other East Asian languages also helpful but not required. This course explores selected commentaries on the Analects (Lunyü) from different periods in Chinese history beginning with the earliest extant commentary by He Yan et al. and extending down to 20^th-century commentators. This is an upper-division, graduate-level course requiring advanced reading knowledge of Classical Chinese. Reading knowledge of Japanese and Korean is helpful but not required.

We will learn how to read the particular genre of classical commentary and explore the philosophical and hermeneutic presuppositions of different and influential commentators on the Analects.

Culture Courses/Literature Courses

Section 001.

Instructor(s): William Baxter (wbaxter@umich.edu)

Prerequisites & Distribution: Chinese 452. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: https://coursetools.ummu.umich.edu/1999/fall/lsa/chin/588/001.nsf

This course covers skills and materials necessary for scholarship in premodern Chinese literature, history, art history, and thought. It is inteded to serve as a bridge from general elementary classical language study to proseminars and seminars in specialized fields. The first section of the course provides an introduction toand practice with a range of lexical and technical aids, including Western language, Chinese, and Japanese dictionaries, encyclopedia, concordances, indices, atlases, and conversion charts. Practise in locating and understanding classical texts is a key part of the course, and, when possible, students' current research interests are indulged. Emphasis is always on the systematic, accurate, and efficient culling of information from the research library. Briefer sections are devoted to the utilization of modern scholarship on China in books and periodicals and access to such scholarship through bibliographies, comprehensive studies, and library catalogs. Some attention is devoted to the acquisition of materials, the interpretation and presentation of publication data, and other style sheet issues. There are weekly projects to exercise developing skills, assigned with the goal of improving reading levels in tandem with other research skills. Three or four brief (2-3 page) research papers are required, one on a topic, one on the history of a text, one on a historical figure, and one critical review of a piece of modern scholarship.