China Focus is a set of comprehensive Chinese teaching materials specially designed
for the Chinese audiovisual-speaking course. The video clips are extracted from
contemporary Chinese social hot issues, feature programs, news, sitcoms,
documentaries, talk shows, interviews, entertainment programs, films and TV
plays, micro films, advertisements, songs, etc. Using abundant online video
resources, it builds a natural-language-based classroom teaching environment,
giving full play to the Chinese audiovisual-speaking course's function of being
a window to the society, and promoting the integration of language learning and
cultural understanding.
This set of materials is divided
into six levels, each of which is composed of several themes, encompassing
society, economy, culture, education, life, love, and art. Several course
modules are designed under each theme. The intermediate level (Ⅱ)
includes 10 volumes, each taking four class hours and covering the
communication functions and scenes commonly used in the elementary level,
intermediate level and advanced level. Teachers can develop a personalized
assortment of teaching materials based on the themes they are interested in,
which can either be independently used in an audiovisual-speaking course, or as
exercise materials in a comprehensive class, speaking class, listening class
and other classes.
The titles of the
intermediate level (Ⅱ) include Cartoons, Culture, Variety Shows, Travel,
Celebrities, Arts, Vocation, Family, Business, and Society.
Wang Tao, a teacher of
Beijing International Studies University, is devoted to studying Teaching
Chinese as a Foreign Language, and focuses his research areas on Chinese
language processing and computer-based studies. He participated in the design
and development of Jinshan Typing software and assumed the chief responsibility
of constructing the TCFL digital resources database of Beijing International
Studies University and other scientific programs organized by MOE and Beijing
City. He wrote a textbook entitled The
Basic Computer-Based Chinese Language Applications for International Students and published a number of papers.
Besides these, he won the champion in the 6th Contest of Young Teachers of
Beijing International Studies University and got the first prize in the 2nd
Multimedia Education Software Contest of Beijing.