Title of class Newspaper reading

Contact hour one hour a week

Student preparation time one hour a week

Size of class no more than seven students in a group

Material selected by the teacher according to the topics that are decided at the beginning of term

 

Aim

  1. To perfect students newspaper reading skills

  2. To teach Chinese-English translation skills

Achievable

  1. Students are asked to read and translate one or two prices of Chinese  newspaper articles which have no more than 800 characters every week. The topics for the articles are based on the list given at the beginning of term.

How to achieve

An unseen newspaper article should be handed to students at the beginning of each session. The reading and translation exercises are carried out in the workshop format. The teacher should use PowerPoint to prepare the essential vocabulary and examples for the selected newspaper articles, so that when the material is projected onto a large screen the vocabulary and examples are not automatically displayed. Students have to take the initiative to work out the meanings of the phrases and the sentences themselves before viewing the vocabulary. Students should take in turns to translate the article into English sentence by sentence and they should be made aware of the difference in word order and in the sequential descriptions between the two languages. After each session extra reading and translation assignments are given to students on the internet which should be submitted by the end of each week. All the assignments should be marked and returned back to students with comments in the following session.