Farmhouses near Shāzi, a few hours' bus ride southeast of Guìlín, in Guăngxī. (Image courtesy of Julian K. Wheatley.)
Instructor(s)
Dr. Julian K. Wheatley
MIT Course Number
21G.104
As Taught In
Spring 2006
Level
Undergraduate
Course Description
Course Features
Course Highlights
This course features a downloadable textbook (J. K. Wheatley's Learning Chinese: A Foundation Course in Mandarin) available in readings and includes audio files of its main conversational and narrative material, available in study materials.
Course Description
This is the last of the four courses (Chinese I through IV) that make up the foundation level (four semesters over two years in the normal curriculum) of MIT's regular (non-streamlined) Chinese program. Chinese IV is designed to consolidate conversational usage and grammatical and cultural knowledge encountered in the earlier courses, and to expand reading and listening abilities. It integrates the last part of Learning Chinese (two units designed primarily for review of grammatical concepts and vocabulary growth) with material from Madeline Spring's Making Connections, designed to bolster listening skills, and Linda Hsai and Roger Yue's Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, a collection of traditional stories that has been a favorite of students of Chinese for many decades and is used here to focus on reading. Reading for this course is primarily, but not exclusively, in the simplified character set that is the standard on the Mainland; readings in the traditional set that is standard in Taiwan are also assigned.
Students who have advanced through Chinese I, II, and III to reach this level, as well as those entering at Chinese IV, should review at least the late material in Chinese III before proceeding.
Chinese Sequence on OCW
MIT OpenCourseWare now offers a complete sequence of four Chinese language courses, covering beginning to intermediate levels of instruction at MIT. They can be used not just as the basis for taught courses, but also for self-instruction and elementary-to-intermediate review.
The four Chinese subjects provide the following materials: an online textbook in four parts, J. K. Wheatley's Learning Chinese: A Foundation Course in Mandarin; audio files of the main conversational and narrative material in this book; and syllabi and day-by-day schedules for each term.
| CHINESE COURSES | COURSE SITES |
|---|---|
| Chinese I (Fall 2014) | 21G.101/151 |
| Chinese II (Spring 2014) | 21G.102/152 |
| Chinese III (Fall 2005) | 21G.103 |
| Chinese IV (Spring 2006) | 21G.104 |