Elementary Chinese - Grade 3

Overview

This course is intended for students who are in their fourth year of studying Chinese in the elementary school. The course is designed for a Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) program. This yearlong course is proficiency-oriented with a focus on meaningful communication rather than on grammatical structure. The curriculum has a spiral design, so that greater detail, rigor, and breadth are added to similar themes of study each subsequent school year. As recommended by the American Association of Teachers of Foreign Language, it is expected that the teacher will use the target language at least 90% of the time for all class purposes. Students start by simply recognizing and responding to the target language. Next, they begin to use the words independently within an appropriate conversational context. This transition happens naturally as the curriculum spirals and builds on previous learning from unit to unit and grade level to grade level. Students continue to build upon themes from prior grades while they add new topics to their repertoire. As students progress into the third grade curriculum, they continue to develop their listening and speaking skills along with guided reading and writing of familiar topics and vocabulary. They create and present authentic skits mirroring real life situations such as ordering in a restaurant and going to the doctor. The target language is used as a means of communication so that students first understand and then produce the language. Since Chinese requires the learning of a totally different writing system, instruction includes recognizing specific characters within each unit. Students continue to review Pinyin, write specific characters and are also introduced to radicals within each unit.

Rationale

Studies show that there is a direct correlation between the amount of time devoted to language study and the language proficiency that the students attain (Curtain & Pesola, 1988). It can be argued, therefore, that children who begin world language study in elementary school, and who continue such study for a number of years, have a better chance of developing a high level of world language proficiency than do students beginning second language learning in the post elementary school years.

A world language provides learners the cultural knowledge and communicative skills to become globally competent and engage with the ever more flattening world. By developing proficiency in another language, learners are able to explore communities beyond their own, interact with people from different cultures, and engage in common educational, career-oriented, and leisure activities with native speakers.

Scope and Sequence

This course has been designed for a FLES program that meets a minimum of three times per week for 30 minutes per session. Teachers who teach in a Foreign Language EXperience model (FLEX) will need to adjust the content.

There are six units of study thematically arranged. Careful thought has been given to the order in which the six units of study are presented. Certain scaffolds have been created based on this order and schools should take care in moving units from their intended placement in the curriculum. Vocabulary from previous units is reinforced in subsequent unit themes and contexts.

Alignment

The Chinese Grade 3 course is aligned to the Michigan World Language Standards and Benchmarks as well as the National Standards for Language Learning.