Chinese for Academic and Professional Communication
CHNSE 150B
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
Continuation of 150a. This course is designed to bring students from ACTFL Advanced-High to Superior proficiency in Chinese. It aims to further develop students’ ability to use Chinese in a precise, flexible, and context-appropriate manner across a range of academic and professional domains. Building on prior coursework, the course adopts a task-based approach and emphasizes the use of Chinese as a practical tool for engaging with discipline-specific content, expressing complex ideas, and communicating with clarity and purpose. Highly customized to students’ academic fields or academic interests, the course also fosters their analytical and critical thinking skills in Chinese.
The course focuses on communicative tasks commonly encountered in academic and professional settings, such as analysis, interpretation, argumentation, and evaluation. Through guided practice and exposure to authentic materials across disciplines, students will refine their control of advanced vocabulary, rhetorical strategies, and discourse structures. Particular attention will be given to clarity, precision, audience awareness, register, and the ability to adapt language use to different communicative contexts, especially in formal and semi-formal communication and writing. Students will also strengthen their ability to read both closely and efficiently, and to engage with culturally and intellectually meaningful topics beyond the textbook.
Course Notes
No auditors. May not be taken Pass/Fail.
Recommended Prep
Chinese 150a or equivalent.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
