150157 KU Listening and Speaking A (M3) (2020W)

To improve the listening and spreaking abilitty and to build up debate skills in Mandarin Chinese.

The main course content will focus on topics from practical life and social, cultural aspects of Chinese society

Given the situation from Covid 19, the course will possibly at anytime change to take place via distance learning platform.

The course is taught in a hybrid asynchronous manner due to the COVID-19 crisis, i.e., Every week, part of the learning group is alternating in the lecture hall, the rest, instead of being present in the lecture hall, has to work on course content asynchronously and hand-in exercises. Before the first session, you will receive a message via your Uni Wien e-mail address informing you which group you belong to. We want to draw your attention to the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic can switch the course to home learning at any time.

== Aims ==
1. Students will discuss the issues of the Chinese Mandarin-speaking regions by integrating six topics, such as adaptation to foreign environments, change of shopping behaviors, fitness and health care, education philosophy, the differences of employment in various cultures, and the society's influence by the tradition and present.
2. Students will improve their listening and speaking skills at the same time, in order to achieve a level expected for basic debating.
3. Through the discussions between the lecturer and students, students are expected to activate their intercultural awareness and develop the essential interactive skills within the contemporary pluricultural-and-plurilingual world.

== Content ==
This course is hybrid, consisting of both physical classroom and online classroom sessions, with six topics. Each topic lasts two weeks. The students will be divided into two small groups: Group A and Group B. Two groups will biweekly take turns to be present in the physical classroom. The rest of the weeks, they will attend online classrooms. In the first week, all students will meet online with the lecturer for the course introduction and the arrangement of the winter semester. Starting from the 2nd week, group A is present in the physical classroom, and group B needs to join the online classroom; on the 3rd week, group B present in the physical classroom, and the other group will attend an online classroom. The whole semester will continue in this teaching mode until the end of the winter semester. Based on the development of the current COVID-19 pandemic related situation, changes to this schedule might appear.

== Method ==
• Physical classroom
In the physical classroom, the teacher will lead the students to discuss the relevant topics with integrated intercultural aspects and conversational materials. The classroom will focus on activities and discussions to develop the students' intercultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence.

• Online classroom
When the students are not required to be in the physical classroom, they will need to attend the online classroom and to practice, speaking and listening, with a native speaker. The time of online classroom is ideally set at the regular course time ( 12:00~ 14:00, Friday), but there is a possibility to switch to any convenient time that fits the students and his/her tutor. The learning material is a piece of Podcast (around 12 mins), relating to the biweekly topic. During this online classroom, the students are expected to learn relevant vocabulary and phrases on the topic. This online classroom aims to enhance students' linguistic competence. Through practice and discussion with the native speaker, the students can benefit from the authentic context and refine their conversational skills. For a better-customized online-class, adjusted accordingly to the individual student's learning style and characteristics, the online-class will be recorded and supervised by a class-organizer from time to time. However, without consent from the students in advance, none of the video and audio recordings will be made.