CHN 405: Fourth Level Chinese for Business Professionals

Goals & Objectives

This is a comprehensive language-for-specific-purposes (LSP) course, which will admit students with a minimum oral proficiency of Intermediate High (Emerging Advanced) in Mandarin and will focus on language functions for the workplace. Productive skills, both spoken and written, will include the delivery of extended analytic and specialized business professional documents and reports.

Students will attain approximately the Advanced Mid level on the ACTFL/ETS proficiency scale with emerging skills at the Superior level. Advanced High and Superior Level reading and speaking skills and Advanced Low Level essay writing techniques will be given emphasis in this course. In this advanced language course, students will be required to use only Mandarin during contact hours. Specifically, students will have the opportunity to achieve the following:

Listening

Understand the majority of both formal and informal conversation in standard Mandarin at normal speech rate in a variety of business settings; gain main ideas and most supporting details of oral communications during specialized professional engagements, such as signing a contract, dealing with business disputes, marketing and advertising, sales and service, etc. Can handle a broad range of business professional topics and situations, give supported opinions, hypothesize, provide complex explanations, describe in detail with a great deal of precision. In addition, understanding of broadcast radio and TV analytic programs on both general topics and business professional topics will also be developed.

Speaking

Confidently engage in both formal and informal communication needed during the work related stay in China. Appropriately initiate, maintain and end conversations at the workplace in the situations mentioned above. Participate in work-related conferences and discussions. Deal with both social and business transactional situations with a wide range of general interest topics and some special fields of interest and expertise. Give detailed job-related instructions and professional speech and oral reports.

Reading

Understand both main ideas and supporting details of factual narrations, descriptions and statistics in business prose, such as business editorials, economic and business analytical essays by economists. Reading on various specialized topics on society, culture, economy, business management, investment, marketing and business related contemporary issues in China and the world will also be included. Strategies to understand unfamiliar subjects and a variety of literary styles are also emphasized.

Writing

Be familiar with levels of formality and characteristics of various specialized business related writings, such as business project proposals, analytical marketing reports, financial reports, product introductions, advertising plans, etc. Produce most kinds of formal and informal correspondence, complex summaries, précis, reports, and research papers on a variety of specialized business topics treated both abstractly and concretely. Competence in presenting and supporting opinions by developing cogent arguments and hypotheses is expected. Particularly, write articles with well-organized structures with a length of 1500 Chinese characters or more. Make drafts for formal talks and speeches in various professional meetings and conferences.

Instructional Coverage

  1. China and the World Economy
    • China in the World Economy
    • China and United States Economic Relations
    • China Energy Strategies
    • China Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development
  2. Business Management in China
    • Foreign Exchange and RMB’s Revaluation
    • Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Rights Protection
    • Management of Joint Ventures
    • Special Economic Zone and Development Zone
  3. Investment in China
    • Forms of investment in China
    • Investment Environment in China
    • Field of Investment: Stock Market
    • Business Planning: Start Your Own Business in China: Procedures and Preparations
  4. Marketing Management in China
    • Managing Marketing Information and Measuring Market Demand
    • Analyzing Customer Market and Buying Behavior
    • Analyzing Industries and Competitors
    • Managing Advertising, Sales Promotion and Public Relations
  5. Chinese Culture and Inter-culture Communication
    • Doing Business: Dos and Don’ts
    • Chinese Business Customs
    • Guanxi in China
    • China and US Inter-Cultural Communication